The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I read a lot of articles on the internet, especially yahoo new and I tend to comment on a lot of the articles that I read.  Last year I commented on an article about a man being found not guilty in a particular case.  I added a comment to the article because it was my way of venting.  I didn't put anything about my race or race at all in the article but received several replies and one that stuck out in my head was the fact that someone said that I was an ignorant black woman and that they could tell that I was black...because of the stupid name that I had.  I was offended and stereotyped because of my name and the person who commented was racist and prejudice in my opinion.

This prejudice diminished equity because of the fact that stereotypes and racial biases were used in commenting on the post that I did concerning the article.  Not one individual commented on what I said about the situation but rather I was bashed because they felt I had a black name.  I was pissed at the comments but realized that those commenting were the one's that were being ignorant.  I gave them names of white women who they could look up to see that this name wasn't just a "black name" and although they gave me no response afterwards I figured I had proven the point of not stereotyping people based on their names and making prejudice comments.

I can't say what or who would have to change in order to turn incidents such as this one around for an opportunity for greater equity.  However, I do feel that it is important that people grow and get over racism, stereotypes and their biases when dealing with people from other ethnicity's or cultures.  It's important that people are educated on what prejudices and racism is because people will say quickly that I'm not racist, I'm not prejudice but won't realize that they have microaggressions that they may not be aware of that will portray them as a racist or someone who is prejudice.