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Most broadly, discrimination is the discernment of qualities and rejection of subjects with undesirable qualities. This article focuses on discrimination among people. That is, discrimination based on personal qualities, whether fair or not. Discriminating between people on the grounds of merit is generally lawful in Western democracies. Discrimination on other grounds generally is not. When unlawful discrimination takes place, it is often described as discrimination ''against'' a person or group of people. Social Theories such as Egalitarianism claim that Social Equality should prevail. In some societies, including most developed countries, each individual's civil rights include the right to be free from government sponsored social discrimination.1 In contrast, , asserts that a natural social order is characterized by increased discrimination. Unlawful discrimination can be characterised as direct or slightly less direct. Direct discrimination involves treating someone less favourably because of their possession of an attribute (e.g., sex, age, race, religion, family status, national origin, military status, disability), compared with someone without that attribute in the same circumstances. An example of direct discrimination would be not giving a woman a job because she is more likely to take maternity leave. Indirect discrimination involves setting a condition or requirement which a smaller proportion of those with the attribute are able to comply with, without reasonable justification. The case of Griggs V. Duke Power Company {Link without Title} provides an example of indirect discrimination, where an aptitude test used in job applications was found "to disqualify Negroes at a substantially higher rate than white applicants". RACE DISCRIMINATION Racial discrimination differentiates between individuals on the basis of real and perceived racial differences, and has been official government policy in several countries, such as South Africa in the Apartheid era. In the United States , Racial Profiling of minorities by law enforcement officials has been called racial discrimination. In the UK the inquiry following the murder of Stephen Lawrence accused the police of Institutional Racism .
Life after Civil War African Americans expected that the end of the Civil War 1867 would mark the end of the division between African Americans and Caucasian Americans, but it merely signified the end of slavery. While the formal physical abuse had subsided, African Americans were only given second-class citizenship. Through the Jim Crow Laws , African Americans were given a limited amount of rights. Voting rights were manipulated and through different clauses such as the Grandfather Clause , it was made so only Caucasian Americans could vote. Although African Americans were no longer held against their will as slaves, they were not given equal rights. Black people were still used for labor but were able to have some sort of growth. Basically, African Americans would oversee the farms and fields of Caucasians. Although they could keep some profit, they were forced to return most of it to the farm owner. This way of life, though degrading, greatly informed African American culture, which became set on a seven day rhythm: work for five days, Saturday for recreation, and Sunday for worship. Saturday evenings established the Blues because African Americans spent the night together expressing their hurt in an artistic way. Slavery widely informed later African American culture. AGE DISCRIMINATION , which is also called ' Adultism '; discrimination against those 40 years old or older {Link without Title} , and; discrimination against elderly people. In the United States, the Age Discrimination In Employment Act prohibits employment discrimination nationwide based on age with respect to employees 40 years of age or older. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act also addresses the difficulty older workers face in obtaining new employment after being displaced from their jobs, arbitrary age limits. In many countries, companies more or less openly refuse to hire people above a certain age despite the increasing lifespans and average age of the population. The reasons for this range from vague feelings that younger people are more "dynamic" and create a positive image for the company, to more concrete concerns about regulations granting older employees higher salaries or other benefits without these expenses being fully justified by an older employees' greater experience. Some people consider that Teenagers and Youth (around 15-25 years old) are victims of Adultism , age discrimination framed as a paternalistic form of protection. In seeking social justice, they feel that it is necessary to remove the use of a false moral agenda in order to achieve agency and empowerment. This perspective is based on the grounds that youth should be treated more respectfully by adults and not as second-class citizens. Some suggest that social Stratification in age groups causes outsiders to incorrectly Stereotype and generalize the group, for instance that all adolescents are equally immature, violent or rebellious, listen to rock tunes and do Drug s. Some have organized groups against age discrimination. Ageism is the causal effect of a continuum of fears related to age. This continuum includes:
Related terms include:
