Rim Mekonnen
Racism in the Twenty-First Century
1. Throughout the history of the United States, whites dominated society by making laws that limited the power of minorities such as Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans. For hundreds of years, whites controlled minorities using laws and mind games to make sure these minorities never rose to threaten their control. In the 1950s and 60s, Congress passed laws to protect the civil rights of minorities such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on “race, color, or religion” in the work force. Even though many people would say that racism ended decades ago, in “Piercing the Brilliant Veil: Two Stories of American Racism” from the Indiana Law Journal, Deborah Jones Merritt argues that two stories of racism exist in our society.
2. Deborah Jones Merritt believes that two stories of racism exist in society. One is where racism has been eradicated and minorities hold high positions. In the other, minorities live under poverty, have higher rates of going to prison, and lower chances of getting a job than their white counterparts with identical qualifications. The previous story shows the disadvantages minorities face both in schools and in society, where whites are more likely to receive aid financially and academically. The author believes that both stories are true: the first demonstrates America’s dedication to social reform while the second shows the existence of racial discrimination, which minority children grow up in. These stories are significant because the existence of affirmative action where there is no racism hurts both whites and minorities but on the other hand, affirmative action recognizes the fact that whites receive better...
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... more comfortable working with other minorities as opposed to whites.
5. Because of my experiences as a minority, I believe that Merritt depicted the difficulties many minorities face in the United States even today. She showed that minorities are treated differently in the work force, the education system, and the health care system. In school, minority children face opposition and discrimination, which develops over the years and strengthens their feelings of inferiority over the years. The perfect solution that the author suggests uses affirmative action programs to acknowledge hardships that minority students face and allows white students to interact with them and learn more about them. Eradicating affirmative action would allow white students to blame their preference for white lab partners, for instance, on lack of competence of African American students.
Over the past 15 years tremendous awareness has been raised around this and programs of preferential treatment emerged. These programs ensured equal rights for people of color and females in the work place, allowing for them to apply for executive level positions and earn the same amount of money, benefits, and prestige as a white male ensuring equality for all race and sex. Lisa Newton argues that, “reverse discrimination does not advance but actually undermines equality because it violates the concept of equal justice under law for all citizens. In addition, to this theoretical objection to reverse discrimination, Newton opposes it because she believes it raises insoluble problems.” Among them are determining what groups have been sufficiently discriminated against in the past to deserve preferred treatment in the present and determining the degree of reverse discrimination that will be compensatory. Newton outlines the importance of ensuring her argument is recognized as logically distinct from the condition of justice in the political sense. She begins her argument for reverse discrimination as unjustified by addressing the “simple justice” claim requiring that we favor women and blacks in employment and education opportunities. Since women and blacks were unjustly excluded from such opportunities for so many years in the not so distant past, however when employers and schools favor women and blacks, the same injustice is done. This reverse discrimination violates the public equality which defines citizenship and destroys the rule of law for the areas in which these favors are granted. To the extent that we adopt a program of discrimination, reverse or otherwise, justice in the political sense is destroyed, and none of us, specifically affected or no is a citizen, as bearers of rights we are all petitioners
Despite the passing of the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action, racism evolved from the blatant discrimination of the 1960s like segregation, to the slightly more passive racism of the 1990s such as unfair arrests/jail time (Taylor). Curtis’ writes three decades after the aforementioned progress and yet, looking back on the 90s, there is an alarming amount of similarities between the two.
Even though slavery was abolished Jim Crow laws were made illegal years ago, racism is still not gone, and this is Bonilla-Silva’s central argument in his book, “Racism Without Racists.” While racist practices are not as overt nowadays, the covert, institutionalized ways of today’s new racism are just as discriminatory, he argues. One particular sentence that stood out that sums up the first part of his argument is “that the main problem nowadays is not the folks with hoods, but the folks dressed in suits.” Because of this switch to a more covert way of discriminating against people of color, white Americans have become color-blind to racism. In turn, the country is now home to “racism without racists,” which is the second part of the author’s argument. Because racism has become so internalized in our institutions, it can sometimes be hard to recognize, or at least admit to, the discrimination that is so prevalent in the U.S. Because whites either don’t recognize or admit to this racism, they claim that they don’t see color, and that any inequalities that are at play are due to the minorities not working hard enough in our meritocracy.
Color blind racism is an “ideology, which acquired cohesiveness and dominance in the late 1960s, explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics,” according to Bonilla-Silva (2). In order to analyze color blind racism, Bonilla-Silva relies “mostly on interview data (11)” through a 1997 Survey of Social Attitudes of College Students and a 1998 Detroit Area Study (DAS) (12). Bonilla-Silva then breaks down the analysis of color blind racism into four central themes to convey how whites explain a world without racial issues: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization.
After long years of suffering, degradation, and different sorts of discrimination which the disadvantaged group of people had experienced, the “Affirmative Action Law” was finally passed and enforced for the very first time on September 24, 1965. The central purpose of the Affirmative Action Law is to combat racial inequality and to give equal civil rights for each citizen of the United States, most especially for the minorities. However, what does true equality mean? Is opportunity for everyone? In an article entitled, “None of this is fair”, the author, Mr. Richard Rodriguez explains how his ethnicity did not become a hindrance but instead, the law became beneficial. However, Mr. Richard Rodriguez realized the unfairness of the “Affirmative Action” to people who are more deserving of all the opportunities that were being offered to him. Through Mr. Rodriguez’s article, it will demonstrates to the reader both favorable, and adverse reaction of the people to the Affirmative Action, that even though the program was created with the intention to provide equality for each and every citizen, not everyone will be pleased, contented, and benefit from the law.
