Racial Discrimination

I was watching the news, when the footage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster came on. The news reporters were showing a black man walking in flooded waters near a market with a bag full of food and labeled him a “thief”. Social media in the United States has portrayed people of different racial backgrounds differently and unequally in recent years. In the essays “Theories and Constructs of Race” and “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” the authors discuss in both essays about issues with racial equality in our world today. Authors Linda Holtzman and Leon Sharpe discuss in the first essay racial schemes are created through prejudices and the telling and retelling of stories. While, authors Cheryl I. Harris and Devon W. Carbado discuss in their essay about the issue of “colorblindness” in social media. Holtzman is a professor of communications and journalism at Webster University, while Sharpe is a professor at Webster as well. Similarly, Harris and Carbado are professors at UCLA’s School of Law and have addressed widely on race, gender, civil rights and constitutional issues. Both essays do a good job at explaining their ideas and supporting them with evidence of racial discrimination in our world today. The authors from both essays organize their ideas and summarize them, which helps understand the main idea of racism, discrimination and racial inequalities in today’s society.

Women continue to face disadvantages in the workplace in regards to not receiving equal pay as well. There are many instances where women have the same or more qualifications to do a job than their male counterparts but do not receive the same pay. This difference in pay is not only related to gender differences but also racial differences. Women employees of different racial backgrounds tend to earn less money than their white female and male counterparts. Many women of color often face discrimination when applying to jobs and are overlooked for a position despite having the qualifications to do the work. When they are hired to these occupations they are not receiving the same pay as their white female counterparts. This double bind that minority women face within the work place continues to lead to economic hardships. Regarding women in the workplace in general, due to society’s high regard for men they are often not promoted to positions of authority or receive equal pay because people assume that women are inferior workers. (Buchanan, p205-207)

This proposal will explore two significant issues Black women face in the work place. The first issue involves African American women being less likely to be considered for promotions, in comparison to Caucasian women. The second issue involves African American women receiving less pay than Caucasian women. The theoretical perspective that best understand why these issues exist is the social conflict theory. This theory explains that groups, such as social classes, gender, or race, compete for limited resources, as

Unfortunately, many workplaces have utilized the colorblind approach that emphasizes peoples’ similarities rather than their differences, in order to “treat everyone the same.” The rhetoric behind these tactics are that differences lead to problems between one another, marginalized groups must assimilate into the dominant culture, individual culture must be abandoned, and that there are absolutely no biases at play, although this only leaves marginalized employees more untrusting of their straight, white, male coworkers. Colorblindness also allows those who perpetuate microaggressions to be excused from holding accountability for expressing offensive beliefs and biases. Those offended may ultimately leave their job or their performance will decline. During recruitment, heterosexist and racial biases determines who is “qualified” (218). Companies who adopt a colorblind tactic have very low retention rates because although overt, prejudicial instances may be addressed, covert ones are ignored and deemed as

“In New York City, where colored people are about half of the population, 80% of the NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos.”(Quigley 1) Racism is like a barricade holding colored people back from becoming as successful as they want to be. Racism affects people in the workplace by limiting their chances to seize a job or promotion they are qualified for and should get. As an example, it has been proven that people who have white names have double the chance to be interviewed for a job than a person with an African American name. Racism is not the only persecution that affects people, sexism also is still a big problem in America. Sexism demeans and is unfair to women all around the globe, these women deserve to be treated as equal to men. In terms of women in leadership positions, the number of women with managerial positions is substantially lower than men. “In 2009, less than a quarter of CEOs were women in the US, and they earned significantly less than their male colleagues made.” (Gender Inequality and Women in the US Labor Force) Women are treated differently, even in places where gender has absolutely no importance towards the job. As an example, most people interview women and men differently, many questions women have to answer have zero importance to their qualification for the job. For example, interviewers ask women about children, which has

Racial bias is still a very active issue in society today. This paper explores the understanding of racial bias in business hiring. This is critical because racial bias continually uniforms businesses in hiring decisions. The prevalence of racial bias in business hiring, potential interventions, and explanations of why this occurs will be explored. How prevalent is racial bias in business hiring today and how can it be mediated?

