Examples Of Institutional Racism

Institutional Racism Over the last century, America has taken legislative action to prevent acts of racism and discrimination from penetrating society. Laws such as the 1964 civil rights act were established to provide equal treatment to all, regardless of race, gender or ethnic background. In 1954 the Supreme court ruled on the case, “Brown V Board of Education” stating “We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal ' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (Administrative office of U.S. courts, 2016). While these laws eliminated many forms of segregation and racism, tension between minority and majority dominant groups still remains in American society. Forms …show more content…
This is even more apparent when gender is added to the equation. Gender discrimination is defined as a common civil rights violation that takes many forms. These forms can include sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, and unequal pay for women who do the same jobs as men. One might think we moved passed the era of gender discrimination, when in reality we still have a long way to go. Most gender discrimination cases happen in the work place. On average women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same job (Sanders, 2015). Gender discrimination is not always toward women but there are also cases where men are discriminated against. For example, there was a time when being a server at a restaurant was considered a woman’s job. Today that line of work is open to anyone which is what caused the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday to have to pay a $100,000 settlement. This happened when one of their restaurants in Park City, Utah refused to hire two men to be servers in the summer of 2013 (EEOC, 2015). The restaurant reported that only women would be considered for this position because of a concern of men and women being housed together. This was shocking to some because it is unheard of gender discrimination being towards men but this simply goes to show us that it does happen. Another case was found in 2015 when Katherine Moussouris was looked over for a position by a Seattle based Microsoft Company. They did not like her “manner of style” and they gave the promotion she was up for to some male employees. She made several reports of sexual harassment and as a result of that she received a 5-million-dollar settlement (Hunstad, 2015). We have come too far in the world to still have to deal with gender discrimination. We need to come to a place where we respect one another no matter what gender they are because we can all learn and gain something from one