Discrimination In David Margolick's Book 'Elizabeth And Hazel'

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While discrimination has improved from the past, we still see it indirectly in certain contexts. In David Margolick’s book, Elizabeth and Hazel, it says “Probably every newspaper in the country has published a picture of the fifteen-year-old Negro girl walking to and from school with a crowd of white students behind her, sneering, snarling, and probably even cursing” (102). In this excerpt, it’s clear to see that how white students used to discriminate and criticize Elizabeth straight away because of her skin color. This event took place around 60 years ago, but we made some progress over the course of many years to develop better race relations in the education field. But there are some challenges that we still face while we try to improve this relation. Discrimination in the school is one of the most significant obstacles to improving race relations today. A student may not get discriminated straight away nor physically, but indirectly because it’s not the time when students used to get differentiated directly in everywhere. Discrimination on the basis of race or religion still exists in schools today because certain students are denied opportunities and still judged based on these factors. For overcoming this obstacle we need to get rid of racial hatred and have to ensure that every races’ students get the equal rights. Because of racial profiling based on religion, students are being discriminated unjustly in their educational environment. On September 14th, 2015, Ahmed Mohamed, a Muslim freshman of a high school, was arrested from his school because he brought a commercial digital clock, what he invented, to show his English teacher because he wanted to show her something smart. But she got it wrong because she thought it was a bomb. That’s why she impounded the project and sent him to the principal’s office. After that, the school authority called the police and as a result he was arrested. This news was published on many news websites in the entire world. This recent event caused due to racial profiling and his religious faith, Muslim, because some people think Muslims are terrorists and they make bombs. Ahmed Mohamed had never felt he’s different from his peers until he got arrested. Discriminating him in school for his religion shows how we still practice segregation because by discriminating him, they discriminated all other Muslims. It is important to know that the school discriminated all other Muslims because it is a problem about religion. Everybody has different religious faith, and nobody has right to judge a person based on their religion because the religious freedom is defined in First Amendment. Other Muslim students will not feel safe in the school if this kind of event takes place regularly. In David Margolick’s book, Elizabeth and Hazel, he mentioned, “So …show more content…
In such schools the state hires the teachers who are not at the same level as the teachers from private schools because low-income schools get a minimal amount of money. The minority students have to share the textbooks and can’t finish the homework on time. When these students have to take a standardized test like the SAT, they face problems to get ready for the test because their school library doesn’t provide SAT books for everyone. Whoever students come first, get all the books that the library has and rest of the students suffer from that. On the other hand, schools in higher middle-class cities provide every materials for their students. They even have availability of computers, enough tools for science, while lower income schools are lacking these resources to give their students. These economic disadvantages have an impact on the students’ result. Research shows, “The District of Columbia in 2014 received an “F” grade in academic achievement for low-income and minority students attending its public schools” (CNSNews.com) it shows the direct effect on the lower-income and minority students’ academic results. Although they may be smart as others, they learn less because they don’t get enough benefits. These differences in economic condition build a gap in race relations and this is one of the elements for discrimination in the school. This gap is important to recognize because to build up a perfect nation, a nation must have full of literate people in it. To overcome this problem every students must get benefits

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