Mistreatment due to Race

Racism has existed throughout history for an extreme amount of time. The question I would ask is why can’t there just be a society of equality? Racism has the negative factors of racial inequalities. People are treating others differently based on someone’s race or culture. The United States is reputationally known as the country of equality and diversity, but does it actually stand to its reputation. Although it may be diverse with multiple cultures and races with many different backgrounds, these different backgrounds are not treated with equality. Racism has been in existence since before the Civil War era. According to the constitution of the United States every citizen is subject to equal rights, freedom, and liberty. Racism is crucial and it should be considered dramatically because it creates discrimination giving inequality, and mistreatment. It is having a negative impact such as brutality, inequality in jobs, and simply because it is a violation of basic human principles. I would like to inform the audience of how people are mistreated based on their race, and hopefully with this essay I can help persuade my audience to help get rid of racism once and for all. This topic is very important to me as well because I am of color and I have been mistreated many times based on my race and identity. A very recent experience I was mistreated and I believe it was because of my race. I recently took a trip to Boston Massachuettes with two of my friends. On our way we were pulled over by Massachusetts state police, for exceeding the speed limit. During the pull over the officer was asking many questions on where we were from. I was not driving, I was sitting in the backseat with my two white friends driving and the other sitting passenger. The whole time the officer kept on questioning me even though I was not driving, the next thing I know he asks me to step out of the car. I knew I had the right not to step out or answer any questions but with fear I stepped out, mindful he was being very rude and arrogant towards me the whole time but not my friends. The officer never asked my friend to step outside the vehicle. Once I step out he asks for my ID and then he starts questioning me by saying “do you have any weapons, any drugs”, I reply by saying no but in my head I was thinking why would he ask me that if he has no probable cause to. I realized that I was being racially profiled. But the last thing he said and I quote “get out of here, you’re not from here”. That triggered me a lot and ever since then I became more aware of racism and that inequalities exist based on your race. Racism is very controversial. Many people believe that racism does not exist. Individuals are being mistreated and are dealing with discrimination all based on their race, and culture. I believe discrimination and mistreatment still exist based on your race. 

Within my research I came across some articles on racial discrimination. That racial discrimination exists for people of color. Racial discrimination/segregation has been around for many years, many years ago most places in the United States were divided among whites and blacks. White people have always held more jurisdiction and more rights than blacks, most blacks during the time had to be separated from the whites from having to be in different schools, restaurants, and even buses. In the article, Daily Multidimensional Racial Discrimination Among Black US American Adolesant, 2020, author Devin English, an author at the Rutgers School of Public Healths, asserts that racial discrimination occurs individually, vigoriously, online, and on a day to day basis, and suggests that if we were to highlight how often black adolestants or any people of color are being racially discriminated, then we can help everyone realize how wrong it is to discriminate. He supports this claim by first stating statistics and experience of people of color that have experienced discrimination, then he explains how those statistics are created, and lastly states the analysis of the stats and future perspectives of racism. English’s purpose is to highlight and inform the audience on how racism is still occuring on a daily basis for black adolescents in order to change the perspectives of the people who think they have more rights than others. He adopts an informative tone for his audience, the readers of United States of Elsevier LLC and others interested in the topic of racism. Devin English generated a study and analyzed the study of psychological and daily experiences of racial discrimination experienced individually, vigorously, online, and daily basis. English mentions a “Participants reported 5606 experiences of racial discrimination during the study and averaged 5.21 experiences per day across the six subscales. The two online subscales were more frequent than the offline subscales”. The author makes his argument with the help of statistics to show how frequently adolescents are facing racial discriminations per day. It’s crazy how the participants within the study face 5.21 experiences per day, the author mentions how this can have a negative psychological depressive outcome. The author also mentions how these experiences occur on a daily basis from school, to neighborhoods, to even public places. This was a study that was created within the past 5 years, so that shows that within generations after generations racism still exists today. This source connect to my overall idea that discrimination, and mistreatment occurs based on the race of an individual. 

