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Whether and how a child is punished for acting up in school could depend on his race, a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.

The report found that black students in K-12 schools are far more likely to be disciplined - whether through suspension or referral to law enforcement - than their counterparts of other races.

This chart shows the topline finding, demonstrating that black children are overrepresented based on their actual population in the student body:

This was true no matter the type of punishment:

No matter the type of school:

And no matter the rate of poverty at the school:

GAO noted that "disparities in student discipline such as those presented in this figure may support a finding of discrimination, but taken alone, do not establish whether unlawful discrimination has occurred." So these charts may show discrimination, racial bias, and systemic racism, but there could be other factors involved.

When taken together, though, the charts present a damning picture: One would have to assume that whatever other factors are involved would have to apply across all types of punishment, all kinds of school, and no matter the rate of poverty - and apply particularly to black kids.

There is also good research showing the reality of racism in America. A 2014 study, for example, found that people generally view black boys as older and less innocent starting at the age of 10. "Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection," Phillip Goff, an author of the 2014 study, said in a statement. "Our research found that black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent."

Another study released in 2017 produced similar results, finding that Americans overall view black girls as less innocent and more mature for their age, from ages 5 to 14. Survey respondents were more likely to say that black girls, compared to white girls, need less nurturing, less protection, to be supported less, to be comforted less, are more independent, know more about adult topics, and know more about sex. The researchers described this as the "adultification" of black girls.

If people are more likely to view black children as less innocent and older, they may be more likely to accept harsher punishments against these kids. The GAO study suggests that may be the case - and it's backed by other research.

This is not the first report to find something like this

It would be one thing if the GAO report was the first with findings like this, but there's a lot of research and data that shows black kids are disproportionately punished in schools:

Federal civil rights investigations have found that black students are punished more harshly than white students in schools even when black and white students engage in identical or similar behavior.

Black students with disabilities are almost three times as likely to experience out-of-school suspension or expulsion as their white counterparts, and twice as likely to experience in-school suspension or expulsion, according to a report from the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

Although black boys face higher rates of school discipline than anyone else, a report from Columbia Law School's Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies found that black girls are six times as likely to be suspended as white girls, while black boys are three times as likely to be suspended as white boys.

A study published in Sociology of Education analyzed a data set of more than 60,000 schools in more than 6,000 districts. It found that schools with relatively larger minority and poor populations are more likely to implement criminal justice-oriented disciplinary policies - such as suspensions, expulsions, police referrals, and arrests - and less likely to connect them to psychological or behavioral care.

Boys with imprisoned fathers are much less likely to possess the behavioral skills needed to succeed in school by the age of 5, a study published in Sociological Science found. Black children, who are more likely to have imprisoned fathers, are therefore more likely to be set on a bad course before they start kindergarten.

The harsher punishments are part of a decades-long trend. As lawmakers and politicians began enacting "tough on crime" policies in the 1970s through the '90s, some of the concepts have trickled down to schools, which started outsourcing discipline to school resource officers and referrals to the juvenile justice system.

This has created what some critics refer to as the "school-to-prison pipeline." Essentially, as school punishments become harsher - and especially as they increasingly involve police - they create a pathway for students to get involved in the criminal justice system fairly early on in their lives, which can heighten the risk of delinquent or criminal activity in the future. (For one, a criminal record makes it harder to get and hold down a legal means of income.) And since black kids are disproportionately affected, this pipeline reflects the broader racial disparities in the criminal justice system as a whole.

Put another way: These are places that are supposed to educate children and lead them to happy, productive lives. But these policies may be having the opposite effect for a specific segment of the population.

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Black kids are way more likely to be punished in school than white kids, study finds

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Whether and how a child is punished for acting up in school could depend on his race, a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found. The report found that black students in K-12 schools are far more likely to be disciplined - whether through suspension or referral to law enforcement - than their counterparts of other races.

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No laws against verbal Racism

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think about it

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we found racism, homelessness and job discrimination interisting.

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Are there punishments for Racismand descriminiation?

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Are there punishments for Racismand descriminiation?

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racism can happen anywhere
- when in public
- an everyday issue, it can happen anywhere like riding a bus, paying for something at a store, going to the doctors,
- racism has been a big issue in jobs, people with certain skintones tend to get a promotion or the job hiring not all cases are for racism but there is still cases of it
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we decided to focus on racism, it has a lot of information and although we have come a long way and it has gotten better, racism is still a prominent issue in everyday situations

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ALL racism

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Racial categorization reflects the process of placing people into distinct groups based on variation in phenotypic physical features of the face and body such as skin color, hair color and texture, eye shape, nose width, and lip fullness. Racial stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination reflect the human tendencies to conceptualize and value certain configurations of phenotypic features differently, and act on these thoughts and feelings in our interactions with members of racial categories. Many of us, particularly students of prejudice, can recruit from memory vivid examples of racial bias and its consequences. In both overt and subtle forms, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination exhibited among individuals belonging to different racial categories has long been a significant source of social strife in American society and abroad. In general, individuals with physical features associated with Whites (lighter skin color, lighter and straighter hair, rounder eyes, narrower nose, thinner lips) are advantaged compared to individuals with features associated with other racial categories.
Rethinking Racial Bias
Notice that the statement ending the previous section is subtly, yet importantly, distinct from the statement that Whites are advantaged over individuals from other racial categories. It reflects another variety of racial bias that occurs both between and within racial categories by suggesting that individuals may possess features associated with Whites and enjoy relatively advantaged status over others without necessarily being categorized as White. At first glance, this concept may seem illogical. How can one conceptualize racial bias, characterized by between-category distinctions, that occurs within a racial category? Our impediment may stem from the well-studied tendency to perceive homogeneity in the characteristics of a target group once categorization has occurred (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963). In fact, there is as much phenotypic (and genotypic) variability within human populations associated with racial categories as there is between those categories (American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1996). Thus, this bias can be conceptualized as "racial" because it is appears to be based on the phenotypic characteristics we use to categorize others as a function of race.