Anne learned from a young age that if you were a Negro, hard work will get you something, but most of the time, that something isn’t enough for what you need. This is the same for the fight against racial inequality. Though the programs made an impact and were successful in their own smaller battles, the larger battle still had yet to be won. Anne’s experiences had raised several doubts
Affirmative action, the act of giving preference to an individual for hiring or academic admission based on the race and/or gender of the individual has remained a controversial issue since its inception decades ago. Realizing its past mistake of discriminating against African Americans, women, and other minority groups; the state has legalized and demanded institutions to practice what many has now consider as reverse discrimination. “Victims” of reverse discrimination in college admissions have commonly complained that they were unfairly rejected admission due to their race. They claimed that because colleges wanted to promote diversity, the colleges will often prefer to accept applicants of another race who had significantly lower test scores and merit than the “victims”. In “Discrimination and Disidentification: The Fair-Start Defense of Affirmative Action”, Kenneth Himma responded to these criticisms by proposing to limit affirmative action to actions that negate unfair competitive advantages of white males established by institutions (Himma 277 L. Col.). Himma’s views were quickly challenged by his peers as Lisa Newton stated in “A Fair Defense of a False Start: A Reply to Kenneth Himma” that among other rationales, the Fair-Start Defense based on race and gender is a faulty justification for affirmative action (Newton 146 L. Col.). This paper will also argue that the Fair-Start Defense based on race and gender is a faulty justification for affirmative action because it cannot be fairly applied in the United States of America today. However, affirmative action should still be allowed and reserved for individuals whom the state unfairly discriminates today.
To sum everything up, we as a human race are not perfect, nor will we ever make solutions that will satisfy both side of arguments. One lesson we can learn from this research paper, however, is that everyone should have the ability to fully enjoy their Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendments. Nonetheless, the development of reverse discrimination, the creation of stigma against women and minorities, the buildup of racial tension, and the fact of attempting to solve a racial problem that no longer exist all contributed to the danger of affirmative action. It may be created with good intentions, but certainly not applicable to our society now if all of us wish to be treated equal.
“…Everybody jumped on him, and beat him senseless… Everybody was hitting him or kicking him. One guy was kicking at his spine. Another guy was hitting him on the side of his face… he was unconscious. He was bleeding. Everybody had blood on their forearms. We ran back up the hill laughing… He should have died… He lost so much blood he turned white. He got what he deserved…” (Ridgeway 167). The skinheads who were beating this man up had no reason to do so except for the fact that he was Mexican. Racism in this day and age is still as big of a problem as it was in the past, and as long as hate groups are still around to promote violence, society is never going to grow to love one another.
Dating back to the beginning of times people have always been looked at different depending on the color of their skin or what your religion, race, or beliefs may be. It is in our human nature to not like people for certain things that they are. Many will argue that in this day in age we are no longer at a race war but how can you be so sure when you actually open your eyes and see reality. Rapper Kanye West once said “racism is still alive, they just be concealing it” and these words are everything but false. You must ask yourself the real question about racism and it is how could you ever cure such a thing in people’s minds? People are free to think and believe what ever they would like and old habits such as racism will never change in people.
Today there is considerable disagreement in the country over Affirmative Action with the American people. MSNBC reported a record low in support for Affirmative Action with 45% in support and 45% opposing (Muller, 2013). The affirmative action programs have afforded all genders and races, exempting white males, a sense of optimism and an avenue to get the opportunities they normally would not be eligible for. This advantage includes admission in colleges or hiring preferences with public and private jobs; although Affirmative Action has never required quotas the government has initiated a benefits program for the schools and companies that elect to be diversified. The advantages that are received by the minorities’ only take into account skin color, gender, disability, etc., are what is recognized as discriminatory factors. What is viewed as racism to the majority is that there ar...
Racism is the mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. The term racism may also denote a blind and unreasoning hatred, envy, or prejudice (Dimensions of Racism). Racism has had a strong effect on society. Despite the many efforts made to alleviate racism, what is the future of African Americans' Racism's long history, important leaders, current status, and future outlook will be the main factors in determining how to combat racism. Racism is still present in many societies, although many people are doing their best to put an end to racism and its somewhat tragic ordeals.
The world has lived through generations of racism and racial profiling. After the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Civil Rights Movement, the American people thought they had passed the days of hatred and discrimination. Although Americans think that they live in a non-racist society, minorities today still live in the chains of oppression and prejudice through sports, schools, and social media.
Racism as a Common Problem in the 21st Century Racism has been a problem since the very first day that two men of different races met in the past. Racism is defined as belief in the superiority of one race over all others. Often racism is a belief that one type of person has better physical attributes, or is more. intelligent. The snares are a lot of fun.
Defenders include that governmental policy regarding minorities in society has without a doubt prevailing with regards to extending business and instructive open doors for non-white individuals, and that people profiting from governmental policy regarding minorities in society have for the most part fared well in the work environment or on the grounds. In such manner investigate finds that African American understudies moving on from specific US schools and colleges in the wake of being conceded under governmental policy regarding minorities in society rules are marginally more probable than their white partners to get proficient degrees and to wind up engaged with community issues (Bowen and Bok, 1998). As this concise discourse shows, a