Discrimination Broken Down
Why should a company have to lower its standards of hiring the best people? Why should a university not try to recruit the top students in the country? They shouldn¯t have too. However, Fred L. Pincus, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, would like them to change their standards in order to avoid the appearance of discrimination. In his article entitled, From Individualism to Structural Discrimination, published in Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing, Pincus breaks discrimination into three specific types. He succeeds in explaining the more common types of discrimination, but his explanation of °structural discrimination± is not as effective and causes him to lose credibility in his argument that all three types of discrimination must be confronted if °racial equality is to be achieved± (592). From the start of Pincus¯s article, he is conveying his biased opinion. He states, °Prejudice' does not necessarily lead to discrimination' and discrimination is not always caused by prejudice± (586). Pincus¯s explanation of what discrimination is sounds like a contradiction. Everyone knows that the roots of discrimination can be
Discrimination has always brought out biased opinions in people. Some people, including Pincus, would like to believe that all organizations are guilty of it. This is simply not true. A company or university who has high standards for admission or hiring is not practicing discrimination. Now if they lowered their standards to accommodate blacks and Hispanics, they would then be practicing discrimination against whites. Pincus succeeds in breaking down discrimination into two types, individual and institutional. He even offers solutions as to how they can be eliminated. However, his attempt in proving that it also exists on another entirely different level, structural, is a weak argument. Another type of discrimination that Pincus evaluates is that of the policies of majority institutions and their intentions of keeping minorities out. Pincus classifies this as °Institutional Discrimination.± This classification is also easily proven accurate. Pincus weaves facts into his argument that demonstrate that this type of discrimination still exists today. For example, he states that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation °illegally discriminated against blacks and Hispanic agents until 1992± (588). This is a truly shocking piece of evidence to the reader. It is difficult to believe that discrimination existed in such a prestigious organization until the early nineties. Pincus then discusses the history of this type of discrimination and how at one period in American history it was legal and endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court until the 1950s to discriminate between blacks and whites. Pincus follows with examples of this type of discrimination. He uses the example of how the Native Americans had their land seized by the Unite
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Approximate Word count = 1174
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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