This within-category variety of racial bias, while perhaps much less familiar to many observers, has consequences paralleling those of "traditional' racial bias. A relatively small but growing literature produced by historical, sociological, medical, anthropological and psychological researchers confirms that racially-motivated biases exist not only between members of different racial groups, but also among individuals who belong to the same racial group. Most of the focus has been on perceptions of Black Americans by Blacks and Whites as a function of a single feature, skin tone. Early historical evidence suggests that both Blacks and Whites exhibited bias based on skin tone as early as the slavery era (Drake & Cayton, 1945). White European facial features in Blacks were seen as evidence of White ancestry, leading to inferences of racial superiority (Russell, Wilson, & Hall, 1992). In the post-slavery era, lighter skin provided better social, educational, and economic opportunities (Neal & Wilson, 1989). Sociological evidence corroborates these historical data, suggesting that these social disparities persist among Black Americans (Keith & Herring, 1991). Furthermore, medical evidence suggests that darker skin tone is associated with negative health outcomes (Gleiberman, Harburg, Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1995). These disparities are not limited to Blacks in the United States. The tendency to make discriminations based on skin tone emerges among Latinos in the United States and Latin America (Murguia & Telles, 1996; Uhlmann, Dasgupta, Elgueta, Greenwald, & Swanson, 2002), in Brazil (Harris, Consorte, Lang, & Byrne, 1993), Canada (Sahay & Piran, 1997), India (Beteille, 1967), Israel (Munitz, Priel, & Henik, 1985), Jamaica (Tidrick, 1973), Japan (Goldberg, 1973; Wagatsuma, 1967), Northern Africa (Brown, 1967), and South Africa (Legum, 1967). Evidence suggests that, in each of these societies, lighter skin is generally valued over darker skin, and a person's skin tone has broad implications for his or her relative social status.

These outcomes are, in part, due to interpersonal processes that were not generally recognized in social psychological theory. Dominant theories in social psychology have emphasized the role of racial categories. Few considered phenotypic variation within a racial category as a meaningful factor in representations, judgments, and treatment of others (Maddox, 2004). The mainstream perspectives asserts that, regardless of phenotypic appearance, an individual categorized as a members of a particular group is potentially subject to the full brunt of associated stereotypes and prejudices (Secord, 1958). More recent social psychological evidence has linked within-race variation in phenotypic appearance of Blacks to categorization and stereotype content (Maddox & Gray, 2002), the application of stereotypes and prejudice (Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002), and implicit and explicit evaluations (Livingston, 2001; Livingston & Brewer, 2002). This evidence suggests that it would benefit researchers to reconsider the extent to which racial phenotypicality that may elicit categorical thinking and the conditions under which categorical thinking may be accompanied by more nuanced patterns of thought and action.
Racial Phenotypicality Bias
Among psychologists, this general phenomenon has been described using a variety of terms: Afrocentric bias (Blair et al., 2002), the bleaching syndrome (Hall, 1994), colorism (Okazawa-Rey, Robinson, & Ward, 1987), perceptual prejudice (Livingston & Brewer, 2002), phenotyping (Codina & Montalvo, 1994), skin color bias (Hall, 1998), skin tone bias (Maddox & Gray, 2002), and subgroup prejudice (Uhlmann et al., 2002). Each of these terms reflects differential attitudes, beliefs, and treatment of individuals based on variation in phenotypic characteristics of the face traditionally associated with membership in particular racial categories. In previous work, I have offered a rudimentary model of racial phenotypicality bias, a term that corrals the various terms offered by researchers (Maddox, 2004). The model is guided by evidence of our implicit and explicit sensitivity to variation in racial phenotypic appearance among members of the same racial category. The model incorporates suggested revisions to traditional models of person perception (Blair et al., 2002; Maddox & Gray, 2002; Zebrowitz, 1996). Processing begins with identification of a person's physical attributes that act as cues to salient category dimensions such as age, sex, and race. At this stage, the nature of feature processing diverges into two routes of information processing that operate simultaneously and largely independently.

The category-based route. The first is a category-based route as proposed by Maddox & Gray (2002) based on traditional approaches to social representation and judgment (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Through this route, processing of the target's phenotypic features results in racial categorization, based on a single, salient feature (e.g., skin tone) or a global assessment of multiple features (Blair et al., 2002; Livingston & Brewer, 2002). At this point, the individual may be placed into a relevant subcategory as a function of racial phenotypicality (e.g., light-skinned or dark-skinned) depending on the perceiver's conceptual framework. Only salient subcategory representations may guide the process of categorization. Subcategory use is more or less likely depending on person characteristics or contextual cues present in the judgment context (Maddox & Chase, 2004). In that study, the use of skin tone-based subcategories of Blacks was augmented through a manipulation that made salient learned distinctions between light- and dark-skinned Blacks. Once fit between the target and (sub) category membership is established, associated stereotypes or prejudices (Maddox & Gray, 2002) may be used in interpersonal judgments.

The feature-based route. The second route is feature-based; influencing social perception apart from the traditional range of category-based processing. This route employs direct associations between phenotypic features and stereotypic traits (Blair et al., 2002) or prejudices (Livingston & Brewer, 2002). These associations may be learned over time, or reflect innate knowledge of social information that may be overgeneralized to other individuals with similar features (Zebrowitz, 1996). An important aspect of this route is that phenotype continues to influence target judgments in situations even when racial categorization overrides within-race variation through the category-based route (Blair et al., 2002). Furthermore the information that features convey will be applied regardless of the target's racial category membership (Blair et al., 2002; Secord, 1958; Zebrowitz, 1996) and is less subject to conscious control (Blair, Chapleau, & Judd, 2005).

The role of conceptual knowledge. The model also recognizes varieties of conceptual knowledge that may guide the processing of target attributes through both the category-based route and the feature-based route. Possibilities include metaphorical associations with various colors (Secord, 1958), early childhood experiences with light and dark (Williams, Boswell, & Best, 1975), essentialist beliefs (Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 2002), implicit causal theories (Medin & Ortony, 1989), cultural standards of physical attractiveness (Breland, 1998), and beliefs about the relationship between physical features and personality (Livingston, 2001). Each of these and others may contribute to category-based and/or feature-based judgments.
Why Rethink Racial Bias?
This re-conceptualization does not maintain that the study of categorical thinking in the domain of race is obsolete. At times, racial categorization may very well override the significance of within-category variability. However, there are a number of developing factors in our society that will increase the significance of racial phenotypicality (Maddox & Dukes, 2006). First, is the growing phenotypic diversity among the population attributed to increasing numbers of immigrants of color (Massey, 2002) as well as increasing rates of interracial marriages (Steven & Tyler, 2002) and multiracial births (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). Second, is the recent debate over the inclusion of a multiracial category option in the U.S. Census, highlighting the growing recognition that people who may appear to belong to a particular racial category may identify with multiple categories (Steven & Tyler, 2002). Finally, consider the continuing debate surrounding the idea that race is a biological certainty. A growing body of evidence indicates that the biological nature of race is a myth. In fact, racial categories and their apparent correlates arise as a function of social construction processes (American Anthropological Association, 1998; American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1996).

