The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I recently watch an episode of the television show” Good Times”. Good Times is a television show that was created in the 1970’s about a black family living in Chicago’s impoverished area. The 1970’s is a time where blacks were seen as an inferior race and was targets of oppression, racial bias, and prejudices. Thus, most of the episodes had some lesson on society institution, the isms, marginalization, culture, privileges, and family culture.

            There were many episodes that focus on these issues but one episode that I recently watch was Thelma a character who is the family only daughter is going to college for theater and dance. Thelma is very passionate about her career in theater and has written a play about a strong woman in her quest for a better life. The director of the theater department has found interest in Thelma’s play and wants to do a production. The theater director is a white male who sends his assistant to review and edit the play with Thelma.  As they are editing the play, the assistant often mentions that the director will like to omit or edit certain parts of the play. Most of the things he was omitting or editing were things pertaining to the black culture for example; he wanted the character’s name to change because it sounded like a black name and his audience would not identify with that name.

            As Thelma’s play began to lose its depth and meaning, she began to feel marginalization, bias, prejudice and discrimination. As a result, she told the assistant that she didn’t mind making changes to her play but she was not going to compromise the play to fit into the norm of society. She states “compromising can sometimes mean to surrender” and that although the woman in the play is black, the play is not about being black, it is about a woman who happens to be black. This statement really rings in my ears that sometimes society forgets the underlining meaning of things and makes a person’s race, sexual orientation, gender, etc more of an issue rather than viewing things for what they truly are. One of the things that would have to change to turn incidents like this from happening, is society’s mind set would have to change. This view of what is considered to being the norm would have to change. The norms in society, results in issues of prejudice and oppression.