Saki: Personal Experience Essay

Alterna-TV News

Personal Discrimination Experience
Saki Sugiki

Personal Discrimination

Discrimination is a kind of incorrigible practice. I learned about prejudices against black people in the United States. However, I have never thought about any discrimination in my country. I thought about this problem, and I noticed there is in fact unfair treatment about race, religion, sex, and so on. I also realized that one of my experiences was a kind of discrimination. My experience involved dialect discrimination.

At the time, I had just moved to new school. I had a different dialect from another classmates, and I was treated unfairly because of my dialect. Everyone thought that my speaking was very strange. After all, if I spoke something, some people would laugh at me, even though the story was not funny. Some classmates said my accent was really funny behind my back. Also, someone said that I did not know about TV star because I came from the Japan countryside. I was really shocked because I had never been treated like this by others. Therefore, I was scared to speak, as a result of this, I became a very quiet girl at the time. I did not say anything back to such mean people, so they kept treating me like that. Finally, I moved to another school. The people in that school were so friendly and kind. After I moved there, I became better, but I still was scared to speak with my real dialect.

The most terrible case is suicide because of dialect discrimination. A girl killed herself when she was only 12 years old. She moved to the countryside, from Tokyo. Her new classmates did not like her dialect at all. She spoke standard Japanese so she did not have any dialect like her new classmates. Standard Japanese is not so warm as local dialect, some people think that it is very cold. Because of her dialect, everyone thought she mocked them because of their provincialism, but she did not. Then they started offend her physically and psychologically. She could endure the fact that everyone treated her unkindly and unfairly. Finally, she thought she could not suffer anymore, so she hanged herself.

This is very unnecessary. She did not do anything bad to them. Why did she kill herself? I cannot understand why people treat someone badly who has different dialect. I do not think that dialect is a big problem. For this reason, Japanese people love unity. This is one aspect of Japanese culture. Especially in school, everyone has black hair, black eyes, and yellow skin. They all have to wear uniforms properly. That is to say, being unique is not good in Japan. People should all be like same.

In conclusion, everyone should accept difference more. Parents and teachers need to educate children that differencesare good. Japan has many dialects from north to south. They are all different because every town has different culture. Difference is very good because each person is already different. No one has the same body or face. If every child could understand this, there might be no discrimination, then the world would be much nicer and more peaceful.