Different, discordant, dangerous? How should we perceive minorities?
Imagine that you are talking with a man, but you cannot see him. As the conversation goes,
he turns out to be a genuine, intelligent person. Then the lights turn on and you can see the
man who is from the Middle East. Two years ago he managed to escape from his country.
Would you instantly change his mind about him? Would he become less intelligent or less
kind?
Of course, this is only one example of many minorities that can be met in this day and age.
Minorites exists in diverse forms like religious, racial or sexual. The main problem is that
people are often afraid of them, because they do not know them. On the one hand, it is
completely reasonable, because fear is something that helps us survive as humans, but on the
other hand, it is unfair and narrow-minded. Different does not mean worse. Some effort
should be made to get to know and understand what is strange to us. As George Mead said:
Society is unity in diversity. The power of society is in its integrity despite some differences.
Opponents of any minority claim that their existence in society has a negative influence.
It cannot be denied that among these social group are those who are simply evil. As the saying
goes: one bad apple spoils the whole barrel. That is to say, no matter how many moral people
there are, the ones that do harm will be remembered the most and thus the image of a whole
minority will be distorted.
A further common criticism of minorities like refugees is that they are often believed to be the
reason of increasing crime rate. However, that is only a stereotype. According to the data
published by the Italian National Institute of Statistics number of crimes committed across the
country shows that crime has diminished everywhere in Italy since 2008, while the number of
granted asylum permits in Italy increased. This clearly shows that immigrants should not be
perceived as a source of danger.
To conclude, I firmly believe that minorities are not to be feared. In my view, stereotyping is
harmful and it should be taken into consideration that one day you might as well be in
a minority, so you would not like to be perceived misguidedly.