Persuasive Essay On Equal Treatment

By giving everyone the same, equal treatment, mankind will already be winning the fight for equality. “All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries,” Abileen states in the renowned period novel “The Help”, which has served to shed some light on that era and discourage against racism (Stockett 312). If people applied that simple concept to civil rights and equal opportunities, the world would not face such high rates of inequality and injustice. Kindness, like equal treatment, should be given to all, regardless of barriers such as race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. This does not necessarily mean that all members of society should be seen as the same; that shortcut completely distracts from the problem at hand. It means that all members of society should receive the same respect, kindness, and rights that all human beings are entitled to. This unequal treatment can be summed up by this statement:

As long as women of color are being paid even less on the dollar than white men and women, as long as there is domestic violence and trans violence, as long as families are being broken up by our broken immigration system, as long as black communities face disproportionate police harassment, violence and incarceration, as long as children born to one family in one part of our nation don't have the same exact shot at reaching their full potential as a child born anywhere else in America, then we have not won yet.

(Kohn 1)

Equal treatment in society and under the law is the first step to equality in the United States, and then the rest of the world. Our country always seems to rise to the occasion when freedom and liberty are challenged, and this nation’s people pride themselves on that fact. So why shouldn’t the United States lead by shining example in the fight for equality? The equal treatment of all people is one of the largest steps society can make in the fight for equality, but that, of course, is not

all.
Although treating everyone equally would be a large leap, the problem must still be fought at its root: oppression. In any equality movement, for the oppressors “the fight was to prevent equality, on the premise that equality for others would somehow diminish the life that we currently enjoy,” (Kampa 1). Oppressors benefit from the discrimination and prejudice targeting the oppressed. When the institution is built in the favor of someone, that same someone doesn’t usually work to try and change that. Opposing oppression and endorsing equality go hand in hand, so society must do all it can to acknowledge and challenge the existence of privileges that hinder the progression of equality in the world. The world is ruled by “the oppressors, whose tranquility rests on how well the people fit the world the oppressors have created, and how little they question it,” (Freire 57). To fight for equality means to fight against oppression, everyone constantly faces oppressors each day but rarely ever challenges them. If society continues to criticize the world while sitting back, doing nothing, and allowing these such people to relentlessly carry out their oppression and power, equality will never be won, peace will never be reached, and society will never move forward. Those seeking equality must fight the power, take the power, and give it back to the people by peaceful, just means.