Punishing Differences

"If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity" (John F. Kennedy). Differences and the inability to accept such differences have always thwarted the worlds attempt to convene in a harmonious manner. Everyone is unique, there is no two exact things. The color of ones skin and ethnicity have always been a main way of distinction, but there's also ones sexual preferences, they're manner of thinking and viewing the world, characteristics (both external and internal), and thousands of others. Just because someone can't comprehend someone else and their differences does not give that person the liberty to discriminate and essentially "punish" that other human being for something that is out of their control.
In The Stranger by Albert Camus, the protagonist, Meursault, has a very unconventional thought process in which he is mostly governed by his physical condensations. It is out of his control because that's just how he is, at the same time his actions could be taken as a punishment towards the Arabs because of their current conflict with his own ethnicity. Regardless of the motives, the ambiguity of the situation is open to people's own interpretation which again correlates to how everyone is different and what one may see as innocence others will see as a guilty crime. You can't punish someone because they seem different, because you can't understand their motives. No one understood Meursault for his actions, but maybe that's just because he's clearly not mentally stable if he lets his emotions be governed by his atmosphere, it's out of his control. The death penalty he was sentenced to was to me an extreme, taking into consideration that the Arabs were also a non innocent party on the beach.
Currently, in the United States people are being discriminated against for their differences. Dark colored skinned people are being discriminated against because people automatically view them as criminals doing suspicious activities. The Latino ethnicity are automatically seen as "aliens", they also get unjustifiably punished for supposed suspicious activities. The middle eastern people are automatically viewed as terrorists. We don't give them the opportunity to prove that they're actually not so different from us, we're all one and the same. People that seem different are seen as inferior human beings, but why should this be permitted? Why is it that we can't accept each other's differences to reconcile with one another? We need "to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."