The Definition Of Discrimination

2.1.1 Definition of Discrimination

Discrimination is not a new concept in American society. As defined by Oxford Dictionary (2001: 127), discrimination is “treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their skin color, sex, religion, etc” So that, people under these unequal treatments will be classified professedly from others and considered as divergent. Eckhard Feidler, Reimer Jansen and Mil Norman-Risch (1998) also stated in their book America in Close-up that: “Discrimination has kept many Americans from sharing equal protections and prospects in American society.” Discriminated people are usually restricted, eliminated that they don’t have the equality, opportunities as the others. At the same point of view, Smedley (2014) said that segregated experience of people in lower class may consist of daily insults, act and expressions of disrespect and contempt. With the consistency from three opinions of different authors as above, clearly, the idea of discrimination

As written by Dictionary of American History (2003), discrimination includes six branches based on age, disabled, race, religion, sex and sexual orientation. In term of race discrimination, or racism, according to Fredrickson (n.d.), it exists when one ethnic group dominates, eliminates or excludes the others based on differences in heredity, culture or history. In other words, racial discrimination is that a person is treated less favorably than another in the same situation due to their race, color, national origin or immigrant status. In America, which known as a multiethnic country with mass immigration from the past, racism is a long and complicated issue. Ethnic groups such as such as African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other Americans color have experienced racial discrimination (Dictionary of American History,