The confluence of these factors suggests that more and more people in the country will not fit into traditional models of racial stereotyping and prejudice, augmented by the deterioration of the traditional framework surrounding race. These factors may lead to decreased reliance on race in social perception and judgment and, perhaps, and increased reliance on racial phenotype. If we are to recognize the face of stereotyping and prejudice in the future, it is vitally important that researchers give greater consideration to the role of racial phenotype and conceptual knowledge in social judgment.
References
American Anthropological Association. (1998). American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race". Retrieved 7/18/02, 2002, http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
American Association of Physical Anthropologists. (1996). AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 101, 569-570.
Beteille, A. (1967). Race and descent as social categories in India. Daedalus, 96(2), 444-463.
Blair, I. V., Chapleau, K. M., & Judd, C. M. (2005). The use of Afrocentric Features as Cues for Judgment in the Presence of Diagnostic Information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(1), 59-68.
Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M., Sadler, M. S., & Jenkins, C. (2002). The role of Afrocentric features in person perception: Judging by features and categories. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 83(1), 5-25.
Breland, A. M. (1998). A model for differential perceptions of competence based on skin tone among African Americans. Journal of Multicultural Counseling & Development, 26(4), 294-311.
Brewer, M. B. (1988). A dual-process model of impression formation. In T. K. Srull & R. S. Wyer (Eds.), Advances in social cognition: a dual process model of impression formation (pp. 1-36). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Brown, L. C. (1967). Color in northern Africa. Daedalus, 96(2), 464-482.
Codina, G. E., & Montalvo, F. F. (1994). Chicano phenotype and depression. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 16(3), 296-306.
Drake, S. C., & Cayton, H. R. (1945). Black metropolis. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch.
Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1-74). San Diego: Academic Press, Inc.
Gleiberman, L., Harburg, E., Frone, M. R., Russell, M., & Cooper, M. L. (1995). Skin colour, measures of socioeconomic status, and blood pressure among Blacks in Erie County, NY. Annals of Human Biology, 22(1), 69-73.
Goldberg, F. J. (1973). The question on skin color and its relation to Japan. Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the Orient, 16(3), 132-146.
Hall, R. E. (1994). The "bleaching syndrome": Implications of light skin for Hispanic American assimilation. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 16(3), 307-314.
Hall, R. E. (1998). Skin color bias: A new perspective on an old social problem. Journal of Psychology, 132(2), 238-240.
Harris, M., Consorte, J. G., Lang, J., & Byrne, B. (1993). Who are the Whites? Imposed census categories and the racial demography of Brazil. Social Forces, 72(2), 451-462.
Haslam, N., Rothschild, L., & Ernst, D. (2002). Are essentialist beliefs associated with prejudice? British Journal of Social Psychology, 41(1), 87-100.
Keith, V. M., & Herring, C. (1991). Skin tone and stratification in the Black community. American Journal of Sociology, 97(3), 760-778.
Legum, C. (1967). Color and power in the South African situation. Daedalus, 96(2), 483-495.
Livingston, R. W. (2001). What you see is what you get: Systematic variability in perceptual-based social judgment. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(9), 1086-1096.
Livingston, R. W., & Brewer, M. B. (2002). What are we really priming? Cue-based versus category-based processing of facial stimuli. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 82(1), 5-18.
Maddox, K. B. (2004). Perspectives on racial phenotypicality bias. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 383-401.
Maddox, K. B., & Chase, S. G. (2004). Manipulating Category Salience: Further Evidence for Skin Tone-Based Representations of Black Americans. European Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 533-546.
Maddox, K. B., & Dukes, K. N. (2006). Rethinking Racial Stereotyping: Racial Phenotypicality Bias in the 21st Century.Unpublished manuscript.
Maddox, K. B., & Gray, S. A. (2002). Cognitive representations of Black Americans: Reexploring the role of skin tone. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(2), 250-259.
Massey, D. (2002). The new immigratioin and ethnicity in the United States. In N. A. Denton & S. E. Tolnay (Eds.), American diversity: A demographic challenge for the twenty-first century (pp. 75-98). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Medin, D. L., & Ortony, A. (1989). Psychological essentialism. In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 179-195).
Munitz, S., Priel, B., & Henik, A. (1985). Color, skin color preferences and self color identification among Ethiopian- and Israeli-born children. Israel Social Science Research, 3(1-2), 74-84.
Murguia, E., & Telles, E. E. (1996). Phenotype and schooling among Mexican Americans. Sociology of Education, 69(4), 276-289.
Neal, A. M., & Wilson, M. L. (1989). The role of skin color and features in the Black community: Implications for Black women and therapy. Clinical Psychology Review, 9(3), 323-333.
Okazawa-Rey, M., Robinson, T., & Ward, J. V. (1987). Black women and the politics of skin color and hair. Women and Therapy, 6(1-2), 89-102.
Russell, K. Y., Wilson, M., & Hall, R. E. (1992). The color complex: The politics of skin color among African Americans. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sahay, S., & Piran, N. (1997). Skin-color preferences and body satisfaction among South Asian-Canadian. Journal of Social Psychology, 137(2), 161-172.
Secord, P. F. (1958). Facial features and inference processes in interpersonal perception. In R. Tagiuri & L. Petrullo (Eds.), Person perception and interpersonal pehavior. Stanford, CA: Stanford, University Press.
Steven, G., & Tyler, M. (2002). Ethnic and racial intermarriage in the United States: Old and new regimes. In N. A. Denton & S. E. Tolnay (Eds.), American diversity: A demographic challenge for the twenty-first century (pp. 221-242). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Tajfel, H., & Wilkes, A. L. (1963). Classification and quantitative judgement. British Journal of Psychology, 54(2), 101-114.
Tidrick, K. (1973). Skin shade and need for achievement in a multiracial society: Jamaica, Indies. Journal of Social Psychology, 89(1), 25-33.
Uhlmann, E., Dasgupta, N., Elgueta, A., Greenwald, A. G., & Swanson, J. (2002). Subgroup prejudice based on skin color among Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. Social Cognition, 20(3), 198-226.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1992). Current population reports: Population projections of the United States by age, race, and Hispanic origin: 1992-2050. P25-1092. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Wagatsuma, H. (1967). The social perception of skin color in Japan. Daedalus, 92(2), 407-443.
Williams, J. E., Boswell, D. A., & Best, D. L. (1975). Evaluative responses of preschool children to the colors white and black. Child Development, 46(2), 501-508.
Zebrowitz, L. (1996). Physical appearance as a basis of stereotyping. In C. N. Macrae, C. Stangor & M. Hewstone (Eds.), Stereotypes and stereotyping. New York: Guilford Press.
About the Author
Keith Maddox received his PhD in 1998 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Tufts University. His research examines various aspects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, and the mental representation of persons and groups. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. He currently serves as the chair of the Diversity Committee for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Black Psychology, and a Consulting Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. He is the director of the Tufts University Social Cognition laboratory.

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Racial categorization reflects the process of placing people into distinct groups based on variation in phenotypic physical features of the face and body such as skin color, hair color and texture, eye shape, nose width, and lip fullness.

