Living in the 21st century, you may notice many stereotypes and prejudices common in the media of the day. However, these stereotypes are not simply restricted to the media. They are present in all aspects of life: in the workplace, in school, in neighborhoods - basically everywhere.

In the workplace, some jobs are considered men's fields, and so the statistics of the ratio of men to women in these professions reflects this bias. For example, there is an underrepresentation of women in Computer Science. And even those women who are in this field are, as in others, paid less than men for the same work.

Programs such as the Artemis Project, at Brown, help to combat the uneven distribution of men and women in CS.

Another of the more prevalent area of discrimination is on the topic of race. The Civil Rights Movement may have ended 50 years ago, but that does not mean that the problem of racial discrimination is solved and can be put to rest. Far from it! Today's society is still rife with bigotry and inequality. For example, think about the stereotype of black people (especially men) being criminals. Although prisons are more occupied by black people than white, this is because of an ingrained bias in the system:

When police decide which areas to patrol, they reference data, which, in theory, should tell them which areas hold more criminals. It would make sense to keep an eye on trouble areas, right? And this would work well, if the data were not biased just as much as society. However, because in the past they have patrolled primarily black neighborhoods, they have found more crime there, simply because they are looking there and not elsewhere. The data from arrests in these neighborhoods gets fed into the system, and so lead the data to continue to be biased.

If police were to vary their patrols, the data would no longer be so biased, and this stereotype might become less prevalent.

With contemperary terrorist groups such as ISIS being in the news, people seem to be confused between ISIS and Islam - two completely different groups. Some politicians would have us believe that all Muslims are terrorists. This is blatantly wrong. ISIS claims to be represensting Islam, but unassociated Muslims all agree that its practices go against that claim.

This misconception has caused discrimination against Muslims. For example, earlier this year a college student was talking on the phone aboard a Southwest Airlines flight when a women on the flight heard him speaking in Arabic, became alarmed, and alerted authorities of his allegedly threatinging coversation. He was then escorted off the plane as a "potential threat." However, the women who raised the alert had no knowledge of the actual content of his conversation. He was actually only saying "inshallah" which translates to "God willing."

This is just one of many situations where fear and stereotypes have caused innocent Muslims to face discrimintaion.