Nampa Optimist Club

Essay Contest 1999

Optimist International - Friend of Youth

1st - Tyler Ciscell

     If I could give the world freedom from one thing, it would be prejudice. Prejudice is the father of nearly all our problems today. Ask anyone to name the greatest evil mankind has endured, and one will undoubtedly hear phrases like "the holocaust, Hitler, the Nazis", or perhaps slavery and the KKK. Of course, there are other injustices in our society, but none are so insidious as prejudice, and none so devastating to our sense of community and caring for our fellow man. A world without prejudice is potentially greater than any civilization on earth has achieved.
     It is human nature to first worship, then despise and destroy that which is different from us. All of us have this sense that our ideas, our customs, even our bodies are the best; and that all which is not ours is therefore not the best and hence, inferior. We have done this since the dawn of time and will, in all probability, continue to do so until our last breath is taken. So why fight it? Why dream of things that will never be? Because, any dream worth having is worth fighting for; no matter how hopeless things seem. Change is not brought about by those who simply dream; it is brought about by those who dream and do. Action is more powerful than one might think. A simple act of defiance to an unjust king can spur a revolt, maybe even a revolution. It has happened dozens of times in mankind's short and bloody history, and the time is ripe for a revolutions before it. An incredibly unjust king has sprung up, ruling all of us, without regard for race or creed. He has but one goal, and that is to separate us. Prejudice's reign must not last one more day.
     So how do you fight prejudice? You can't really take a gun to it, nor can you vote for it to be ousted from office. No, unfortunately, neither of these will work and sadly, prejudice has the maddening habit of entrenching itself so tightly in a person's mind that no amount of convincing will help. The only true way to defeat prejudice is to defy it. If there is one person in this world you can change, it is yourself. So, the next time you're tempted to laugh at that joke, or look down on that person, or claim anything of yours is better than the next man's, stop and think. Is this how you want others to treat you? If not, if you find yourself tempted by the lure of your own imagined perfection, remember: there are six billion other people thinking the same thing.

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