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- an example wold be stares, this could apply in race, disability, age and lots of physical discrimination.
- people are always in

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Prejudicial stereotypes and testimonial injustice: Autism, sexuality and sex education

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Autists frequently confront prejudicial stereotypes that they are asexual, hyper- or hypo sexual, child-like and dependent, and/or uninterested in sex...

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think about it

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- knowledge from past challenges
- real life experiences

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Racism & Homelessness

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laws against racism
laws against gender
laws against class / money
only applies in social settings not in everyday settings

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how have we overcame injustices in the past ?

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how have we overcame injustices in the past ?

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its illegal to discriminate in work places. but the everyday judge can not be prevented unless serious measures were shown

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Letter, advises governor concerning militia. Will be paid promptly on the evidence being examined by War Department Accountant. Sums limited to those stipulated by Acts of Congress. Additional force would appear to be necessary. Mentions companies of Greenbriar and Bottetourt counties in Virginia, to rendezvous at mouth of the Great Kenhawa.

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"There are three defining features of prevention. First, with successful prevention, new cases of a problem do not occur. Second, prevention is not aimed at individuals but at populations; the goal is a decline in rates of disorder. Third, preventive interventions intentionally focus on preventing mental health problems"

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"There are three defining features of prevention. First, with successful prevention, new cases of a problem do not occur. Second, prevention is not aimed at individuals but at populations; the goal is a decline in rates of disorder. Third, preventive interventions intentionally focus on preventing mental health problems"

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remarks and actions are unjustifiable. Thoughts can not be unjustifiable because they are only our thoughts, when we act apon those thoughts against another human

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there are many ways to be injustifiable. All you have to do is offend someone because of their differences

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We know that for some people, life is a daily struggle - from the people forced to sleep on the street in our own communities, to people living without enough water or food in areas of the developing world. Most of us can barely imagine the reality of living in that way from day to day.

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How many people understand confidently what justice is?

Lawyers don't receive any real training in justice, so far as I am aware. This is a pity, because it is a lawyer's job to help administer justice. We think we understand what it is, but I suspect that you would have real trouble getting general agreement about what constitutes justice.

Deep ethical choices are involved in deciding what constitutes justice. Our conception of justice helps shape innumerable aspects of the legal system. Try this. A mother, stressed already by school holiday torment, is in the kitchen when she hears a crash in the living-room. She rushes to see what has happened and finds her favourite, most precious vase shattered on the hearth. She knows with a certainty which transcends analysis that her youngest was responsible. She fines him and sends him to bed without dinner. As it happens, he was in fact responsible for breaking the vase.

The alternative version: when the mother finds the vase, she realises that no one should be punished without good cause and due process. This is the minimum requirement of justice. She seeks out each child in turn and asks questions calculated to discover the truth of the matter. Suspicion eventually falls on her youngest. She gives him a chance to explain. Not convinced by his explanation she sends him to bed without dinner. As it happens, he was not responsible for breaking the vase.

The question is: Which of these two results is more just? The first is pragmatic; the second accords with principle. But most people cannot choose which is right without hesitation. Due process is inherent in our conception of justice. But bad process can yield right results, just as good process can produce wrong results. The legal system, with all its concerns about process and procedure, is designed to produce justice. The idea of a mob-lynching of a suspected criminal is abhorrent, even if it happens that the mob is right in their choice of victim.

This simple example illustrates how hard it is to choose what constitutes justice. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that our ethical criteria are not static. What appears just in one age may be repugnant in another. A crude illustration of this process is found in social attitudes to capital punishment.

Ronald Ryan was the last person put to death by an Australian Government. The fight to save him from the gallows in 1967 was hotly contested. Led by Barry Jones, those campaigning against capital punishment were vilified by the government of the day and by the tabloid press. Now, 46 years on, no government in Australia today argues for the reintroduction of capital punishment, and members of the community who support capital punishment are either a small minority or surprisingly quiet.

Nevertheless, there was a strong body of opinion in Australia which supported the idea of executing the Bali bombers, and even more local opposition to the execution of the Bali 9. One integer of the ethical choice, it seems, is the nationality of the prisoner being sentenced.
One hundred years ago there was near universal support for the death penalty as an appropriate feature of the justice system.

Two hundred years ago, capital punishment was a commonplace, as was public flogging. What was just then seems to us barbaric now.

The fundamental ethical norms of our society naturally play an important role in determining a theory of justice. The presumption of innocence, and the requirement that all people who go to court are entitled to competent representation both illustrate the way various ethical choices have been played out in our society. Likewise the choice that all people are entitled to justice, not only the powerful.

The idea that an accused person should be presumed innocent is one which does not operate in Japan. The idea that, in the contest between state and citizen, the parties should meet on equal terms, with each competently represented, is one which is accepted but not always honoured in practice.

The most fundamental of these choices is this: that our conception of justice includes the idea that all people are entitled to it. This is not a universal norm, although we take it as self-evident. In his history of the Peloponnesian wars, Thucydides retells the Melian dialogue. In its war against Sparta, Athens decided to invade the island of Melos. Although Melos had not harmed Athens, and was neutral in the war, it was strategically located. Athens wanted Melos for its strategic importance. An Athenian delegation went to the Commissioners of Melos and came straight to the point. They agreed that it would seem unjust for them to invade Melos, but said that they intended to. They offered a choice of conquering Melos the easy way (surrender) or the hard way (mass slaughter). In support of their plainly unreasonable proposition, they accepted that the Melians would complain that it was not just. But, they argued, 'Justice is only relevant between equals in power. Where power is not equal, the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.'

(Incidentally, the Melians adopted a principled stance and refused to surrender to such outrageous demands. Their men and boys were slaughtered; their women were raped and abducted.)

Feudal societies and dictatorships tend to share the Athenian view. Neither the Taliban - nor those who hold Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay - think that justice is for all.

In 1934, Dr Evatt published a small book titled Injustice Within the Law. It was a discussion of the case of R . Loveless and Ors. It concerned the case of six agricultural workers from a small town in Dorset who had the temerity to form and recruit members for the friendly society of agricultural labourers. They were prosecuted for requiring new members of the union to swear an oath of loyalty to the union. The defendants were specifically targeted by a local employer, who was also the Magistrate of the first hearing. All six were convicted and sentenced to transportation to Australia for seven years. Their trial was unfair, their sentence was unfair and they quickly became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, after the town they lived in. Evatt wrote Injustice Within the Law in 1934, to commemorate the centenary of the trial of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

It is easy, and comforting, to think that such an injustice within the law would not happen today. The truth is otherwise. The case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs had many vices. But the main one is that it was a frank failure of the principle of legality.

