DISCRIMINATION

• Discrimination is the act

of making unjustified
distinctions between
human beings based on
the groups, classes, or
other categories to which
they belong or are
perceived to belong.

• People may be
discriminated on the basis
of race, gender, age,
religion, or sexual
orientation, as well as
other categories.
• occurs when individuals or groups are unfairly
treated in a way which is worse than other people
are treated, on the basis of their actual or perceived
membership in certain groups or social categories.

• involves restricting members of one group from

opportunities or privileges that are available to
members of another group.
• Discriminatory traditions, policies, ideas, practices
and laws exist in many countries and institutions in
all parts of the world;

• In some places, attempts such as quotas have been

used to benefit those who are believed to be current
or past victims of discrimination.
Definitions

Normative Approach
• discrimination is defined
as wrongfully imposed
disadvantageous treatment or
consideration.

Comparative approach
• An individual need not be
actually harmed in order to be
discriminated against.

• They just need to be

treated worse than others for
some arbitrary reason.
Example:

If someone decides to donate to help orphan children,

but decides to donate less, say, to Black children out of
a racist attitude, then they would be acting in a
discriminatory way despite the fact that the people
they discriminate against actually benefit by receiving
a donation.
• In addition to this, discrimination develops into a
source of oppression.

• It is similar to the action of recognizing someone as

'different' so much that they are treated
inhumanely and degraded.
• The United Nations’ stance on discrimination includes
the statement: "Discriminatory behaviors take many
forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or
rejection."

• International bodies, United Nations Human Rights

Council work towards helping ending discrimination
around the world.
Types of
discrimination

Age
• Ageism or age
discrimination is
discrimination and
stereotyping based on
the grounds of
someone's age.

• Ageism is most often

directed toward elderly
people, or adolescents
and children.
• Joanna Lahey, professor at The Bush School of
Government and Public Service at Texas A&M,

• firms are more than 40% more likely to

interview a young adult job applicant than an older
job applicant.
• In a survey for the University of Kent, England, 29%
of respondents stated that they had suffered from
age discrimination.

• is a higher proportion than for gender or racial

discrimination.

• Dominic Abrams, social psychology professor at the

university, concluded that ageism is the most
pervasive form of prejudice experienced in the UK
Caste

• UNICEF and Human Rights Watch,:

“caste discrimination affects an estimated 250 million

people worldwide and is mainly prevalent in parts of
Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal,
Japan) and Africa.”
• As of 2011, there were 200 million Dalits or
Scheduled Castes (formerly known as
"untouchables") in India.
Disability

• Discrimination against people with disabilities in

favor of people who are not is
called ableism or disablism.

• treats non-disabled individuals as the standard of

'normal living’,

• results in public and private places and services,

educational settings, and social services that are
built to serve 'standard' people, thereby excluding
• Studies, disabled people not only need employment
in order to be provided with the opportunity to earn
a living

• they also need employment in order to sustain their

mental health and well-being.
• Work fulfils a number of basic needs for an individual
such as collective purpose, social contact, status,
and activity.

• A person with a disability is often found to be socially

isolated and work is one way to reduce his or her
isolation.
• In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities
Act mandates the provision of equality of access to
both buildings and services and is paralleled by
similar acts in other countries, such as the Equality
Act 2010 in the UK.
• Language

• people are sometimes

subjected to different
treatment because
their preferred
language is
associated with a
particular group, class
or category.

Ex: Anti-French
sentiment in the US;
Anti-Quebec
sentiment in Canada.
Ex: Wayúu Native Colombians, given derisive names
and the same birth date, by government officials,
during a campaign to provide them with identification
cards.

issue was not discovered until many years later.

In 1948, Mohammad Ali Jinnah declared Urdu as the
national language of Pakistan and branded those
supporting the use of Bengali, the most widely spoken
language in the state, as enemies of the state.
• Language discrimination is suggested to be labeled
linguicism or logocism.

• Anti-discriminatory and inclusive efforts to

accommodate persons who speak different
languages or cannot have fluency in the country's
predominant or "official" language, is bilingualism
such as official documents in two languages,

• and multiculturalism in more than two languages.

Name

• researchers suggest this form of discrimination is

present based on a name's meaning, its
pronunciation, its uniqueness, its gender affiliation,
and its racial affiliation.
• Research has further shown that real world recruiters
spend an average of just six seconds reviewing
each résumé before making their initial "fit/no fit"
screen-out decision and that a person's name is one
of the six things they focus on most.
• France has made it illegal to view a person's name
on a résumé when screening for the initial list of
most qualified candidates.

• Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and the

Netherlands have also experimented with name-
blind summary processes.

• Some apparent discrimination may be explained by

other factors such as name frequency.

• The effects of name discrimination based on a

name's fluency is subtle, small and subject to
significantly changing norms.
Nationality

sometimes referred to as bound together with racial

discrimination

is usually included in employment laws

In the GCC states, preferential treatment is given to
full citizens (workplace), even though many of them
lack experience or motivation to do the job.

State benefits are also generally available for citizens

only. Westerners might also get paid more than other
expatriates
Race or ethnicity

Racial and ethnic discrimination differentiates

individuals on the basis of real and perceived racial
and ethnic differences and leads to various forms of
the ethnic penalty.
also refer to the belief that groups of humans possess
different behavioral traits corresponding to physical
appearance and can be divided based on
the superiority of one race over another.

may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or

antagonism directed against other people because
they are of a different race or ethnicity.
• Modern variants of racism are often based in social
perceptions of biological differences between peoples.

• These views can take the form of social actions,

practices or beliefs, or political systems in which
different races are ranked as inherently superior or
inferior to each other, based on presumed shared
inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.
Ex:
South Africa during the apartheid era.

race-based discrimination against ethnic Indians and

Chinese in Malaysia

Vietnamese refugees moved to Australia and the

United States,
Region

Regional or geographic discrimination is a form of

discrimination that is based on the region in which a
person lives or the region in which a person was born.
It differs from national discrimination because it may
not be based on national borders or the country in
which the victim lives,

it is based on prejudices against a specific region of

one or more countries.
Religious beliefs

• Religious discrimination is valuing or treating people

or groups differently because of what they do or do
not believe in or because of their feelings towards a
given religion.

• the Jewish population of Germany, and indeed a

large portion of Europe, was subjected to
discrimination under Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party
between 1933 and 1945.
• forced to live in ghettos,
• wear an identifying star
of David on their clothes,
• and sent to
concentration and death
camps in rural Germany
and Poland, where they
were to be tortured and
killed,
• Many laws (most
prominently the
Nuremberg Laws of
1935) separated those of
Jewish faith as
supposedly inferior to
the Christian population.
• In Saudi Arabia, non-Muslims are not allowed to
publicly practice their religions and they cannot
enter Mecca and Medina.

• private non-Muslim religious gatherings might be

raided by the religious police.
• In a 1979 consultation on the issue, the US
commission on civil rights defined religious
discrimination in relation to the civil rights which are
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
• religious discrimination occurs:
• when someone is denied "equal protection under the law,
• equality of status under the law,
• equal treatment in the administration of justice,
• and equality of opportunity and access to employment,
education, housing, public services and facilities, and public
accommodation because of their exercise of their right to
religious freedom".
Sex, sex characteristics, gender, and gender
identity

• Sexism is a form of discrimination based on a

person's sex or gender.

• has been linked to stereotypes and gender roles,

• and may include the belief that one sex or gender is

• Gender discrimination may encompass sexism,

• is discrimination toward people based on their

gender identity or their gender or sex differences.

• Gender discrimination is especially defined in terms

of workplace inequality.

• may arise from social or cultural customs and norms

• Australia, first country to add an independent
attribute, of 'intersex status’.
• Malta, the first to adopt a broader framework of 'sex
characteristics', through legislation that also ended
modifications to the sex characteristics of minors
undertaken for social and cultural reasons.
• Global efforts such as the UN Sustainable
Development Goal 5, aimed at ending all forms of
discrimination on the basis of gender and sex.
Sexual orientation
• One's sexual orientation is a "predilection for homosexuality,
heterosexuality, or bisexuality".
• homosexuals and bisexuals are vulnerable to prejudice and
discrimination from the majority group.
• may experience hatred from
others because of their
sexuality;
• term for such hatred based
upon one's sexual orientation
is often called homophobia.
• Many continue to hold
negative feelings towards
those with non-heterosexual
orientations and will
discriminate against people
who have them or are
thought to have them.
• People of other uncommon
sexual orientations also
experience discrimination.
• One study found its sample of heterosexuals to be
more prejudiced against asexual people than to
homosexual or bisexual people
• Employment discrimination based on sexual
orientation varies by country.
• Revealing a lesbian sexual orientation lowers
employment opportunities in Cyprus and Greece but
overall, it has no negative effect in Sweden and
Belgium.
• 2009, ILGA published a
report based on research
carried out by Daniel
Ottosson at Södertörn
University College,
Stockholm, Sweden:

• 80 countries around the

world that continue to
consider homosexuality
illegal,
• five carry the death
penalty for homosexual
activity,
• two do in some regions of
the country.
• happens in Islamic states, or in two cases regions
under Islamic authority.
• February 5, 2005, the IRIN issued a reported titled
"Iraq: Male homosexuality still a taboo".

