Discrimination How Will It Affect Our Future?

Introduction

In today's society discrimination is as common as a bag of apples. People are judged on how they look, their weight and how much money they have in their bank account. Fashion magazines have built this kind of a stereotype that requires you to be a certain weight, height, color, and build. Many of our young teenagers have fallen into this new trend of being tall, thin, and light skinned. This kind of discrimination has turned young girls into anorexic and bulimia.

According to our book which is entitled "Sociology a Brief Introduction" the sixth edition, the description of discrimination is the denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups because of prejudice or other arbitrary reasons. Discrimination also occurs with the most educated and qualified minority group members with the best family backgrounds. Women in particular take the back seat to men in many aspects of society. The fact that we have been raised to be ladies; and stay in a woman's place has put us a slight disadvantage over men.

The Charter of the United Nations in Article 1, 55 and 75 speaks three times about 'respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obliges States Parties to respect and to ensure to all individuals the right to be treated equal. The fact that our parents were raised in an error that whites were superior over other minority races has put us where we are today. We have many other cultures that were once considered minorities. Now that there have been a change in the way the world is run everyone has a chance to do the things that were once considered only for the whites. The things that we have accomplished and are still working at getting better is the fact that women can do men jobs, unfortunately, women are not getting paid what most are making so we still have a ways to go in that aspect. Our book talks about the glass ceiling affect. Glass Ceiling refers to an invisible barrier that blocks the promotion of a qualified individual in a work environment because of individuals' gender, race, or ethnicity. On page 247 it talks about how the federal glass ceiling commission issued the first comprehensive study of barriers to promotion in the United States.

It was also found that the glass ceiling continue to block women and minority group men from top management positions in the nation's industries. If we go to www.mhhe.com/schaefer6 we will be able to see that the white men constitute 45 percent of the labor force, and that they still hold down much of the top positions in many top companies. According to the 2002 issue of the Fortune 500 magazine it states that white men hold more than 80 percent of both the board of directors seat and the top 50 paid positions in these law firms. Now we have to look at the different views of the theorists.

The functionalist perspective was very broad in saying that by discriminating against certain people or cultures we are ultimately limiting our resources. The Anthropologist Manning Nash (1962) identified three functions that racially prejudiced beliefs have for the dominant group and they are as follows:

* Racist views provide a moral justification for maintaining an unequal society that routinely deprives a minority group of its rights and privileges.

* Racist beliefs discourage the subordinate minority from attempting to question its lowly status, which would be to question the very foundations of society.

* Racial myths suggest that any major societal change would only bring greater poverty to the minority and lower the majority's standards of living.

The question that we all want answers to is how long will the discrimination last and will it get any better in the next 10 years? These are questions that only society can answer with the ever changing way that we do things there is always a possibility that things will get better with the next generation. With regards to wages and differences in pay according to the Davis Bacon Act in 1931 it was stated that equal pay is to be paid for equal work.

During the legislative debate of Davis-Bacon Act there were several congressmen in agreement with the act in regards to the equal pay for the work. The effects of discrimination can go along way in a culture. Slavery was another form of discrimination it was more in depth with the Black Americans. During the 20's and 30's and so on black people were bound and sold like a piece of meat in the south. They were often traded to different families for gold and money and some were even shipped to other countries to work for little or nothing.

In South Africa the civil society for apartheid had been seeking some type of compensation for the victims of the slavery that their parents had endured. The South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission had no intention of compensating victim's families with no monetary gifts or offerings. Even though people back in our slavery days fought for their freedom we