Discrimination, Still Alive and Well in Our Society

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 15^th and 16^th 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 19^th 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.