Another form of discrimination and mistreatment that occurs based on race would be racial inequality. Racial inequality is experienced by children, adolescents, parents, and just anyone of color. To this day I would see videos on social media of people of color recording themselves being discriminated against and treated horrible the majority of the time by white’s. It hurts to see it especially if they were doing nothing wrong or did nothing to offend anyone. After doing some more research I came across another article involving prevalence on racial discrimination in the US. In the report, On the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United States, 2019, author Randy T Lee, an author of at the public library of science, asserts that their findings appear to show that only a small minority of individuals across all racial groups experience discrimination, suggests that “underscores the influence that researchers can have on narratives around sensitive issues, and the responsibility that researchers have towards the conclusions they draw from data, especially for work that is sensitive and polarizing”. He backs up his claim by first he proposed his study and research, then provided an analytical result of experienced discrimination, and lastly a general discussion of the effects and explanatory analyses. Lee appears to write in hopes to inform the audience on how drastic the inequalities that are being experienced are majority blacks, hispanics and people of color, in order to change the audiences perception that racial discrimination does not exist. Because of the author’s informative tone it seems the author writes for people of color and similar interest in racial inequalities. Lee mentions “we found a much higher prevalence rate of discrimination than Boutwell et al. report across all racial groups, regardless of how we analyzed the data. For example, Boutwell et al. found that 31.88% of Blacks experienced discrimination, whereas we found a range of 69.45% and 73.62% depending on how we dichotomized experiences. Replicating previous research (e.g., [26-28]), we found that non-Whites in the United States experience more discrimination than their White counterparts”. The study and research they concluded shows the high percentage rate of how drastically people of color experience racial inequality. Both the articles by Devin English and Randy Lee show a different study that was generated in which they generate statistics for people of color that have experienced racial inequalities. Both studies shows that people of color significantly experience discrimination and racial inquality against whites. But in particular even though both studies factor in different races of color both studies show that black african americans experience the most amount of racial inequality than any other race. I agree with both authors’ analysis of their study that people of color experience more racial inequalities than white’s. Randy Lee’s article supports and extends on the idea and report of Devin Englishs that racial discrimination occurs on a daily basis to this present day. Randy Lee’s report relates back to my topic and thesis that discrimination and mistreatment still exist based on one individuals race or background. 

Thus, there are different forms of discrimination and racial inequalities. That many people are treated differently based on their background or culture. According to a course reading that we have discussed throughout the course the author implements the idea that race and cultural background had affected having limited priorities and inequalities. Amy Tan talks about her mother having very limited English because of her mixed background and cultural differences, which leads her to having less priorities and less equality. Within her narrative “Mother Tongue”, by Amy Tan, author Tan analyzes how people are treated and discriminated by the way they speak based on their race and culture. Amy Tan further strengthened her claim on social inequality based on race by sharing experiences of being a chinese immigrant having limited english. Her solution to her argument that inequalities exist based on race and culture, is that you have to stay true to yourself and embrace your culture and identity. Tan mentions, “I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn’t realize that there is something called originality and your own voice”. Amy Tan realized that her voice and her originality is normal and the people that are against that are some sort of “racist”, that you have to embrace your culture and identity. All in all Tan discusses the idea that social inequalities and judgment are made due to your culture and identity. According to Devin English, Randy Lee, and Amy Tan they all highlight the general theme that inequality and mistreatment occurs based on your race, culture and identity. Although there are many videos surfacing social media showing people of color being racially discriminated against and violated. One major example, and recent event that had generated new policy making within the government would be the death of George Floyd. George Floyd a 46 year old black male impacted and showed a crazy outrage publicly when he was murdered innocently by a police officer. According to an article from The New York Times, the murder of Mr. Floyd spiked a large protest against police brutality based on racism. The deputy that had arrested Mr Floyd had forcefully detained Floyd, but while restraining him he brutally had him pinned on his neck killing Mr. Floyd. After the arrest of the officer, bodycam footage shows the whole arrest and you can see that Mr.Floyd was compliant and not resisting at all against the officer. But when you pay attention to the officer you can see that he is being very aggressive, and forceful even though Mr. Floyd was doing nothing wrong. Lastly the whole reason as to which why the police showed up to Mr. Floyd was because he had a counterfeit 20 dollar bill. The officer was later put into trial and was arrest for murder. This was one impactful experience that had occurred, but many experiences similar to this experience are occurring on a daily basis. 

All in all individuals are being discriminated against and mistreated based on their race and culture, and their different backgrounds. The peer reviewed source by Devin English on Daily Multidimensional Racial Discrimination Among Black US American Adolesant, and the peer reviewed source by Randy Lee on On the prevalence of racial discrimination in the United states they both share a common theme that inequalities exist and individuals are mistreated based on their race. We saw how young black adolescent are experiencing discrimination extremly on their daily basis, and also in Randy Lees report we saw how out of the colored people, blacks have reported experienced the most amount of social inequalities and discrimination. Amy Tan also helps relate to the thesis that people are mistreated based on their culture and where they are from. What I want the audience to take away is that to imagine a country where we don’t consider race at all and see each other as equals, there would be less violence and more positive outcomes then negative outcomes such as discrimination, or inequality. Keep in mind how many times you see a video spiraling through the internet where a person of color is being mistreated, and think to yourself how it would feel if you were being mistreated that way.