I am a day behind on my posts, but I will get caught up this weekend!

I decided to pick a bit of a serious topic for my letter D post. Discrimination, especially in the form of prejudice and racism and sexism and all the other isms, is something that is prevalent today, whether it is actual discrimination or “perceived” discrimination as some “news” outlets report (saying it doesn’t exist). Honestly, when I was much younger, like in my 20’s, I never thought much at all about discrimination. I was young and white, so it didn’t seem to be something that impacted my life. Ah, to be young, naive, and ignorant again…. But as I have gotten older and accumulated more life experience and increased my own learning and world view, I have come to realize that discrimination is indeed something that exists and it’s something I need to be aware of and do something about, to the best of my ability. What was really a wake up call for me was being able to personalize discrimination. I have friends and family who are black, Hispanic, Muslim, Jewish, Asian, gay, transgender, non-binary, and other commonly discriminated against groups, and when I hear people, either personally or via media, saying things that are untrue, disparaging, hurtful, and offensive, I see discrimination being alive and well, and it’s disturbing because when those rotten things are said, they’re being said about my friends and family, not nameless, faceless, fictional people. It’s sad that I had to make it “about me” to make it understandable, but I am focusing on the fact that at least I came to an awareness. Please don’t think that just because things may seem better now than they used to be socially that prejudice, hate, bigotry, and discrimination don’t exist. They do. And each of us needs to decide on what we are comfortable doing to help raise awareness and combat it.