There are several different causes of injustice within the law these days:
1. Injustice which results from the fact that the system is run by human beings, and human beings are fallible;
2. Injustices which result when a person does not have effective access to law; and
3. Injustices which are mandated by the Parliament.
The system is not perfect
There are many examples, large and small, of the legal system failing simply because it is run by fallible human beings. A moment's inadvertence can have large consequences. Some matters just don't seem to have much merit, unless you look very closely. This can lead to carelessness: the problems faced by clients with unpopular causes may seem less deserving of attention; the problems faced by clients with mental or social disabilities are too readily dismissed as figments of their disturbed lives. So let the case of Stefan Kiszko stand as a warning.

Stefan Kiszko lived in the northern part of England, with his German mother and aunt. Stefan was a big, lumbering young man and socially backward. He suffered from hypogonadism, a condition in which the testes are completely undeveloped. This was not diagnosed until he was 23, at which time he was a young boy in a man's body. Although he was intellectually normal, his social backwardness made him the butt of jokes at school, and when he got a job in the Tax Office it made him the butt of jokes at work. His mother and his aunt were proud of him when he started working at the Tax Office: he was the first member of their family ever to have had a job which required them to wear a jacket and tie. He had no friends and no social life beyond his mother and his aunt.

On 5 October 1975 Lesley Molseed went down to the local shop to get some bread. She was a small, frail 11-year-old. Three days later, her body was found on the moors near the town. She had been stabbed 12 times and the killer had ejaculated on her underwear.
The police set up a massive manhunt. They took statements from 6,000 people in the area. Their attention soon fixed on Stefan Kiszko. On their assessment of things, he fitted the likely profile of the killer.

They questioned Kiszko for many hours. They did not caution him until well after they had formed the firm belief that he was guilty. So he kept asking to be allowed to see his mother. Eventually he began agreeing with their assertions when they promised that, if he did so, they would let him go home to his mother. He signed a statement confessing the crime, but retracted it soon afterwards.

His trial began on 7 July 1976. He was represented on a Legal Aid brief by David Waddington QC and Philip Clegg. At the start of the trial the prosecution delivered thousands of pages of unused material. The defence did not ask for an adjournment. They ran inconsistent defences. While the primary defence was that Kiszko had not killed Lesley Molseed, they also argued that he had just started hormone treatment for his hypogonadism, and that this caused uncharacteristic changes in his behaviour. The defence overstated this point. Kiszko's endocrinologist would have said, if asked, that the hormone treatment would not have caused any behaviour at odds with his underlying personality. Worse, the alternative defences involved telling the jury, in substance, 'he didn't do it, but if he did he couldn't help it because the hormone treatment had turned him into a sex monster'. On any view, this was not likely to attract the sympathy of the jury. With the best will in the world, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the defence and prosecution alike thought that Kiszko was guilty.

He was convicted, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. For a person convicted of sexually molesting and killing a child, life in jail is hard. Kiszko was frequently beaten by other prisoners, and eventually retreated into a world of private delusion in which he was the victim of an immense plot to incarcerate an innocent Tax Office employee in order to test the effects of incarceration. It was an understandable fantasy. He ultimately became to believe that even his mother was party to this elaborate conspiracy.

But Kiszko's mother was the only person who continued to believe, from first to last, that Kiszko was innocent. She never missed an opportunity to tell anyone who was willing to listen about the hardship of the case and the unfairness of the verdict. As her entreaties became more desperate and forlorn, so her audience became less receptive. But eventually, in 1987, a regional solicitor agreed to have a look at the case. He succeeded in getting access to the police archives and having the case investigated again.

The investigation discovered a few crucial things. First, that the unused material delivered on the first day of the trial included material which cast doubt on the reliability of several important witnesses, and on the reliability of the confession. Second, that the pathologist who had examined Lesley Molseed's clothing had found sperm in the semen on her underwear. Third, that the police had taken a sample of Kiszko's semen at the time of the investigation. It contained no sperm at all because he was medically incapable of producing sperm. Those facts had not been disclosed to the court.

Kiszko's lawyers applied to the Court of Appeal. The application was heard on 17 and 18 February 1992. At the end of argument, Lane LCJ announced: 'It has been shown that this man cannot produce sperm. This man cannot have been the person responsible for ejaculating over the girl's knickers and skirt, and consequently cannot have been the murderer.'

The appeal was allowed and the conviction was quashed.Kiszko was released immediately, but needed nine months' rehabilitation before he was mentally well enough to return to his mother's house. He died 18 months later, aged 41. His mother died six months after that.

The conviction and imprisonment of Stefan Kiszko was an unspeakably terrible injustice. The investigation was flawed, but not corrupt. The trial was flawed, but not corrupt. The defence was competent, but not diligent. The result seemed, at the time, to be justified. Kiszko's protests and his mother's protests looked, at the time, like the sort of thing guilty people would say in the same circumstances.

At the heart of the problem in Stefan Kiszko's case is the fact that the system did not work as it ought to have done. The police, convinced of Kiszko's guilt from early on in the investigation, simply ignored the impossible contradiction of the pathology evidence. Defence counsel plainly did not think it worthwhile to look through the additional unused material delivered on the first day of the trial. For them, at that stage, it must have seemed like a waste of time to seek an adjournment. It would not have been.

There is another element to this, which is difficult to classify. When a person or group is unpopular, it is much easier to deny them justice. Kiszko was unpopular because of the horrible crime with which he was charged: the presumption of innocence does not seem to operate on the minds of the public.

But consider also the plight of boat people in recent years. It has become a political orthodoxy to treat boat people harshly. This is thought to be a deterrent, ostensibly to save the lives of people trying to escape to safety. In truth it is calculated to prevent any more boat people getting to Australia. What is astonishing is the fact that both major political parties openly boast that they can treat boat people so harshly that those people would likely prefer to stay home and face the Taliban rather than face us or the Pacific Solution.

Australians generally consider themselves generous and open. It is a curious thing that they will likely support whichever party is able to promise to inflict the greater misery on refugees. In my view, it has been achieved by first demonising boat people. Since 2001, the Coalition has called boat people 'illegals'. It is a lie. In recent times, Scott Morrison has been the chief offender. Both major parties speak of 'border protection', conveying the impression that refugees are people against whom we need protection.

The Australian public has thus been misled into believing that boat people are a danger, and therefore prefer whichever party can be more brutal to them. It is profoundly unjust to boat people who are, in more than 90% of cases, ultimately found to be refugees entitled to our protection.

Injustice begins when the community regards one group as not entitled to be treated in the way we would wish to be treated.
Access to justice
Let me turn to the second form of injustice within the law. Access to justice is an ideal warmly endorsed by politicians, but not so warmly embraced. They like the idea but, if their conduct is any guide, they are not interested in the reality. Political enthusiasm for access to justice generally reaches its high-water mark at election time, then it recedes unless some transient crisis forces it into the public consciousness again.

