http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/16/ruling-expected-soon-in-iowa-employment-discrimination-lawsuit/?hpt=us_t2
I was reading an article today on CNN about racism and dicrimination in Iowa. A lawsuit has been filed for over 6,000 African- American applicates who felt that racism had a role to play in them being looked over for a job. The beginning of the article tells a stroy about a clear racist bias that lead to a women not being considered for a job. The lawsuit was filed against Iowa. The following is a block of a paragraph that I have trouble with.
"The plaintiffs' attorneys say the discrimination is not necessarily a result of racism. They say the discriminatory hiring was often the result of implicit bias – an unconscious preference of the mostly white hiring officials for white applicants over black applicants."
This was the plaintiffs' attorney and it makes it sound as if they don't want this to been seen as racism because that will have a negative affect on Iowa. Everyone would like to believe that racism was a thing of the past that has already been delt with but I don't think that is near to true. I was watching a national baseball game the other day and it was Jackie Robinson day, a day were every player wears Jackie's number 42 and everyone is suppose to honor how Jackie was able to perserver through racism and break the color barrier in baseball. Some would say Jackie Robinson was one of the most important figures in African- American history and they wouldn't be lieing. What shocked me most was an announcers comments on the day. He spoke about how, even today, we are still fighting for people's basic rights to be equal. And he made a broad and suprising statement that he cautioned American's to start treating one-another with equality because we like to move on too soon on issues of inequality.
We have been talking about whether people would like to take the easy and wrong path compared to the hard and right path and this is how I feel people view equality and racism. They feel like the issue is over and we have moved on but this is just the easy and wrong path. The issue of equality will always be there and we can't ignore it.
Do you feel racism is still an issue today? I have trouble believing it isn't with the actions and comments I've heard people have about Obama.
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I feel like it definitely is still an issue today. However, I think people mask it with other things. People will not come out and say that they are racist, unless they are just plain crazy. I remember DT talking about an election in California where the Democratic candidate Tom Bradley lost to the Republican candidate even though polls beforehand showed that he was going to win.
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People lied in the polls because they did not want to seem racist, but they showed their true colors in the privacy of the voter's booth. Even though this was more than 20 years ago, I believe that this is the same mentality in today's world, except not in politics. It is in the workplace, in schools, etc. Instead of blatantly saying that they do not want to hire an African American they will just say that they are not qualified, even if they are.
I agree. Racism is still at the heart of many people. You see in the way people respond to seeing a person from the Middle East on the same airplane as them. You see it in certain peoples responses to new age music. It is still a prominent issue that I doubt will ever fully be over.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: The class-action suit in Iowa was "thrown out" today by the District Court judge.
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