Racial Discrimination

The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty.” Moreover, the study reached the conclusion that a defendant in a capital case was much more likely to be given the death sentence if the murder victim was white. Sadly, “the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.”

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.

Racial bias is a attitude or stereotype that influence a racial attitude when hiring someone for a job. Modern racism and racial bias in he workplace would relate to discrimination in the hiring process. I’m interested in this topic because this is a very global topic and, this is very unfair treatment and I feel that if you have the credentials no matter what race you are you should be able to get the job that you desire.

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?

Although roughly thirty six people are executed each year, it is safe to assume that around eighty percent of those people put to death had killed a white victim. Because of this, the death penalty is discriminatory. The poor and minorities, especially African Americans, are the groups who get the metaphoric “short end of the stick.” Studies have shown that black defendants with less evidence against them than a white person who had committed the same crime were more likely to be sentenced to death. Black defendants are also more likely to be sentenced to death than a person of another race who had committed the same crime. An additional study showed that black defendants were almost three times as likely to get a death penalty sentence than

After the 1976 Supreme Court ruling concluded that the death penalty does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” many states have given the capital punishment to over 500 convicted felons. However, there is still a debate on whether the decision on the sentence is fair or not, particularly on the issue involving race. In 1998 the Death Penalty Information Center published the Death Penalty in Black and White, a study examining the sentences following the 667 murder convictions in Philadelphia to see if race was a possible factor in the decision of the death penalty.

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.

Prejudice and racial discrimination has governed people who are of different race, religion, or ethnicity for hundreds of years, and is still a major issue all over the world. For example, in the Myanmar Rohingya Crisis, about 600,000 Rohingya Muslims had fled to Bangladesh after ethnic violence erupted in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State in late August.

The ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative also known as the american dream. The american dream is perceived differently by different people of different races. Race alters the american dream for different individuals which makes the american dream unequal. Racial discrimination can be seen in many different areas including the the workplace, school, and in employment. Racial discrimination in employment, the workplace, and in school causes unequal access to the american dream.

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.

The anxious student timidly walks into her school one day. Keeping her head down, she quickly maneuvers around students and tries to avoid drawing attention. The girl and her family are followers of Islam, which makes them Muslim. It was a couple days after September 11th, 2001, the previous terrorist attack still had people shook up. During those couple of days, the girl had drawn a lot of unwanted attention towards herself, just because of what race she is.

Did you know that when famous people such as Colin Kaepernick decide to protest something it affects millions of people? Standing with your hand over your heart while the National Anthem is being played is showing respect, but some people decide to kneel for the national anthem to protest racial inequalities. Although singing the National Anthem before a National Football League (NFL) game has been a long-standing tradition, many players are choosing to protest racial inequalities which makes some people happy to see a change, some people very upset to see our country disrespected, and also makes famous people speak up and say their opinion.

Although slavery has been abolished since December of 1865, racism and racial discrimination has not stopped. The white communities discriminate against the black community. The African Americans refuse to accept it, but, instead fight for equality and freedom from oppression. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Rita Dove’s “Rosa Parks”, Rosa Parks’ and characters in A Raisin in the Sun both fight against racial discrimination. Rosa Parks and characters in A Raisin in the Sun face racial discrimination through the white communities’ actions but they do not succumb to it. The theme of fighting racial discrimination is shown through the white communities’ racist actions and the black communities’ refusal to accept their oppression.

Once slaves were free and blacks were progressing in America, the mid 20th century demonstrated an era of racial injustice, launching a series of events known as the Civil Rights Movement, and expansion of debates that successfully rendered any form of racial segregation as illegal. The 50s and 60s proved to be a crucial changing moment for African Americans that involved racial injustice and inequality. Of the many events, Brown v. Board of Education overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson case that deemed unconstitutional the “separate but equal” ruling by the Supreme Court. This court case was one of many notable instances in American history that reflected the idea of social equality. The tracing back of the Civil Rights Movement was rooted in local and smaller activism, such as Ella Baker, who began organizing and empowering local communities by raising the concerns of civil rights injustice in the South. Ella Baker wrote in Developing Community Leadership, “I have always felt it was handicap for oppressed peoples to depend so largely upon a leader, because… the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader... in the public limelight”, which expresses the concern that those who endure inequality may always face inequality, injustice, and prejudicism if they don’t take the situation into their own hands (304). However, many activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. who spent his entire career dedicated to racial justice will go to extremes for the cause. As expressed by Martin

As our nation faces a new president and the realities of politics in a post-Obama world, the big issue that stops conversations cold, is still the question of race in America. Since the recent victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S Presidential elections, racial tensions in the United States have been anything but united. Despite the many accomplishment made by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, Many Americans are still finding that equality is still an obstacle, especially in the area of inclusion and economic progress. Slogans like “Make America Great Again” rang throughout Trump’s political campaign. According to Michael Reigh, in the past twenty-five years there has been virtually no permanent improvement in the economic position especially for African Americans.