"Little Things Are Big" Reflection

Once Jesus Colon rode on the subway in the eve of Memorial day, a white woman got arduously on the same subway later as taking care of two children with her careful attention, holding a little child with one arm, and pulling a valise with another arm. Looking at her, he had been caught by a strong sense of responsibility of helping her out in response to his inherited ‘courtesy’ as one of Puerto Rican. However, the fact that he is a black and a Puerto Rican bothered him, agonizing over whether it would be fine to provide help to the white lady who could have held preconceived prejudices towards the races and ethnicity. He imagined numerous situations in which the lady and himself faced against each other, as well as her following responses: alright, suspicious, or even worse. Until the minutes and seconds the subway stopped at the stationery point, he weighted between ‘assisting’ her or just ‘neglecting’ her.

Ultimately, Colon simply passed away the white lady without even glancing as if he saw nothing around the station. Even though his every senses were concentrated to that lady and children, he pretended to hear only some footsteps and a piercing wind. Afterwards, a huge shame and a feeling of embarrassment were surrounded him, who noticed that he was prejudiced by himself.

Most surprisingly, this story gave a different perspective of prejudices and stereotypes. The one who has been suffered from the discrimination of a society is being a protagonist, and depicted how he took seriously about and conscious of the bias. As the title addressed, 'little things are big' - reflects the fact that unfairness among our races and ethnicities would be considered as a trivial thing or taken for granted by many people, but the one who receives an eyesore gets stressful about the prejudices. For every behaviors they are trying to do without any intentions, the responses are usually suspicion and misunderstanding. By reading this story, a strong message is conveyed to the audience that 'the prejudices should be eradicated'.