Access to justice is not the same thing as access to law. The distinction is important. First, because the quality of legal assistance received may significantly affect the quality of justice delivered. Second, because what constitutes justice is, at least in some measure, subjective. A result which lawyers consider 'just' may not be seen that way by a person who, from first to last, has no understanding of the process by which the result was arrived at. Third, because justice has a social dimension: if two people face a similar legal problem, and one of them has a greater prospect of a favourable result than the other, then justice in the larger social sense has not been achieved.

An encounter with the court system is a daunting thing for most people. The substantive law is a jungle of complexity. Statutes are difficult to understand, and the interplay between different statutes is often unpredictable and opaque. The nature and content of the common law are mysterious to most lay people. Most people who have no legal training struggle to understand the distinction between civil and criminal law, and have no conception of administrative law. Add to all of this the laws of evidence and procedure and you have some conception of how daunting it is for an individual litigant to represent themselves with any confidence or competence.

Imagine then how daunting it is to a person with limited education, or limited skills in English to navigate the legal system without help. And for them, it is an encounter at a time most likely of great emotional stress. Even sophisticated clients, the ones who get red carpet treatment, have difficulty understanding the refinements of law and legal procedures. What hope for the disadvantaged? With or without help, they may understand so little of what is happening to them that, short of a perfect outcome, they may not have any sense of having experienced 'justice'.

I have spent a little time on this because one standard response of funding bodies is that the law is too expensive; we cannot provide legal help to everyone. The first proposition is probably true: law is unquestionably very expensive. Justice is even more so. I have occasionally reflected on how it would feel to be a litigant in a case that needed someone like me as counsel. I do not think I could afford it. To recognise that I cannot afford myself is to recognise that something is profoundly wrong with the system - or else I am simply redundant to my own existence.

The law is complex; competent legal help is expensive. Many people cannot afford legal help when they need it. Accepting that reality, governments institute schemes for legal aid. Unfortunately, legal aid is grossly under-funded. The practical result is that many people are not eligible for legal aid and are forced to sacrifice their rights or to represent themselves.

If access to justice has any meaning, funding for legal aid is plainly inadequate. For practical purposes, legal aid is trimmed to stay within available resources instead of being increased to meet actual needs. Even in family law and criminal matters, litigants go unrepresented because they cannot afford lawyers and do not qualify for legal aid. If they are lucky, they may get some free advice from a community legal centre.

In civil litigation, legal aid is effectively unavailable. This is probably because funding bodies consider fights about money and property less important than fights about children and crime. Other aspects of our social arrangements suggest a much greater concern for money and property than legal aid funding suggests. The absence of legal aid in civil litigation can work profound injustice, especially when the litigant on the other side can afford their own lawyers. When one party is a well-resourced company, the individual litigant's rights are irrelevant: they will almost certainly have to sacrifice their rights because they cannot afford to vindicate them. Tenancy disputes, consumer disputes and credit disputes all have a profound impact on the affected litigant. To deny them access to legal aid will likely result in injustice.

Civil litigation of course can involve questions beyond money and property. Discrimination and employment law are two examples. Victims of discrimination are doubly disadvantaged if they cannot get legal help to address the wrong already suffered. It is bad enough to be the victim of unlawful discrimination, but worse again if that fact means that you cannot get legal aid to help redress the balance.

Injustices in the area of employment can also strike with double force, because the fact of being dismissed unfairly guarantees that the litigant will not be able to afford their own legal help. It is a difficult, but necessary, exercise to imagine what it must be like to be in debt, with a family to support, and to find yourself cast out of employment unlawfully but without access to legal help to take on a large, corporate employer.

If governments were honest about access to justice, they would fund Legal Aid so as to meet the real need which exists. As it is, Legal Aid is trimmed to fit the budget and the result - every day in every jurisdiction - is injustice within the law. Inadequate Legal Aid is the principal cause of injustice within the law.
Injustice mandated by law
Of all the sources of injustice, the most distressing and outrageous is injustice which the law mandates. There are many examples of this. They are all a reflection of political expedience. Of course it is a contestable point whether some of them can be characterised as injustices. Perhaps the best test is to imagine yourself hoist on one of these laws, and see how it feels.

An increasing number of statutes, in all jurisdictions, reverse the onus of proof. In a departure from the most basic principle of the criminal law, it is increasingly common for parliaments to require a defendant to prove his or her innocence.
Confiscating proceeds of crime
One insidious development is the extended reach of legislation ostensibly aimed at confiscating the proceeds of crime. Legislation like this exists in most jurisdictions. It also authorises confiscation of 'instruments of crime'. Few people would reject the idea that a bank robber should have to hand back the stolen money, or that the shotgun he used should also be taken away. But it is less obvious that a person who has written a successful book about their past life as a criminal should have to disgorge the royalties earned from sale of the book; but the legislation reaches that far. Several years ago, a retired public servant in Adelaide was found to have 3 marijuana plants growing in her back garden. She was fined a modest amount, but then the DPP applied for an order confiscating her house as an instrument of crime.
Boat people
Then we have the legislation concerning asylum seekers. By statute, until recently, anyone who came to Australia without a visa had to be detained and remain in detention until they received a visa or were removed from Australia. In practice, under Howard and Ruddock, this meant that men, women and children who had committed no offence at all were held in conditions of hopelessness and despair for months or years, even though most of them were eventually accepted as genuine refugees.

Not enough people know the case of Ahmed al Kateb. He came to Australia and sought asylum in late 2000 or thereabouts. He applied for a visa and was refused. He found conditions in detention so intolerable that, rather than prolonging his stay by appealing against that refusal, he asked to be removed from Australia. Eighteen months later he was still in detention because there was no country where he could be removed to: he was a stateless Palestinian. The Migration Act provided that a person who comes to Australia without papers must be detained, and they must remain in detention until either they get a visa or they are removed from the country.

What to do? He had not committed any offence; he was not a risk to anyone, but he could not get a visa and could not be removed. The Howard government argued, all the way to the High Court, that Mr al Kateb could be held in detention for the rest of his life. By a majority of 4:3 the High Court held that that is what the Migration Act means, and with that meaning it is constitutionally valid. The majesty of the common law is not adequate to blunt the malice of a heartless government.

Let me finish with another source of injustice mandated by law. This arises from the modern obsession with national security. It is alarming then to see the powers which ASIO and the Attorney-General can wield, ostensibly in the service of our national security interests. Among other things, ASIO has power to make security assessments of a person. Among other consequences, an adverse security assessment from ASIO can result in a person's job application being refused or their Australian passport being cancelled. For foreign visitors, it will result in a visa being refused or cancelled. If a person is adversely assessed by ASIO, they are not told what facts ASIO took into account in forming its views, so it is virtually impossible to show that ASIO was wrong.

