We live in Poland in a seaside city called Gdynia. We are fifteen years old students of secondary school. We would like to discuss types of tolerance in the world. Tolerance is an attitude towards people who are different than us in look and who take a different view. There are few kinds of tolerance. Sometimes people do not accept somebody’s religion, the colour of skin, appearance or his opinion. There are a few examples of tolerance or intolerance. About a few months ago in Russia priests lost their jobs because they were Catholics. Some time ago government of Afghanistan allowed women to go to school for the first time. Earlier, women were discriminated because of their sex. In the whole world women couldn’t learn in the last century. Now they are treated the same like men. But intolerance is not only in the East. In nineteenth century in the United States of America there were two clans. Ku-klux clan and Black Panthers. In Ku-klux clan there were only white people and in Black Panthers there were only black people. Ku-klux clan killed many black people because they were told that black people were worse than white people. But Black Panthers had to defend so they killed white people. Nevertheless, it was in the nineteenth century. From the above described cases we can see that there is no tolerance at all. For example stewardess in the Polish Airlines laughed at one of the passengers because he had an Australian accent. These were examples from the world. Now from Poland. We can give an example of one of the girls. Her mother took a flight to America to study Martial Arts. She met a black man who became her husband. They had a little girl whose name was Katie. She was half-cast. When she was thirteen her parents flew with her to Poland to visit her grandparents. When they were already there, she went for a walk at night. Somebody came to her and said that he couldn’t see her in the dark because she was a Negro and she had got ugly black skin. The next day she went to the bakery to buy 2 loaves of bread and the lady said that she did not serve black people. The worst thing that she heard which made her sad was when her Grandma told her that she should be ashamed of herself because she comes from a black man.

Also in Poland there are many Romanians who do not have good opinion. Polish people do not like them because they are said to steal things. But not all Romanians are bad. Many people want to work, have a family and a normal life. Some Polish people give Romanians illegal jobs.

In Poland we can notice various types of intolerance.

Intolerance towards the disabled and the old, towards homosexuals and among teenagers’ subcultures.

We are just trying to get into European Union. We can not be blind for others being different!

Why are we still missing special ways for the disabled? Why are we laughing when we see a man holding another man’s hand? It’s not a big deal in other countries!

We are said to be an independent country. Why shall I not wear buggy jeans or long hair? The answer is simple – there are plenty young people who may not like it.

We asked people who live in Gdynia : What do you think about poor people which vagabondize in the Gdynia’s street ?
We also asked people : Does the homosexual community worry you ?