The personal side of bias, prejudice, and Oppression

I experienced a bias when I first started working as a teenager. I was a waitress at a local pizza joint. My family lived close by and when you live in a small town everyone knows everyone else’s business. It is hard to do anything wrong in a small town without it being the next morning’s coffee shop talk. I grew up in a low income family and we were seen as such. We did not have money like most families in the town and as a teenager it affected me more so. I did have to work hard and build my own reputation. This started off when I was working as a waitress. I had a good job and made my tips from a lot of local customers that knew me and my family. One time I had a family that refused to sit at a table when they realized I was the waitress. They went to another part of the restaurant where my good friend was waiting on those tables. She was from a more prominent family and we had grown up together. She received a big tip that evening and she shared that tip with me. The bias I received as a waitress from that family made me feel unworthy and incompetent as a waitress. I was regarded as unworthy to serve them based on who I was and who my family was. My friend told me that she wanted to share the tip with me because they were seated in my section and they were my patrons to wait on. This story represents two separate representations of who people are and the choices they make. The family chose to move and have me not wait on them and my friend chose to share a tip that she felt I should have had the opportunity to earn. I learned more from my friend that evening than I did from the family. The family was prejudice against me and showed me true bias behavior. My friend taught me that even though they were that way, she knew it was wrong. At 16 my friend showed more maturity and un-bias behavior than a couple in their 40’s. Bias isn’t age based its moral and ethically based. I learned that we can stand up for what we feel is right at any age and I want to bring that to my classroom and instill that into my own children and the children in my classroom.