People may think that because the Civil War ended into 1865 and because in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed into law that prejudice doesn’t exist anymore.

Those people are wrong.

The newspaper staff has heard insensitive statements towards multiple races/religions/cultures/ethnicities. People may say these things because they might just be jumping on the bandwagon, or perhaps they are just ignorant. Ignorance cannot be an excuse for prejudice; we need to work together as a whole to truly become a community.

This problem has also been seen on the Internet because on the Internet anyone can be anonymous in hate. Some people may just say prejudiced things out of genuine malice, but we need to understand that if we are to function as a community, then we need to discard stereotypes and misplaced prejudices to truly become a community.

To help each other, we cannot just criticize because that will not fix the greater underlying problem of ignorance or pure malice. To truly help those who are prejudiced against another race, ethnicity, religion or culture, we need to educate them on the inner working of said group.

We may be setting a negative example as well. Comedy has devolved into making cheap jokes at the expense of a race or religion. People can use racially insensitive words without truly understanding the connotation they may have to other people.

We need to realize that anyone can be a part of the problem, even ourselves. Without truly being sincere for the causes which we support, we can create an even larger gap between our races and religions.