Discrimination

Since I graduated from college last May I have been searching diligently for a full-time job with no luck! It has been very frustrating and I have been lucky to find part time at a job that I love while I continue my job search. Recently, I was asked if I ever feel discriminated against while looking for a job and this sparked inspiration in me and I also was curious about other people’s opinions.

My answer is yes and no and I will go into detail but let’s identify what the definition of discrimination means. The definition of discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex (look on yahoo.com). This can include a wide range of people including disabled people. Being disabled I have encountered a lot of people who doubt my abilities whether it involves job searching, dating or my every day life.

For example, I am a swimmer, I love to swim! If it’s warm I can be found in the pool swimming laps or floating on an inner tube and lounging in the sunshine. My grandma has always called me a fish because I love the water. I decided one year in school that I would try out for the swim team. I thought I can swim laps all day, hold my breath for forever and I love to swim so why not? All of my friends and family were very supportive so I went for it. I signed up and went to try outs. The swim coach had me start out just doing some basic strokes mainly breast stroke which is how I normally swim and then the crawl which is the arms over the head and head back and forth out of the water. Well, I failed miserably at the crawl because of the inability to use my legs. I couldn’t swim straight and ended up doing a nose dive towards the bottom of the pool every time. Now just to clear things up, I can swim very well but the inability to use my legs makes me a little slower than others and my stroke methods are limited but the important thing is I can do it.

The coach told me to keep swimming laps and she left. She returned a few minutes later and told me to dry off. I thought it was very weird and then my mom showed up. PISSED OFF to say the least. Evidently the coach called my mom and told her to pick me up because I wasn’t fast enough and couldn’t do a lot of the strokes. She expressed to my mom that I just wasn’t good enough and she didn’t want me on her team! The coach was not even willing to work with me, don’t they say practice makes perfect? I put my all into the try out and was not upset that I didn’t make it but was upset about how the coach went about letting me know. She didn't even tell me how she felt to my face, my mom had to tell me what happened because the coach didn’t say anything to me. That was my first real dose of blatant discrimination.

I remember for weeks after the try out I worked in the pool to prove her wrong! I never mastered the crawl, obviously that wasn’t going to happen and every time I did the turn to flip around from one side of the pool to another I bumped into the side and hit my head. Funny now but not at the time, I finally gave up which is something I hardly ever do!

Now to my answer, in certain circumstances I do feel discriminated against like in the above example. But, I have strong beliefs that when it does happen it’s just because they focused on my inabilities and not my abilities. Two other reasons for why I believe people discriminate due to a disability is because they haven’t known anyone that is disabled and the fact that because of that they are naive! When we think about certain cases when discrimination has happened many people take action and are out for revenge.

I, on the other hand, have a completely different approach. I don’t have time to worry about why I didn’t get a job, why people are staring and the fact that people just don’t realize all that I am capable of. I absolutely love my life and can never imagine myself focusing on stuff like that. It completely ruins your self esteem and confidence and why let it? I can’t imagine myself focusing on being discriminated against; I enjoy life to much to focus on people who won’t ever see the good in me. Life is way to short for that.

So, if you are disabled and going through a tough time or a job search and feel like people are focusing on your disability not who you are as a person, here is my advice: Keep trying, you can’t give up! Obviously the job or situation is not right for you because people don’t see how awesome you really are! Someone will see the good in you; your great personality (I have a very strong personality if you haven’t figured that out) and all of your skills that make you the right person for that situation and you will flourish and succeed! No matter the situation, stay true to who you are, work towards educating people and keep looking towards the future! Discrimination is not about revenge it’s about fair treatment. The truth is that discrimination is out there and it will continue to remain an issue until people are willing to educate themselves. We can’t change the fact that people discriminate but we can change our behavior and how we react to it. Change can begin with just one person! Remember, you can do whatever you want to do and great things are headed your way! Remember, bottom line, it’s just a chair! 

Any thoughts? I would love to here anyone else’s opinion on this topic.