this course is talk about poverty and discrimination. We need to response to other student’s discussion and show our opinion. I will post rubric of response and discussion, other student’s discussion, chapter’s content and discussion questions. please write me two response(I will post two discussions also), each needs 300 words and citation.
question: If we observe unequal treatment, we may suspect discriminatory behavior. For example female workers make an average of 78 cents for every dollar a male workers make. African-Americans tend to make less than Whites, even when adjusting for parental income. Maybe you’ve witnessed or experienced discrimination firsthand. Yet in a market economy, equal outcomes are not expected since brains, entrepreneurship, luck, and drive are not equally distributed. If a basketball team signs only players above six feet tall, does this discriminate against those under six feet? When does such action become discriminatory, and when does it not?
More simply put, my question for you this week basically boils down to this: What should we constitute as “discrimination, and have you witnessed an example?
Discussion Student 1: Schiller frames an operational concept of discrimination as “selection based on irrelevant or nonproductive criteria”. Going back to the example of a basketball team that only signs players above six feet tall, under this definition of discrimination, the team is discriminatory against players who are under six feet. Although height is definitely a relevant basis of selection for basketball players (as on the average a taller individual is going to be more able to record rebounds and score in the paint), it should not be the only basis for selection onto the team. It may be advantageous to be taller or bigger than other players, but basketball skill and IQ still play a huge part of an individual’s ability to play at a high level. Isaiah Thomas is only 5’9” tall, but he is playing for the Denver Nuggets in the NBA. Although he is undersized and shorter than his opponents, he still has a place on the team due to his speed and ability to score. Isaiah’s height definitely makes it harder for him to be a professional basketball player, but what he lacks in height, he makes up for in other aspects of the game. It is not discriminatory to pick the taller person if both people are roughly equal in terms of skill, but it is discriminatory to pick people based on height alone.
I have been lucky enough that I haven’t been a victim of discrimination. However, an example of discrimination that is becoming more prevalent is age discrimination in hiring processes. Last March, a lawsuit accused PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of illegally favoring younger job seekers. Middle-aged accountants who applied — and were rejected — for jobs with the claim that by focusing much of its recruitment effort on college campuses, PwC discriminates against older applicants. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, age discrimination cases are notoriously difficult to win, in part due to a 2009 Supreme Court ruling requiring plaintiffs to prove that age wasn’t just a factor, but a decisive factor, in their complaints. I’m not too familiar with the hiring process to weigh in on whether or not it is age discrimination, but it seems that if most applicants are denied due to a lack of “cultural fit”, it may constitute as age discrimination as firms are looking to hire recent graduates/millennials/people from their own generation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16…
Discussion student 2: Discrimination can have many boundaries that constitute whether or not some actions can be considered “too far.” By definition discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people. In today’s society discrimination comes in many forms that can be slight, but still be experienced on a day to day basis. This causes people to have unfair privileges over others in many aspects in life, such as job searches, customer service, and the perception of an individual solely based on appearance. Any unfair treatment can be discriminatory and thus, it is important in societies that people are given the same opportunities in life that will not be based off of bias. By law, all companies are required to not base one’s hiring process on anything, but what is on the person’s resume and how he/she is able to interact with the recruiter during interview processes. However, actions and perceptions can be hard to measure as there is no fine line that defines what is discriminatory.
There are many examples in history and in today’s society that show how individuals are discriminated against. For example in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, segregation in education between white people and black people was discrimination. Although it was stated that people of different color were given the same education in the same institutions, African Americans were still treated secondary to those who were Caucasian. Black people still had to sit in the back of the buses, “sit behind a screen in a classroom,” and were treated malevolently by their peers. Actions are considered discriminatory when people are treated as though they are a part of a lower class based on irrational reasoning that is not part of their experiences. Today, it can still be seen how people of different beliefs, religions, gender, race, etc. are still treated differently from each other even in small increments.
In today’s society, race still plays a role in how people are treated differently from their peers. Growing up as an Asian American in my high school, I have lived within a community that consisted mostly with white people. My experiences showed me that I was different from the people I was surrounded by as I was called racial slurs, excluded from some activities, and experienced different things due to my own culture. An example is how people were able to quickly notice the smell of Asian cuisine as I had come straight from home and they instantly categorized me as Chinese in a demeaning way. This was all due to the fact that I stood out as one of the very few Asians residing in my town. Although I was given the same education as everyone else in class, the environment that I was exposed to still made me feel out of place. I cannot say that all my experiences from high school were negative, but they were still different from others’. For one thing I was considered smart and people who come to me asking from help for assignments from class. There were other instances in which I was treated differently because of my family’s financial situation, but I feel as though the majority of my experiences stemmed solely due to my ethnic background.
Whether discreet or apparent, discrimination still takes place for people of all different backgrounds. As an Asian American, I have experienced multiple different forms that had led me to want to also be Causasian and completely ditch my own heritage as a Korean. In my opinion, there is no set boundary that dictates whether someone is treated in a discriminating way, but one can detect it as though it is a sixth sense.
Mahon, J. P. ” Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County”, 11 Dec. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cumming-v-Board-o…
Schiller, Bradley R. Economics of Poverty and Discrimination. Prentice Hall, 2013
