Law in the 21st Century

Since the early history of the United States, humans have been discriminated against, based on race, age, beliefs, gender, employment, disabilities and even their social circle. There are equality challenges in schools, businesses and even through law enforcement officials. Over many years, rights of U.S. citizens have evolved and are preventing discrimination but whatever we try to do, discrimination will always exist and that is why as engaged citizens of the United States, we should try to honor, acknowledge, and cultivate our governments capability to encourage equal rights to all citizens.

Discrimination is a term referring to the treatment towards or against others of a certain group and based entirely on character. There are major past equality challenges, present equality challenges and there will be equality challenges in the future for many, many years to come. In the past, there was discrimination against women and for no other reason than their gender. Today, in the United States we are even dealing with racial discrimination towards humans who are no different other than the color of their skin. In the future, we will always have to deal with the discrimination of poor people and the problem that our country will always face, poverty.

In the past, there were such crucial equality challenges. One of the major historical events that everyone is aware of is slavery, a compelling time when race was the only thing that mattered. Slavery will go down as one of the worst events in history. It is the time when African-Americans were brought over seas and were involved in forced labor and considered less than human.

African-Americans were expected to do manual labor for white people who thought they had power over them. These men, women and even children would work long, treacherous hours in the hot sun, they would work in the kitchen for the plantation owners and this would leave them with barely any time for their own families.  White slave owners thought they were superior to black people, which increased the gap between being considered slave and free, in some communities it was even legal to kill a slave if they refused to work or misbehaved.

Killing an innocent human being who is only different because of the color of their skin is very unreal and because of the actions of those from many years ago it has led our country to face racial discrimination challenges today. Name-calling and racial slurs are “humorous” to many human beings who are doing the name-calling but only offend and hurt the person being called names. “Equal Justice For All” is taught to kids of younger ages now so that they grow up to be mature and understand that what they are saying is nothing but hurtful.

Slavery is not the only equality challenge in the U.S. that occurred in the past. There was also discrimination towards minorities. Native Americans faced deadly discrimination and now the population of Native Americans barely exists. There was discrimination towards Japanese-Americans because of their ethnic background and because U.S. citizens believed the Japanese would not be devoted to the U.S. There was even gender discrimination and age discrimination. Women would get less pay in factories and men would be forced to do harder work. Back when everything went by the status quo, women were better known as the “housekeepers” and men were better known as the farmers and manual labor workers.

Everyone can choose to do something about discriminating and I choose to do something. I choose to treat my peers with respect, whatever their beliefs may be. We seem to neglect ourselves in the big idea of life and forget the worry of our biased behavior towards others. Discrimination today is more cruelly shown without the least bit of concentration, it happens so much where it almost becomes a lifestyle and no one may notice. Anyone can be discriminated against in almost any situation. Whether you don’t get a good job because you are a man or a woman or if you aren’t experienced at something but aren’t given time to prove yourself. If you look around on a daily basis, you will recognize all the discrimination that occurs everyday. Discrimination now, is the reflection on the past and the future is the reflection on today. What we do today will affect the prevention of discrimination and encourage a more diverse world for everyone.