discrimination

discrimination Essay Examples

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Published: Friday 25th of January 2013

Write An Essay on Discrimination (Example)

In contemporary society, discrimination is among the serious problems that we have. Discrimination may occur due to lack of knowledge or because one's actions may be intentional. In other instances, it may be due to personal ignorance, intricate sociological triggers or societal delusions. One may argue that it is our mind that makes us judge other people and that this is how we are even as we compare them to our ideal model of a human being or ourselves. To start fighting against discrimination as much as the complexity of the matter is overwhelming, it is then vital to determine how discrimination is promoted by our society and developed in our minds to learn how the misconceptions occur. It is therefore imperative to understand the effects of discrimination on people’s lives and the different types that are there.

Different Forms of Discrimination

Everywhere that you go, you will find discrimination. The basis of discrimination against other people lies in their ethnicity, social status, gender and their specific worldview or one’s way of behavior. Discrimination appears in many forms and types, and here we will take a step further by looking at the individual structures that are there:

Direct Discrimination

This is a form of unfair treatment from people because you look different from others since you have physical or personal characteristics which are protected by the law.

Indirect Discrimination

You are likely to find some regulations that put specific people at a disadvantage. This means that the policies or rules will be applied to everyone in the group, but due to some characteristic that you might have, the law will be harder on you.

Justifiable Discrimination

This means a person can discriminate against you and justify that it was proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Comparators in Direct Discrimination Case

This means proving you suffered worse treatment than someone else who doesn’t have these characteristics. This person is called a comparator by the Equality Acts.

Absence from Work because of Gender Reassignment

You are protected against discrimination if you are absent from work and you want gender reassignment. You cannot be treated any different if you were sick, on maternity leave or had an injury.

Sexual Harassment

This is an inappropriate or unwelcome sexual advance in exchange for a reward in the workplace. It mostly leaves a person feeling degraded, offended, and violates their dignity.

Harassment

This is inappropriate behavior that is meant to humiliate and intimidate you. This act is aimed at you because of your age, race, disability, religion, or sexual orientation. A person can speak, write, gesture, joke or use images to harass you. Notably, harassment happens in work environments.

Telling or Making Someone to Discriminate

You cannot make a person discriminate a particular or specific group for you. Such type of discrimination is done by those people in higher authority.

Victimization

This mostly happens when you’ve raised concerns about discrimination. It could be that you have been mistreated or someone else has. By trying to support your claims and intentions, you might find yourself excluded from many activities in the office to frustrate you so that you leave work.

Discriminating Due to Disability

We have been told over and again that disability is not inability. You may find that a person has qualified for a particular position in an organization, but the mere fact that they have presented their application in a wheelchair automatically disqualifies them from that race. Although it is against the law, many employers tend to turn a blind eye to these circumstances. We forget that by the same criteria, we are also judged by others. Is this a typical model of human behavior? Such a question may arise. Or is it pre-programmed by nature and it is imposed on the society that we live in intentionally by some prejudices and stereotypes? I tend to lean in more on a point that I had made earlier, the way that people act, speak, think and look differently are the main reasons as to why we start discriminating them. We feel unjustified superiority over them since they do not necessarily belong to the same social group and we experience some feeling of their segregation. Most people’s acceptance of others’ differences is a thing that they do not like because they are highly prejudiced. We have found it convenient to be living in a comfortable world with the people that share our social status, beliefs, and color. For those who fall short and do not fit into this category, they are shown extreme disapproval regardless of whether those people have some outstanding talents or have achieved goals that you could never have imagined or they are 10 times smarter than you.