A Federal Court case in 2011 illustrates the problem. Two people had been adversely assessed by ASIO. As a result, they were refused protection visas, despite having been assessed as refugees. The practical result was that they faced the prospect of remaining in detention on Nauru indefinitely.
They issued proceedings in the Federal Court. They swore that they had never done or said anything which could bring them within the (very wide) reach of the security laws. ASIO did not challenge that evidence, and did not produce any evidence to suggest that the people were a risk to security. The argument was that, because the court did not know what ASIO had taken into account when forming the adverse assessment, the court could not say that it had made a mistake.

That argument was accepted. If ASIO had got the wrong people, or had applied the wrong test, or had made a mistake in the facts, that remained hidden and beyond correction. It is important to understand that an adverse assessment does not mean that the person is a terrorist or a danger to the community. The criteria for adverse assessments are incredibly wide, including that a person might represent a risk to the security of some other country.

If a person is adversely assessed by ASIO, they will automatically be refused a protection visa, despite having been assessed as refugees.This creates a problem. A person who has been assessed as a refugee cannot be returned to their country of origin, because the central obligation in the Refugees Convention is the obligation not to return a refugee to a place of possible persecution. The principle established in the al Kateb case seems to apply to a person who is refused a visa because of an adverse assessment by ASIO. This is injustice of astonishing proportions.

The problem is exemplified by the case of Ranjini. Shortly before Mothers Day 2012, Ranjini and her two children, aged 6 and 9 years, were removed from the community and placed in detention at Villawood. They are refugees: that fact is accepted by the government. They are in detention now because their protection visas have been cancelled. Why? Because ASIO has assessed them adversely on security grounds. They will not tell her why. The best guess is that her husband, who is dead, was once a driver for Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka. Even if that is true, it does not involve the woman and her children in any sort of offence, and it says nothing about their character. It seems likely that the basis of the adverse assessment is that Ranjini's connection with the Tamil Tigers (her now-dead first husband) would make her a risk to the security of Sri Lanka if she returned there. That is: the same facts which qualify her as a refugee result in her being adversely assessed and jailed, potentially forever, but without charge and without trial. How can this be, in a free democratic country like Australia? It is the result of two court decisions which most Australians have never heard of.
Conclusion
It is tempting (and comforting) to think that the kind of injustice worked in R v Loveless could not happen here and now, because we are so enlightened these days. To be sure, we do not see such corruption of the legal process as it represents. But injustice within the law still exists. It may not affect you and me, at least not now. But if we ignore it, we betray one of society's most basic ideals, and we corrode the very system which exists to protect all of us.
Julian Burnside AO QC is a leading Australian barrister, author and human rights advocate. This is the text of his 2013 Annual Evatt Lecture presented at the H. V. Evatt Memorial Dinner at the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba on 13 April 2013.
See also on the Evatt site:

Previous Evatt lectures:

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How many people understand confidently what justice is? Lawyers don't receive any real training in justice, so far as I am aware. This is a pity, because it is a lawyer's job to help administer justice. We think we understand what it is, but I suspect that you would have real trouble getting general agreement about what constitutes justice.

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an injustice is when a person or group of people lack fairness or equality

or an act that is unfair towards a specific group of people

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Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

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The world’s leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!

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Social Injustice: Discrimination

Social injustice can be described as a situation in which dominant population is made known of the inequity that leads for others due to their relative position in the structure of power (Maus n.p.). Social injustice is also the way unjust actions are done in the society. Social injustice occurs in a situation where the equals are treated unequally and the unequal is treated equally. Three common examples of social injustice include: discrimination, ageism, and homophobia (Farooq n.p.). I want to focus on discrimination, its causes, and the solutions of discrimination.

Discrimination is found in education, housing, employment, voting, lending and credit, land use, health care services, transportation, public accommodations, and government benefits and services (Find Law n.p.). Discrimination is described as unequal treatment of persons, for a reason which has nothing to do with legal rights or ability. Discrimination is considered illegal by the federal and state laws of the United States of America. These laws prohibit discrimination in employment, availability of housing, rates of pay, right to promotion, educational opportunity, civil rights, and use of facilities based on race, nationality, creed, color, age, sex, or sexual orientation (K. Hill and G. Hill n.p.). Discrimination always promotes or reveals unfair treatment of a person or a particular group of people on the basis of prejudice and partiality which could lead to emotions such as frustration and anger. Discrimination seen or considered as a mild or serious form of suffering, with anger sometimes, in particular, if applicable, anger at the person or persons who caused it. (U.K. Essay n.p.). This is why discrimination is considered or seen as a social injustice issue in our society today.

A census data was conducted by the researchers at Brown University which found that income is not the only driving factor in the separation of races or ethnic groups in U.S. cities. Minority groups at every income level live in poorer neighborhoods than do whites with comparable incomes. White people have the advantage or better chances of living in better neighborhoods than people from other races. The study also shows that there are fewer resources for those in minority neighborhoods (Goyette and Scheller n.p.). Another study done in the state of Arizona shows during the years of 2006 to 2007, the state highway patrol was more likely to stop African Americans and Hispanic drivers than white drivers on all the highways that were studied. Native Americans and people of Middle Eastern descent were more likely to be stopped on most of all the highways studied. The highway patrol was 3.5 times more likely to search a Native American than a white individual, and 2.5 times more likely to search a stopped African American or Hispanic driver (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights n.p.).

The Injustice at Every Turn survey revealed that twenty-five percent of transgender recipients reported losing a job because they did not conform to gender norms. A staggering ninety percent said they faced some forms of transgender-based discrimination. In 2008, a survey by the Injustice at Every Turn also showed that the amount of unemployed transgender respondent was two times the rate of the entire population used and they were more likely to get a wage of less than ten thousand dollars compared to the rest of the population in the survey conducted (Paquette n.p.). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) fielded 16,008 charges of age discrimination in 2000 and 23,264 in 2010, which was more than forty-five percent increase. The EEOC helped obtain settlements of $45.2 million in 2000 and $93.6 million in 2010, which was more than a hundred percent increase. Numbers of legation trended in the same ways and resulted in far greater costs to business, both in fees and damages paid (Smith Moore Leatherwood n.p.).

Stereotypes is a cause of discrimination, because one might not think about the stereotypes or prejudices a person holds might hurt or put other people to disadvantage without the person realizing or knowing. People, sometimes, think that they are simply behaving in ways that actually reflect the realities or abilities of a group men and women, rather they are actually discriminating and promoting inequality in the society. A stereotype is seems positive, the fact that not all persons in that group always meets the standard that often leads to a positive stereotype, which disadvantages individuals in that group (Gender Equality n.p.). Greenwald and Pettigrew reviewed experiments and survey methods from published scientific research on discrimination from the last five decades. They found that the discrimination observed in those studies occurred much more often as helping rather than harming someone. They also found that most researchers defined discrimination as based on negative attitudes and hostility, only rarely treating favoritism as a component of discrimination (Armstrong n.p.).