The topic of minorities in the workforce and how the struggle to accomplish equal treatment in today’s workforce is nothing new to our society. For centuries we have been concerned that by bringing together our different backgrounds, skills, and experiences, as well as the many businesses of this great

For many years, women encountered the “glass ceiling” effect within workplaces, in which they were often limited in making upward mobility into corporate management positions that were dominated by their make peers. However, this “glass ceiling” began to crumble over time “with women in most major companies constituting about half of managers, the possibilities loom large that many other women will soon be breaking through to the top positions” (Parrillo, 2016, pg. 127). Another change that is continuing on the right path for women’s lives is with racial minority groups of women overcoming racism and sexism. Unfortunately, unless women are often from mainstream groups, gender equality among the minority groups are still facing pressures of inequality compared to their white

Through The Lens of Race: Black and White Women’s Perception of Womanhood. This article was written by three authors from Michigan State University called: Settles IH, Pratt-Hyatt JS, and Buchanan NT. Their goal was to uncover the feelings of Black and White women as they continuously face sexism and gender-based discrimination at home, at school, and mostly at work. The participants were described as fourteen blacks and seventeen whites, unlike the first article, these women were simply given topics that all woman experience and asked to describe their experiences in those fields (Settles & Pratt-Hyatt & Buchanan, 2015). The results proved that all the women experienced some kind of gender-based discrimination, most experienced sexism in the work place, and some even encountered sexual harassment at school or at work. This research is extremely relevant to the topic because it proves that society still has a lot of improving to do, especially for White women for they were faced with gender-based discrimination the most. This is relevant to the students because it portrays how hard it will be to get a job while competing with someone with the same degree, simply because of your sex. This is also a motivation for women to work twice as

Prejudice attitudes have existed in corporate America prior to and ever since the first corporation began. As businesses develop with an increase in diversity, bigotry continues to evolve with older professionals who don’t see minorities as equals. Several significant events in history such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act suggest a decrease in overt racism in the workplace. However, it is still prevalent in many parts of the country especially in the corporate world. In today’s society, prejudice attitudes and racism is often seen in company’s lack of representation of minority men and women. In other words, it is still difficult for minorities such as African Americans to escape the unfortunate reality that bias exist against them

Gender, ethnicity, and race inequalities and the issues surrounding them in the workplace have been on the forefront of society’s mind for decades. The problem of inequality in the workplace has become one of the most important and vital issues in our society today. In order to understand fully the reasons for these inequalities, one must try to understand the factors that cause gender, ethnicity, and racial issues within the workplace, yet in this case, we will tend to focus mostly towards gender inequality in the workplace. One typically thinks locally

With all of the advances in modern society and human behavior, racism is still a crisis that many people have to cope with. It can occur at any place or at any time, including in the workplace. Racial discrimination arises when someone is treated differently based on their actual or perceived race. Many people believe that if one were to be in the vicinity of a respected workplace that they would be respected by all co-workers and employers; this is in no way true. A big amount of minority employees, mainly African-Americans, are affected by racial discrimination in the workplace whether it’s from their employers or their fellow co-workers, and it is not at all acceptable. Racial discrimination is a situation that has always been a problem, so we must show an effort to try to eliminate it from our society.

In the article written by Karen Brodkin, Sandra Morgen and Janis Hutchinson discusses how we as people discriminate and need more equal opportunities for both white and people of color. In the summary I have written I have discussed how we need more equal opportunities in the work place. We as a people do not all have the same equal opportunities because of cultural indifferences and through the process of enculturation, or how we were raised to behave with different races in the workplace. In many surveys we see that higher paying jobs are dominated by the white workforce, while the lower paying jobs are dominated by the lower paying jobs that often involve longer working hours and more back breaking work. American workplaces need to have

Since slavery, there has been a continuous trend of disparities among blacks and other races. These disparities prevent a significant amount of people from having a successful futures as many obstacles work against them. More specifically, there are racial disparities among races when it relates to discipline. According to statistics, 43% of blacks are punished with lifetime suspension compared to 1% of whites. These disciplining strategies increase the risk of more black students following the path to jail. The racial disparity within disciplination of students is a problem because many kids are going to prison as a result of issues that could easily be solved within the school system. Instead of seeking to look at the context of the problem, black students are being given to the system. As a result, deep rooted problems are being ignored and behavioral problems are perpetuated. The best solution for the problem is implementing intervention specialists because it will allow the students to have an advocate that seeks to understand their individual needs; they will have a role model to look up to. These specialists will also work alongside the teacher, bridging the misunderstanding between the two parties.

Do Americans feel like there is still racial discrimination in today's everyday life? Racial discrimination is treating someone differently because of the color of his or her skin. Racial discrimination has been around for a long time. There are laws that are supposed to protect non whites from being racially discriminated against but these laws are not applied to everyone equally. There are a lot of different types of discrimination such as gender and age but the main type is racial. Racial discrimination still exist in America based on discrimination at work, police brutality, and arrest rates.