The
idea of race superiority has been going around for centuries. Ever since the
Middle Ages, slaves were introduced to the live of Europeans. These slaves were
often black Africans, who were thought by the Europeans as an inferior race due
to their skin color. Later in the 15th and 16th century,
these black slaves were traded into the United States.
In
the United States, the slaves fought and perused for their freedom, trying to
gain equality and the rights that they are supposed to have. Around the 19th
century, they did succeed in gaining their freedom and equality in law, but the
reality, was not what they expected.
The
concept of discrimination developed; people were treated differently just based
on the skin they were born into. Even in the society today, the discrimination
still exists, in fact, many controversial topics today are still based of
discrimination.
There are also many things we see or hear in everyday
life that signals that discrimination is still alive right now.
When
I walk on the street or in school, I often hear people saying the N word, which
is a word used to call black people in an offensive way. In addition, black
people are commonly seen as being bad and are more likely to be suspected for
crimes too. I’ve heard about parents telling their children to stay away from
black people as if every black man will kidnap their child. All these indications have shown that
discrimination still exists in our society
It’s
not just in our daily lives that discrimination exist, but in law and
government offices too.
Police
brutality for example, is quite common to see on televisions or news these days
about white police beating up black man or forcing them to stop in the middle
of the highway for check-ups simply because they are black. Under severe
situation, the blacks get knocked down and beaten up by the white police. This
is actual evidence that discrimination is still happening, people are getting
physically abused due to their race.
Many
people might argue that these people of the black race have already received their
equality, even if they didn’t, there are government programs such as the
affirmative action to help them. In reality, affirmative action does actually
help the minority races to retrieve their education, however, it also shows a
denial of the ability of the minority (black) races. The idea of affirmative
action is just like saying that they did not reach their accomplishment through
hard work like everyone else, but through “cheating” with external help from
the government. In fact, the affirmative action actually shows some type of discrimination
toward the minority races.
We
often hear that our society has changed and advanced through time, and we the
people, as a part of the society have been changing too. The way we think and
act has changed, and that’s what led us to our society now, a society where we
call equal and fair. But is this society really what we’ve thought it to be?
Will it become what we have imagined of, equal, fair and free? Society is we as
whole, there will always be those who accepts and follows the new ideology and
those who will stick to their obsolete views. You might not have seen, but
there are still those people who are discriminating and being discriminated
against.
Perhaps
right now, as you are reading this passage, there’s someone in this world
around you being discriminated against.
