Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Race to end Discrimination

The Race to end Discrimination.


After our in-class viewing of "The Laramie Project," thoughtful reflection was deemed necessary. The Catholic priest’s plodding question, "Do you know how hate crimes like Matthew Shepard's start" circulated my thoughts. The priest elucidated by identifying "tiny seeds" as the roots of discrimination and as I came to grips with this statement, I noticed a growing insecurity. Am I unaware of the seeds of unfairness that have been fostered within myself? Many of us will not act out in the fashion of McKinney and Henderson , but the movie’s efforts to raise its audience’s awareness of inequity cannot be ignored. To take action toward Kaufman’s anti-discrimination message, I will move outwards from sexual orientation and examine the United States’ history of racial discrimination, unfairness in the workforce, and Colorism.

The unfortunate problem of racial discrimination has a long history in our nation. As long ago as 1863, Abraham Lincoln took his own stance on trying to improve it. His iconic Gettysburg Address states that, “Four score and seven years ago our father’s brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Spearheading the Civil War, Lincoln’s actions went a long way to improve the United State’s unfair establishment of slavery. Years later, Civil Rights Activist, Rosa Parks, also took an action that has long since been remembered. She recalls her elementary school days, initially accepting the fact that only whites were allowed to ride the bus to school. Realizing the injustice of this racial segregation, her notion to rise up against this stuck with her. In the “Montgomery Bus Boycott”, Parks was charged with disorderly conduct for not giving her seat up to a white citizen. When asked to explain her actions on National Public Radio, Parks said that “It was just time…[this was an] opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner.” Although key figures have tried to make a statement against racial discrimination, it’s presence still plagues our society.

In a case against Binghamton University, head coach Kevin Broadus filed a charge of racial discrimination; accusing the University that the color of his skin largely influenced the loss of his job. When athletic director, Jim Norris, did not let Broadus coach the team, Broadus expressed that “No one else in the department [was] treated in this manner; but the most important component is I’m the only person of color who is a head coach.” Broadus’s lawyer, Don Jackson, found that a $913, 381 audit was targeted at the basketball program targeting a group of African-American coaches and while some coaches had been arrested, none had their position of head coach suspended. Broadus’s suspicions only grew when he thought of the various arrests happening all over the country; virtually half of The University of Tennessee
basketball team was arrested for weapon and drug charges on New Year’s Eve, and of course, the head coach was not fired. Broadus feels that if he were the head coach, it may have been justification to blame the player’s actions on him, and let him go. While this may be a case where racial discrimination snuck into the workforce, America has come a long way since their initial efforts of “Jim Crow (separate but equal) Laws” where whites and blacks were still thought of as separate beings not to be intertwined in our society. More recently, Affirmative Action Policies, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and the No-FEAR Act all speak to the United State’s efforts to provide solutions to the problems which still exist within the American workplace. However, many African American’s have voiced concern not only about problems
which occur during their employment, but rather about the struggle to become employed.

The issue of having black or white skin paradoxically contains a large gray are; Colorism. Within the color black, varying shades ranging from darkest to lightest greatly impact one’s skin tone. The issue at hand is sadly that the darker the skin color, the higher the chance of discrimination. In first comparing this to people with white skin color, unnerving statistics have been found: “Blacks are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed” and “Black applicants are less likely to be given the same position even when having the same credentials as whites.” Looking closely at the above data leads to other depressing findings. African Americans that receive the benefits of Affirmative Action generally come from educated families, and most of these are of the lighter skin type; so while it appears that policies such as these are benefiting the entire African- American race, it is only benefiting a sub-type of African Americans. These statistics point to the fact that while a lot of work as been done to better the state of racial discrimination, The United States has a long way to go in truly stopping all racial inequity.

As I opened by questioning my awareness of the unfair seeds nestling inside myself, I will close with a thought on how various kinds of discrimination are planted. A young child may innocently ask you, “Why don’t people like those people?” or “Why can’t he walk like I can?” It’s important to teach our children that when others are different from us, a significant amount of fear instills itself which is often later realized as petty name-calling and other forms of negative treatment. As children grow up, it would be nice to think that perceived differences become less and less important and the ability to respect others for their differences would be instilled; remembering incidents such as Matthew Shepard’s reminds us that this is not the case. My hypothesis is that some children never forego this paradigm shift because they too, having felt the pain caused from their own differences, learned that their inherent individuality was a source of self-loathing and certainly nothing to be prideful of. As far fetched as it may seem, the reason it is so impossible for the most discriminative people to view others' differences as a uniquely positive characteristic is because they don’t also view their own differences as a
positive thing. Discrimination continues to be an outstanding issue within our society, but by promoting sensitivity toward others, equality on all fronts could make great strides.

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