Discrimination in Today’s Society Opinion Essay Example

Discrimination plays a huge role in what's acceptable and what’s not in today’s society. Discrimination is “the unjust treatment of people or things, mainly on the topic of race, gender, age or sexual orientation.” I feel that in today's modern society, one of the biggest forms of unjust treatment is towards people of color and people who aren’t heterosexuals or “straight.” Although I haven’t experienced it myself, almost every day I am exposed to racism and homophobia whether it's online or out in public. A variety of times throughout the school year I would hear people say slurs and simply not care about the meaning behind them. Especially in the area that I live in, that's a very common occurrence and it’s frustrating because a lot of individuals truly do not care about how their actions and words affect others. For me, I feel extremely uncomfortable and angry when people hate someone just for being themselves. I frankly do not understand how someone loving the same gender is such a concern for people. It doesn’t affect them in any way, so why do some make such a big deal of it? Due to covid and being quarantined for a while, I think it changed my perspective about what happens to people who don’t fit into society's standards. Even though I don’t agree with people being hateful towards others, I tend to just watch instead of sticking up for the people being treated unfairly. Since homophobia is so normalized it’s hard for me and many others to voice our opinions without being also made fun of as well, so we tend to stay quiet and not do anything. With that said, I believe it truly shows that as our current culture people like to fit in and not do anything that would disrupt the flow of things.

In the current state of society, I feel that we recognize discrimination as harmful but at the same time we see of it as if “I’m not the one being treated badly why should I care?” I also think that some members of society don’t realize the effects that their hatred can bring onto others. Therefore if it's not bothering them, what's the point in trying to understand how it can affect others. Even though we have come a long way in terms of discrimination, I still feel as if we still have a long way to go. 

Aside from my personal views, there have beena handful of events demonstrating acts of discrimination towards certain groups of people throughout history. More recently we have seen these happen in the past year with numerous black citizens being killed by police officers. One of the major events in the news of March 2020 was the murder of a woman named Breonna Taylor. Taylor was killed by police officers who broke into her apartment on March 13, 2020. Her boyfriend had thought someone had broken in so he fired one shot with a gun and the two policemen preceded by firing several shots, hitting Breonna 5 times. Neither Breonna nor her boyfriend had done anything wrong or illegal and it could’ve ended a completely different way if the officers had explained the reason for their raid. Her death along with countless others due to racism and police brutality had led to hundreds of protests and discussions about discrimination against black individuals.

Another significant act of racism occurred earlier this year towards Asian Americans surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Several Asian senior citizens were brutally beaten and attacked due to them just being Asian, and 6 women were even shot and killed at a nail salon in Atlanta, Georgia. “Hate crimes against Asians jumped 107% in California in ‘an epidemic of hate.” People resorted to violence just because they had no one else to blame for the virus, and took their frustration out on innocent people. This shows how far the population is to ending discrimination and hate.

A different form of bigotry was taken against Norway’s women’s beach volleyball team this month. Each player of the team was fined 150 euros for wearing shorts rather than bikini bottoms while they were competing. The team was upset by this since the men’s team can wear shorts as long as they’re not too baggy. One of the spokeswoman for the International Handball Federation, Jessica Rockstroh, said that “ she did not know the reason for the rules.” Wearing the shorts instead of the bikini bottoms did not make a difference in their playing at all so people are frustrated at the fact that men can wear shorts yet the woman can’t. This goes to show that women’s sports teams’ uniforms aren’t necessarily designed for the sport, but rather for show and to please the audience watching. 

Overall, considering that all of those acts of discrimination and prejudice took place within a year of now goes to show how far society is from putting an end to discrimination. Whenever society talks about racism, misogyny, homophobia, and more, we imagine it as happening decades ago. When in fact it’s happening right now, yet people choose to ignore it rather than try to realize our mistakes and try to fix them.