Racism: A Global Crisis in Need of a Cure – Confronting the Moral Dilemma of Discrimination

Dr. Negus Rudison-Imhotep | Contributor on topics related to memory and memory building

Discrimination is denying human rights or social participation to a group of individuals based on prejudice.” According to Thorat et al. (2012), the primary discrimination witnessed in society is racial, age, and in the workplace.  Racial discrimination takes place when a person from a different culture or ethnic make-up is denied acceptance as an equal to the dominant group.

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Age discrimination is another heinous crime carried on by some segments of society who mistreat and deny individuals equal opportunity based solely on their age. Furthermore, discrimination in the workplace occurs on age, race, gender, and sexual orientation by the dominant class.

Despite intense and almost desperate efforts to eliminate racism and ethnic intolerance, discrimination appears to be every bit as bad at the beginning of the 21st century as it was in the days of the Antebellum Southern region of the United States before the Civil War.  Today racial prejudice and discrimination have manifested themselves in crimes against African Americans. 

The problem statement: Discrimination the Moral Dilemma, can be characterized as – What can be done to lessen the psychological impact of discrimination on society? How does the Media’s stereotypical imagery of African Americans affect the decision-making among human resources specialists, in regards to employment, compensation, benefits, and promotions?

During the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, African Americans were encouraged to enter the workforce as equal partners in the struggle for economic equality. 

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“To compensate for feelings of powerlessness, guilt, and shame that result from the inability to enact traditional masculine roles, some African American male youth of low-income social status have redefined masculinity to emphasize sexual promiscuity, toughness, thrill-seeking, and the use of violence in interpersonal interactions” (Harris, 1995). 

Unfortunately, the minority members of U.S. cities rebelled against the prospect of unemployment encouraged by the discrimination of elitist white power structures. According to Alexander et al. (2010), the correlation linking race and incarceration, principally as it engendered an innovative organism of discrimination, inequality, and suppression for the inner city African Americans.

The stigma that encompasses African Americans dispenses a perception that this group is a redundant portion of the American populace.

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The result of this racism and the mental effect visited upon African Americans, predominately African American youth, and the lack of ways to sustain them resulted in African American juvenile delinquency have turned entire neighborhoods into pockets of crime. According to Stewart et al. 2008, numerous psychological theories explain delinquency in terms of a weak or defective ego. 

That is to say, a person may be unable to manage the demands of the conscience while facing real-life problems. This can result in guilt or in failure to resist temptation. The mental impact of being treated as sub-human at an early age has a debilitating influence on a child’s ability to express self-esteem and to look at life as a black hole where all of life’s happiness disappears and what is left is heartache and pain. 

“Given the uniqueness of racism as a stressor-in particular, that it is a stressor for which we cannot always expect either in-group or out-group support, it is reasonable to predict that coping responses in dealing with racism may differ from other responses as well” (Stewart, 2008). This problem statement addresses that societal reaction to discrimination can be expressed in many negative ways. 

The great Sociologist Emile Durkheim theorized that one of the resulting manifestations of social neglect represented by discrimination was crime and a breakdown of the social fabric of the child’s relationship with society. “One of Emile Durkheim’s arguments was that rapid social change was associated with increases in crime due to the breakdown of social controls. 

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This idea was one of several used by members of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago in the 1920s in their attempt to pinpoint the environmental factors associated with crime and to determine the relationship among those factors.  However, instead of focusing on rapid change in entire societies, they focused on rapid change in neighborhoods” (Vold, 2002). 

This problem statement posits that one would think that after the horrors of the civil rights movement and the struggle for justice and equality, modern society would appreciate the negative impact of discrimination on its youth. “Where behaviorists argue that we acquire habits through the association of stimuli with responses, cognitive theorists argue that we acquire factual knowledge through the association of memories, ideas, or expectations. 

Behaviorists argue that learning occurs primarily through trial and error, while cognitive theorists describe learning as taking place through insight into problem-solving” ( Vold, 2002).

This problem statement on discrimination is that society’s goal must be to build a strong community in which all kids can be free to explore the heights of their capacity to excel and adults can freely participate in neighborhood activities without the threat of youth violence and the psychological disorders brought on by discrimination.  Durkheim would be proud of us for our tenacity.

References

Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press.

D’Alessio, S., Stolzenberg, L., & Eitle, D. (2014). ‘Last Hired, First Fired’: The Effect of the Unemployment Rate on Probability of Repeat Offending. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(1), 77. doi:10.1007/s12103-013-9199-1.

Harris, S. M. (1995). Psychosocial development and black male masculinity. Journal of

Counseling & Development, 279-282.

Moore, M. T. (1998). Youth Violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stewart, J. (2008). Implicit coping responses to racism. Basic & Applied Social Psychology,

 264-277.

Thorat, S., & Neuman, K. S. (2012). Blocked by caste: economic discrimination in modern India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vold, G. B. (2002). Theoretical Criminology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Want to learn more about storytelling? Start by downloading the first chapter of The Storytelling Mastery.