The 21st century was expected to become one of equality and freedom from bias. Nonetheless, real-life demonstrates that discrimination based on gender, age, race, and numerous other factors has not become a relic of the past yet. Still, modern people are actively undertaking attempts to eradicate infringement of people who are different from the majority. During the past two years, I often witnessed injustice against some groups of people and the privilege of others. Indeed, many authors emphasize that discrimination remains topical nowadays. The present essay discusses this problem and also suggests ways of fighting it in the modern US. The concept of discrimination refers to the prejudicial attitude towards people who differ by race, ethnicity, native language, gender, age, or disability. American society makes great steps toward the eradication of discrimination (Elder, 2016). For example, in 1958, 4 percent of respondents supported the marriage of representatives of different races, whereas, in 2016, the percentage of supporters increased to 87. Despite this fact, many people are still suffering from injustice. The study conducted by Silva and Ford (2020) reveals that in the US, the Black and Hispanic population encounters racism at the workplace, schools, universities, and even in courts and hospitals. Almost 16 percent of American students are victims of race-based bullying, and 40 percent of Black, Native American, and Hispanic patients complain about the poor quality of healthcare services (DoSomethig.org, 2020). Undoubtedly, discrimination is not only about race. It is also about other factors like gender and disabilities. However, the problem of racism is the most pressing one for the given society. Discrimination can be defeated by the efforts of all members of society. One of the most prominent contributions in fighting racism was made by Comcast, Nike, PepsiCo, PayPal, Apple, Warner Music Group, Ginkgo Bioworks, Lego, and Uber which gifted billions of US dollars to promote racial justice (Kerber, Coster, and McLymore, 2020; Markovitz & Sault, 2020). Additionally, during the past four years, the Bank of America donated $1 billion to anti-racism activists (Kerber et al., 2020). It is a generous deed, and the good thing is that businesses do not remain indifferent. The bad thing is that there is no way to ensure that this money was spent decently by the heads of action teams. Furthermore, the effective fight against racism should start with internal organizational changes (Livingston, 2020). CEOs should be concerned with raising awareness among employees, training them to get rid of prejudices, and encouraging diversity (Livingston, 2020). Fight against racism and any other form of discrimination starts with every individual. Money cannot change people’s minds and worldviews. If I were the head of one of these companies, I would settle anti-discrimination projects that would include education and training of employees and CEOs and assistance in implementing diversity in the workplace. One of the most famous books targeting injustice is “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee (1960). The book was written in the times when racism flourished in the US. For example, the white dwellers of Maycomb characterized the death of the Black character, Tom, as typical (Lee, 1960). In their view, it was “typical of a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger’s mentality to have no plan, no thought for the future” (Lee, 1960, p. 220). Furthermore, Lee (1960) shows how racial minorities suffer from a biased judicial system: the Black Tom Robinson was wrongly condemned for the rape of a white woman, Mayella Ewell. From my point of view, the idea of Lee (1960) is that it is impossible to make white people treat Black ones as equals. Atticus hoped that justice would be served, but Tom was shot by people to whom the color of his skin was the primary justification for his felony. Even though it is difficult to combat injustice, it is not impossible. Nonetheless, for now, an average monthly income of a Black person is lower than a white person. As Pager and Shepherd (2008) put it, “whites possess roughly 12 times the wealth of African Americans” (p. 190). The American government established public education to fight discrimination and conducted numerous criminal justice system reforms but failed to resolve the problem (Pager & Shepherd, 2008). From this, it could be inferred that the initiative to eradicate injustice should come from people, not from authorities. In the past two years, people express their willingness to fight inequality and discrimination as vigorously as ever before. However, these social movements are becoming too aggressive and cause more harm than actual benefits. Still, people should not keep silent because this will not help change discrimination for the better. In the future, racism, ageism, sexism, and all other forms of intolerance will be defeated. But people should unite and go a long road in fighting discrimination together. To conclude, during the last two years, I learned a lot about injustices and ways of fighting them. In modern times, a lot has been done to combat discrimination, but still, there is a lot of work to be done. Most importantly, it is wrong to teach everyone that Black, Asian, or whoever suffers because of whites. Instead, social organizations and activists should be concerned with making people understand that skin color means no more than the color of eyes and that gender and age do not make a person unqualified. People should fight discrimination together. However, this fight does not make sense without self-reflection and internal freedom of any bias of every person in this large crowd. As Michael Jackson sang in one of his songs, “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”
References
DoSomethig,org (2020). 11 facts about racial discrimination. Web.
Elder, L. (2016). Is America racist? PragerU. Web.
Kerber, R., Coster, H., & McLymore, A. (2020). U.S. companies vow to fight racism but face critics on diversity. Reuters. Web.
Lee, H. (1960). To kill a mockingbird. Random House.
Livingston, R. (2020). How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace. Harvard Business Review. Web.
Markovitz, G., & Sault, S. (2020). What companies are doing to fight systemic racism. World Economic Forum. Web.
Pager, D., & Shepherd, H. (2008). The Sociology of discrimination: Racial discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and consumer markets. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 181–209.
Silva, J. M., & Ford, T. N. (2020). Navigating race and injustice in America’s middle class. Brookings. Web.