• honor killings by Iraqis against a gay family member

are common and given some legal protection.[

• August 2009, Human Rights Watch: torture of men

accused of being gay in Iraq, (blocking of men's
anuses with glue, giving the men laxatives).
• Although gay marriage has been legal in South
Africa since 2006, same-sex unions are often
condemned as "un-African".

• Research conducted in 2009 shows 86% of Black

lesbians from the Western Cape live in fear of sexual
assault.
• A number of countries, (Western world) passed
measures to alleviate discrimination against sexual
minorities,

• including laws against anti-gay hate crimes

• workplace discrimination.

• Some have also legalized same-sex marriage or civil

unions in order to grant same-sex couples the same
protections and benefits as opposite-sex couples.

• In 2011, the United Nations passed its first resolution

recognizing LGBT rights.
• Reverse discrimination

• discrimination against members of a dominant or

majority group, in favor of members of a minority or
historically disadvantaged group.

• Groups may be defined in terms

of disability, ethnicity, family status, gender
identity, nationality, race, religion, sex, and sexual
orientation, or other factors
• seek to redress social inequalities under which
minority groups have had less access to privileges
enjoyed by the majority group.

• it is intended to remove discrimination that minority

groups may already face.
• can be defined as the unequal treatment of
members of the majority groups resulting from
preferential policies, as in college admissions or
employment, intended to remedy earlier
discrimination against minorities.
• Discrimination against refugees, asylum
seekers, migrants and internally displaced
persons

• refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and internally

displaced persons have been the victims of racial
discrimination, racist attacks, xenophobia and ethnic
and religious intolerance.
• Human Right Watch,
"racism is both a cause and
a product of forced
displacement, and an
obstacle to its solution."
• the influx of refugees to Europe (2010), media
coverage shaped public opinion and created hostility
towards refugees.
• Prior to that the European Union had started
implementing the hotspot system, which categorized
people as either asylum seekers or economic
migrants,
• Europe’s patrolling of its southern borders between
2010 and 2016 intensified,
• Five actions you can take against racism and
discrimination

1. LISTEN AND EDUCATE YOURSELF

Pay attention to the voices of people who experience
racism every day – listen to friends,
classmates, neighbors, and community leaders.

There are also a lot of articles, books, documentaries,

films and podcasts on issues of
racism, discrimination and privilege.

Listen to what the people in them have to say.

Understand and confront your own privilege. Be
prepared to feel uncomfortable at times. Many of us
absorb biases and prejudices at an early age, so they
2. RAISE AWARENESS
Share the resources that you have found useful with
your community to help them learn how they can play
a role in ending racism and discrimination. If you have
younger siblings or family members, set a good
example for them.

3. CHALLENGE EVERYDAY DISCRIMINATION AND

RACISM
Racism and discrimination happen around us all the
time. Often it is in the form of jokes, stereotypes or
insensitive comments and questions from our friends,
family members or colleagues.

If you witness a friend or family member saying racist

or discriminatory things, you should talk
to them, if you feel safe to do so. Approach them
4. REPORT RACIST OR DISCRIMINATORY
CONTENT ONLINE
Many social media platforms want their platforms to
be safe and empowering for people of all
backgrounds. If you see content that you think
violates their guidelines, report it to the platform.

If you see content in a newspaper or other traditional

media that reflects prejudice, leave a comment or
send a letter to the editor to let others know that
intolerant remarks are unkind and uncalled for.
5. IS YOUR SCHOOL OR UNIVERSITY AGAINST
RACISM AND DISCRIMINATION?

Schools and universities should be safe places for

children and young people of all races and ethnicities.

Find out whether your school or university has a policy

on non-discrimination and racism, safe ways to report
incidents, support services, and programmes or
initiatives to promote tolerance, diversity and
inclusion.

If not, work with other students and school/university

management to start a discussion and identify ways in
which your place of learning can become a safer and
more empowering environment for all students.
No one is born hating another person because of the
color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.
People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to
hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more
naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
--Nelson Mandela

“I have a dream that

my four little children
will one day live in a
nation where they will
not be judged by the
color of their skin, but
by the content of their
character.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
End of Lesson