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Civil Rights Cases Of Discrimination: Past And Present

Decent Essays

Discrimination: Past and Present
What is discrimination? Discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit (dictionary.com,2010). In America, there has been many cases of discrimination from both the past and present. Statistics shows that 49% of African American and 11% of Hispanic feel a great deal of discrimination.(Episcopal News Service,2013) Discrimination and racism has some great similarities when it comes to the way people were treated and still being treated in today’s time. So, racism will be mentioned frequently. Therefore, I will discuss the difference between …show more content…

The civil rights movement began in the 1950’s when African-Americans basic rights were long denied to them (PBS.org, 2015). This inspired the African American culture and other discriminated groups to fight for their own rights. One of the first acts was when a woman name Rosa Parks did not want to give up her seat to a Caucasian man. She was wrongfully put in jail because of the incident. She was not the first person to do this, but because she was close friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which was one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, she received a lot of publicity and media play. This incident shows that she was a victim of discrimination. She was belittled by people because she would not give up her seat which, in that time was the law. The laws in the past did not protect the minority but the majority which was the Caucasians. Later in the civil rights movement, people marched protested and did everything possible to get some result from the discrimination in America at that time. People were also killed, arrested, slandered, and abused because all they wanted was their rights not to be discriminated against. After all of fighting for civil rights, the laws finally changed and things were getting better. Although things were getting better, in the present time things has turned around for the …show more content…

First, discrimination make individual feel worthless and like they do not belong in society. For example, if there are two individuals applying for the same job position, but the one that looks more like the person that is doing the hiring gets the job but not the one that is more qualified is a strong explanation of discrimination in America. This will affect American people because everyone would not get an equal share of the opportunities that everyone deserves. Also, with this situation it will make the individual that is more qualified for the job feel like they wasted their time and effort in school to receive the proper qualification for that specific job position. Secondly, discrimination will affect individuals by the injustice that the minority receives from the higher authorities when it comes to the United States judicial system. For instance, when there is a crime, the police will usually accuse the suspect to be a part of the minority group instead of the majority. This will make people lose trust in the judicial system because they are not being treated equally. America will always have high crime rates when most people that are citizens do not trust or feel safe with the law enforcement or any other higher

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