Prejudices

Since the 31st August I am on my European volunteering service in a small town in the Czech Republic. I am here with other young volunteers from countries like France, Austria, Lithuania, Poland and Germany. Many different countries and cultures, working and living together for one year. To be honest I was afraid. I never met someone from Poland or Lithuania and I never really heard anything about the people there. And if yes only negative things. About polish people for example. Before the 31st August I only knew negative things about Poland and its people. It starts with jokes about polish people who steal and continues with the German perspective on polish politics and racism and homophobia and more of these bad topics. I was sceptical, what if my future, now present, polish flatmate is racist, what could have caused a lot problems, because of my dark skin.

About a few weeks before we had a conversation in our meeting place, the kitchen. We talked about the prejudices we had before coming here and as more as we talked and as more as I thought about it afterwards, I realized, I should not care as much as I may did before. Prejudices are being created in the minds of people and generalize a whole group of people. But we should not generalize the people of one country because of things about governments and people were told in media.

In the end I prejudiced my flatmate and when I met and get to know her better, I saw how open minded she is and. Prejudices do not bring us forward, they stop our anticipation and can hurt people.