Judgment

How would you feel if someone judged you with one look, they wouldn’t know you or anything about you, but with that one look, they decide how they are going to treat you.

Unfortunately this is one of the most common situations a person goes through every single day from both sides, whether the are judging someone or getting judged by someone, it has become a regular part of life. Sometimes people will not even realise that they have made an assumption about someone else. Now some of you may be thinking that, “I’m not like this”, “I would never do something like that” and many people are aware not to judge someone of their religious or racial background. But when someone has never met another person, and has heard terrible things about them, then how would they react when they meet that person.

There is a huge role that media plays in representing all kinds of people, from different races and backgrounds. For example if the BBC news they said that some specific people were crazy and were trying to eat other people, everyone would fear those people and run away from them. Now this may be an extreme example, but look at what happened on 13/11/15. The day that the Paris attacks took place. “This will change the world” said the French prime minister after a press conference. And not only did these events affect the Parisians that got targeted and were they victims, but this event also affected to 6.13 million muslims living in France.“ You think we like it when these things happen, you think we like having everyone put the spotlight on us and judge us” said a muslim man in France on the BBC news.On the media you constantly hear the reporters saying “Islamic state” and “Muslim extremist” which  makes someone who has never met a muslim quite scared of them and can make the life of the 6.13 million muslims in France’s life very difficult, as many people can and will be judged just because of the of their religion, but this problem isn’t just taking place in France, it’s taking place all over the world.

In UWCSEA a school in Singapore a new student walks in his class as the teacher walks up to introduce him to the class. “ Hey guys can I have your attention, we have a new student, his name is Ali and he is from Pakistan” said the teacher. The whole class erupt into whispers “He’s from Pakistan?”, “What if he’s Osama Bin Laden’s son” says one of the student laughing. Ali heard it, but he ignored it.

Hearing these kinds of stories should really make you think about how people make judgments like this, even in Singapore, where we are supposed to be a great accepting community. So why do people make these judgments.

Almost all of the time we will make these judgments unconsciously or by intuition. Sometimes these random judgments we make about another person are sensible: “She looks nice and friendly. I’ll ask her the directions.” But other times, these feelings can be riddled and filled with unsupported assumptions, biases, and stereotypes that will affect our behaviour, interactions, and decisions when regarding this person

Research dating back nearly 50 years shows, that even teachers that are supposed to always show support and treat all students equally, will still make these judgements, and some teachers view attractive children as smarter. This sways teachers to give those children more attention, which helps them to achieve more academic success and makes the teacher help the student more rather than a shy and quiet student . And this shows the effect of an initial snap judgment about the child’s intelligence.

Cedric Bellens a middle school student says “ In P.E I sometimes feel, that the teachers favour students with greater physical capabilities, and students that are more confident” This problem isn’t only related to race, but much bigger. It can effect people all around the world. And must be stopped

The next time you encounter a situation like this, think twice before you make a judgement about someone. Make sure you know someone before you decide to treat them.

By: Ali

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