GENDER DISCRIMINATION Gender discrimination is discrimination against a person or group on the grounds of sex or gender identity. Socially, sexual differences have been used to justify societies in which one sex or the other has been restricted to significantly inferior and secondary roles. While there are non-physical differences between men and women, there is little agreement as to what those differences are. Unfair discrimination usually follows the Gender Stereotyping held by a society. The United Nations had concluded that women often experience a "glass ceiling" and that there are no societies in which women enjoy the same opportunities as men. The term "glass ceiling" describes the process by which women are barred from promotion by means of an invisible barrier. In the United States , the Glass Ceiling Commission has stated that between 95 and 97 percent of senior managers in the country's biggest corporations are men. {Link without Title} Transgendered individuals, both male to female and female to male, often experience problems which often lead to dismissals, underachievement, difficulty in finding a job, social isolation, and, occasionally, violent attacks against them. Legislation In the U.S., Title VII of the CRA of 1964 allows a BFOQ for gender (contact prison guards, washroom attendants) but such permission is extremely limited. The Equal Pay Act (part of the Fair Labor Standards Act ) prohibits wage discrimination by employers and labor organizations based solely on sex. In the UK, the principal legislation is found in the Equal Pay Act 1970 (which provides for equal pay for comparable work) and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 , which makes discrimination against women or men (including discrimination on the grounds of marital status) illegal in the workplace. The adoption of the Human Rights Act 1998 in 2000 provides more scope for redressing all forms of discriminatory imbalances. EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION See Also: Employment discrimination The federal laws that protect against:
An example of a law suit filed by EEOC in a religion and national origin discrimination case involving Merrill Lynch company: http://eeoc0sues0merrilllynch.wordpress.com/ LANGUAGE DISCRIMINATION People are sometimes subjected to different treatment because their preferred Language is associated with a particular group, class or category. Commonly, the preferred language is just another Attribute of separate Ethnic Group s. "REVERSE DISCRIMINATION", "PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT", AND OPPONENTS OF MODERN PREFERENTIAL PROGRAMS See Also: Reverse discrimination Reverse discrimination is a term used to describe discriminatory policies or acts that benefit a historically socio-politically non-dominant group (e.g. women, blacks etc), at the expense of a historically socio-politically dominant group (e.g. men, whites etc). Most academic and expert opponents of preferential policies that favor historically-discriminated groups, such as Carl Cohen , would avoid the term "reverse discrimination" on the grounds that "discrimination is discrimination" and that the label "reverse" is a misnomer (a point that experts on both sides of issue generally agree with). Groups such as the American Civil Rights Institute, run by Ward Connerly , have opted for the more legally precise terms "race preference", "gender preference," or "preferential treatment" generally, since these terms are contained and defined within existing civil rights law, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In this vein, Ward Connerly has promoted and won a series of ballot initiatives in the states of California ( California Proposition 209 (1996) ), Washington (1998 - I-200), and Michigan (the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - MCRI, or Proposal 2, 2006). California's initiative was co-authored by academics Tom Wood and Glynn Custred in the mid-1990s and was taken up by Connerly after he was appointed in 1994 by Governor Pete Wilson to the University Of California Board of Regents. Each of the ballot initiatives have won, and Connerly plans what he calls a "Super-Tuesday" of five additional states in 2008. The language of these ballot initiatives all use the terms "preferential treatment" as their operative clauses. Academics such as Cohen, who was a supporter of Michigan's Proposal 2, have argued that the term "affirmative action" should be defined differently than "race preference," and that while socio-economically based or anti-discrimination types of affirmative action should be permissible, those that give preference to individuals solely based on their race or gender should not be permitted. Cohen also helped find evidence in 1996 through the Freedom of Information Act that lead to the cases filed by Jennifer Gratz and Barbara Grutter against the University of Michigan for its undergraduate and law admissions policy - cases which were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2003 . Notable national bloggers and internet resources against preferential types of affirmative action include John Rosenberg's Discriminations , Tim Fay's Adversity.net , and Chetly Zarko's Power, Politics, & Money . DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION People with Disabilities have to sometimes face discrimination in all levels of society. seating and work environments are not only be a reasonable accommodation for those who suffer, the are also a preventative measure to counteract the soaring cost of medical treatment for pain conditions. Ergonomic seating in all public institutions would be a positive step to providing access to public services for all those who need it. In the United States the Americans with Disabilities Act {Link without Title} provides guidelines for providing wheelchair access for public institutions, but ergonomic devices for those who suffer from pain are something that has yet to be implemented. REFERENCES SEE ALSO
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