Discrimination is not caused by what happens outside of us. It is caused by seeing things wrongly, what is said to from one to another, commonly referred to as self-talk, and also thoughts or beliefs. When one talks his or herself into becoming anxious, annoyed or angry, because they don't know something or lack understanding about some thing or someone else, or are scared. Quickly, it leads one into a mind-set of discrimination or prejudice (Griffith n.p.). Discrimination is also promoted by patriarchal cultural beliefs. These beliefs usually encourage discrimination by thinking of male gender to be of greater importance than that of females. These beliefs tense describes men with more positive attributes, like being stronger or smarter. Usually men occupy the higher positions and have power to decide the amount of access women have to opportunities, from education and playing sports, to participating in politics and making independent choices about their personal lives (Kidder n.p.).

One way to treat discrimination is to have government intervention discrimination, because federal laws of the United States prohibit discrimination based on a person's country of origin, race, color, religion, disability, sex, and familial status. Laws prohibiting national origin discrimination deem discrimination or discriminatory acts illegal because of a person's birthplace, ancestry, culture or language (The United States Department of Justice n.p.). The state government also has the power to make laws prohibiting people from discriminatory acts. Many states enacted laws that ban any and all forms of discrimination. Specifically, six states have passed ballot initiatives in order to amend their constitutions and prohibit state and local governments from portraying discrimination in public, contract making, and educational aspects on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. These states include California in 1996, Washington in 1998, Michigan in 2006, Nebraska in 2008, Arizona in 2010, and Oklahoma in 2012 (Clegg and von Spavosky n.p.).

Another way to eradicate discrimination is to promote diversity in our society. Diversity was introduced as a kind of end run around the historical problem of racism, the commitment to diversity is associated with the struggle against racism. The objective of eradication or treating racism is to create a color-blind society rather and having a color-conscious society. Instead of treating people as if their race does not matter, we should not only recognize but celebrate racial identity (Michaels). Cultural diversity is important, because workplaces, and schools increasingly consist of various cultural, racial, and ethnic groups which we could learn from. Learning about other cultures helps understand different perspectives within the world in which we find ourselves in, dispelling negative stereotypes and personal biases about different groups or ethnicities. In addition, cultural diversity helps us recognize and respect other cultures. It also makes our country a more interesting place to reside, because people from diverse cultures or contribute to our language skills, thought process, knowledge, and experiences (Belfield n.p.).

In spreading diversity, there could be a problem with lack of understanding between parties or people. A person cannot simply put a group of people together with vast differences and expect them to cooperate with each other immediately. Many people find cultures to be strange and have never had to live or habit and work together with people from completely different backgrounds or cultures. Diverse work groups often experience more conflict compared to groups that share or have more similarities (Kokemuller n.p.). It is completely normal for people to find new things uncomfortable at first. Every person builds their own idea of comfort, people can become uncomfortable when confronted with examples of people that go against how he or she sees or thinks about the world. Whether because of sexual orientation, race, religion, or any other factors that make people differ from each other, people can still struggle in their place of work to be effective as possible (Advice America n.p.).

Problems still arise from government intervention in discrimination which includes the use of affirmative action. Affirmative action is a semi-regulated policy created by the executive orders of President John F. Kennedy to provide equal opportunities for groups amongst discriminated minorities. However, affirmative action tense to lessen the value of the accomplishments by minorities, because affirmative action gives preference to groups instead of their accomplishments, experiences, and qualifications of individuals who might be in the minority group. As a result, affirmative action becomes less productive for the society (Phil for Humanity n.p.).

Discrimination prevent equal treat, therefore, it hurts the society. Discrimination has existed for a long time and it needs to be ended so that we could live together in peace with equality. The eradication of discrimination is not an easy task to accomplish due to the problems that arise from discrimination and the time taken to solve it. In order to eradicate discrimination, the help of every single person is needed. This is not a task for one person or a group of people to achieve.

References

"5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Diversity in the Workplace." Advise America: Sales Training And Management Mag., AdviceAmerica.com, 2015. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

"Age Discrimination in the Workplace." Smith Moore Law, Smith Moore Leatherwood LLP. 8 Mar. 2011, Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Armstrong, Doree. "Favoritism, Not Hostility, Causes Most Discrimination, Says UW Psychology Professor." UW Today. University of Washington, 19 May 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Belfield, Lisa D. "Cultural Diversity: Imagine All the People." Kaplan University. Kaplan Higher Education, Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Clegg, Roger, and Hans A. von Spavosky, "What States Can Do to Stop Racial Discrimination- States Push Back: Models for Reform" The Heritage Foundation. 11 Feb. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

"Federal Protections against National Origin Discrimination." The United States Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, 6 Aug. 2015. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Farooq, Umar. "Social Injustice Definition, Issues and Example." Study Lecture Notes. 7 May 2015. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Goyette, Braden, and Alissa Scheller. "15 Charts that prove we're Far From Post-Racial." The Huffington Post. 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Griffiths, Peter. "Discrimination Is Ignorance." Saskatchewan Libraries. Saskatchewan Provincial Library, 13 Mar. 1997. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Hill, Kathleen and Gerald. "Legal Dictionary: Discrimination" Fine Communications, Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Kidder, Nicole. "Causes & Effects of Gender Discrimination." EHow. Demand Media, Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Kokemuller, Neil. "What Is Diversity and How Does It Impact Work?" Small Business. Demand Media, Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Maus, Michaelis "What Is the Definition of Social Injustice?" 17 Sept. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Michaels, Walter Benn. "The Trouble with Diversity." The American Prospect. 13 Aug. 2006. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

Paquette, Danielle. "8 Critical Facts about the State of Transgender America." Washington Post.com. The Washington Post, 22 Jan. 2015 Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

"Stereotypes and Prejudice." Gender Equality. GSI Marketing and Communication, Web. 29 Nov. 2015

"The Pros and Cons of Affirmative Action." Phil for Humanity. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.

"The Reality of Racial Profiling." The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The Leadership Conference Education Fund, Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

"What Are the Effects of Discrimination on the Society Philosophy Essay." UKEssays.com, Nov. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

"What Is Discrimination?" Find Law. Thomson Reuters, Web. 20 Nov. 2015.

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Social Injustice: Discrimination Social injustice can be described as a situation in which dominant population is made known of the inequity that leads for others due to their relative position in the structure of power (Maus n.p.). Social injustice is also the way unjust actions are done in the society.

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- racism
- age
- gender
- poverty
- job
- homelessness
- sexualality
- class
- wealth