Perspective

So, a word that's been provoking me lately is "perspective". Since the beginning of the school year, it's been mentioned, and today in specific it's been showing up quite a bit.

In English class, we've been watching "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (it'd take too long to read it), which is basically about the happenings during the Civil War and such. So, after a scene or two, our teacher will stop the movie and explain to us what she wanted us to understand from that part of the movie. So at one part today, she stopped it and told us to look at the different perspectives of the people in the film. It was a scene where slaves were being bought and sold. In it was the seller, the buyer, Uncle Tom (a slave), another slave (14 years old), and the mother of the 14 year old. My teacher told us about all of the different views of the characters. Why they were doing what they did. In the buyer's mind, blacks weren't citizens, and purely made for working. He didn't think this because he was a bad person. Because society taught him that way. But to the slave being bought, the buyer was cold-hearted and cruel. It all depended on how you looked at it.

Earlier today, my mom was yelling at me for being selfish and having a bad attitude. After I started thinking about it, I had realized I WAS having a bad attitude. But I didn't think I was being selfish. My mom thought that because she hadn't bothered to look at MY perspective of the situation. She was just looking at everything she thought, and how she thought I should be acting, when there's a WHOLE other side to the story.

Again, in English class, last Thursday, we were talking about the well-known Trayyon Martin case. It had started out with the idea that an innocent, African-American boy was shot, by a white man, with no good reason. But that's just what the media told us. They made us want to believe that it was yet another racial issue. This is called "yellow journalism". The media and the press tells us what we want to hear, that there's a scandal, or a good story happening, when there's more going on then what they tell you. As it turns out, Trayyon Martin was NOT the smiling, happy kid you see in the pictures of him. He was one of the people, as my teacher put it, "with sagging pants, who walk slow, and had suspicious actions." He very well could not have been innocent as he was shot. And yes, he was black, but the man who shot him, as it was later uncovered, is not white. He's Mexican. And he's not the frowning face you see in the mug shot. He's a happy guy. The media took one side of the story and made it news. Not looking at someone's perspective pushed everyone's opinions to what the press wanted everyone to think.

But out of everything, the thing that most interested me about perspective was said in enrichment at the very beginning of the year, when we were discussing 9/11. The teacher was telling us about terrorists. His exact words were,
"To you and I, terrorists are horrible people. We don't know why they do what they do. We just know it's not something acceptable in this country, and we find it incredibly terrible that any human being could do anything like that. But to the terrorists themselves, they're freedom-fighters. They have a motive, they have a reason for doing what they do. They don't think of bombing airplanes as a horrible thing, as we do. It's all about opinion. It's all about perspective."

That, of course, was not the first time I heard that word. That wasn't the first time I learned what it meant. That was just the first time it made an impact on me. That was the first time I ever realized what perspective could do, and what it could cause. Because of not respecting one's perspective, my mom is mad at me. The Civil War started, and segregation continued. The entire country is angry and outraged by a man who was indeed at fault, but isn't entirely to blame. And so much more. So just look at not only your perspective, but others also. In everything you do, say, or think. It may cause something great.