Persuasive Essay On Covering

College is often said to be the time to be whoever you want to be. However, when a student feels they need to make the choice to cover, they lose the opportunity to be themselves and learn more about their community. Covering is a person or group’s acts of censoring portions of their identity viewed as disadvantageous in an attempt to assimilate. Judicial and societal unwillingness to provide protection for marginalized communities furthers encouragement for individuals to cover. While some civil rights activists intertwine protective legislation with equality, requirements for covering in college settings shows a lack of equality and the need for creating a model of acceptance, an opportunity to further equality throughout the world. Covering

By attempting to imitate the expected forms of expression of mainstream identities, the person is choosing to diminish part of their self. While Blackmore suggests that, “What makes us different is our ability to imitate (Blackmore p. 3),” covering can have strongly negative effects upon an individual and ostracized groups. By choosing to cover, an individual internalizes and upholds the ideology that some identities are better than others. Some people argue against a negative view of covering, suggesting that it is product of nurture and not fully a person’s conscious decision. Excusing covering by simply explaining it as a byproduct of a person’s upbringing is harmful because it does not hold the person accountable for their own actions. However, once the excuse behind explaining covering as an unconscious decision, the factor of consciousness is important to consider. Due to the

Yishino states, “The courts will not protect mutable traits, because individuals can alter them to fade into the mainstream, thereby escaping discrimination (p. 5).” This quote shows that, even without considering police bias, protections for non-passing, non-covering members of ostracized groups under the law are limited, and occasionally nonexistent. These individuals, as the quote explains, often do not have legal protection because courts have decided to not include their expression as part of their rights. When their expression puts them at risk, such as at a job or in college, the courts do not protect them, taking away any protections the law could be interpreted to give them. The implications of this legal stance can affect thousands even when acting outside of the judicial system, including college students. For example, tenured professors often receive no punishment for making racist claims during lectures, even when students complain to the professor’s supervisors. Student protection is not as valued as the protection of tenured professors, creating situations even in college classrooms where students must cover their culture. Opponents of legal protection for discriminated individuals argue that people who refuse to cover should not be given extra protection. The argument is that since