"Swear It" by: Marge Piercy

This poem really represented what we see in today's society. We see an image of discrimination. Even though, discrimination happened many years ago, we still see it today. The poem, puts in persepective on how we just judge people by there covers. We do not really look for the personality of someone who has a different background, or one who has a different religion or ethnicity. We just jump to conclusions and that is what the poem was talking about.

In the fourth and fifth stanza, we can prove that we label people. The poem states, "...- often those who label us into narrow jars with salt and vinegar, saying, People like them, meaning me and mine." This is a very important line in the poem. It shows that we all label and we are all steriotypical. We classify people either by ethnicity, religion, or race, before we REALLY get to know the person. We always assume, they are different, they have different skin color, or they do not believe in what I believe. We see this everyday in our society when other are put down because they have something different about them.

This story fits into this poem really well. In psychology class, we were talking about a man ( I don't remember his name), who was black and was taking the subway home in New York late at night. There was a women who had many bags and I believe two children with her. In this man's religion it is polite to help a women. We discussed all the possiblities, what happened if he did not help her, we concluded that he would go against his religion. We also made the point that because he was a black, would the women be afraid and get the cops who might take his life because of his assisstance. There were so many possibilities. In the end, the man did not help the women because he was afraid of losing his life. The man went back on his religion because he just stood there. In this story, there was no discrimination, but the man had to decide whether to save his life or to take a risk not knowing the reaction of the women if he assisted he in any way. What would happen if you were in this situation? Would you like a black man come up to you late at night, in New York in a subway station? There are so many ways that the women could have been discrimating him because she was afraid.

We always judge a book by its cover. I believe that this problem of labeling people will never go away. Even though in the past couple of years, it might be not to important, but we will see this all the time. Every where you go people label others on what they see and not what they know. If only one day, everybody could be friendly with everyone and not judge a book by its cover, the world would be a better place to live in.