Racial discrimination is when race or ethnicity is used to judge others as inferior or superior. Legal efforts aim to eliminate racism, but it can still occur unconsciously. Discrimination can be based on religion or ethnic origin, and media portrayal can perpetuate it.
Racial discrimination is part of racism and can be said of racism that uses race or ethnicity as a criterion for judging the inferiority or superiority of other people. Racial discrimination can also be a legal term used to define the ways people may or may not act. For example, the United Nations rules out “distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference” which may be based on “race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin”.
Other legal efforts created by countries may attempt to eliminate racism through civil rights laws. In the United States, race shouldn’t be a point of consideration when hiring someone for a job, and it can’t be used to justify higher or lower pay, to separate employees, or to hold them to different standards. Like many civil rights laws, not just race, but other things can be viewed as non-discriminatory aspects of employment or treatment elsewhere. These could include your gender, religious background or sexual preferences.
Statistics certainly confirm that racism can be practiced routinely in matters such as taking and paying bills, and sometimes not even knowingly. Some studies have indicated that people may unconsciously express a marked preference for people of their own race and perceive them more positively, and clearly racial discrimination can also exist in overt forms.
It’s also pretty clear that racial discrimination doesn’t just apply to color. People may judge others based on shared religion or ethnic origin, and while in the United States white racism against all other races may be more obvious, there is clear discrimination that occurs between and between minority racial groups. In other countries where there are few minority groups, the problem can be even more glaring. In Japan, for example, there is strong racial discrimination against Koreans. This also percolates to Japanese media and art forms known as anime and manga, where the villains in some of these pieces may have obvious Korean characteristics.
Unfortunately, when such racial discrimination exists in a large form, it is difficult for a culture to get rid of it, even when the clear intention is to remove it. As the media continues to portray other races, and especially minorities, unfavorably, the subliminal effect of this can be great. It may be the cause of unconscious racism because that society’s cultural products may be constantly at odds with legal attempts to change people’s thinking.
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