Many violations of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights occur in connection with discrimination, racism, and social exclusion based on the ethnic, religious, national, or racial origin of the victims. Discrimination is a deliberate restriction or deprivation of the rights or advantages of any persons, organizations, or state on race, nationality, nationality, property status, or political or religious beliefs. In the social studies I studied, it was precisely the question of discrimination that was raised. Each of the articles is a detailed dive into different types of harassment and their study methods. Each of the studies depicts a common problem in its way, so this allows one to consider the issue from different perspectives.
While the meaning and experience of race, class, gender, and sexuality change over time and place, they also have persistence and resilience that makes people believe they will always be with us. Lynn Weber (2016) believes that race, class, gender, and sexuality are systems of oppression that change their dominant component but do not change their essence. The author is convinced that despite the change in paradigms, one or another “concept” (race, gender, sexuality, class) will always dominate and oppress the rest (Weber, 2016). One way to define strength is the ability to achieve your goals despite resistance. Groups remain dominant in the system over time because their position allows them to continue, regardless of the will or goals of others, that is, dependent on the efforts of the oppressed groups.
Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer (2009) do not place more emphasis on the social tradition of oppression but consider discrimination because of the influence of historical context. Racial categories are place-specific and tied to a specific geographic and social context. They also depend on time, changing between different historical eras (Desmond & Emirbayer, 2009). Interestingly, researchers emphasize that racism remains in society because of its misinterpretation. Thus, the authors focus on the analytical analysis of any phenomenon of discrimination: the study of social, historical, political, and other aspects that have an impact on the growth of oppression of certain groups.
In their article, Crowley et al. (2016) raise the question of gender inequality on a par with other inequalities based on race, class, sexuality, age, ability, and more. However, unlike the previous articles, they do not consider the issue of discrimination but mainly reveal misconceptions related primarily to the dual representation of the world (male and female) ( Crowley et al., 2016). On the other hand, the authors also argue that the differences between women and men that are meaningful to society (such as femininity and masculinity) are products of the social world, not nature.
Having studied all three articles, I got deeper into the issue of discrimination, its occurrence, and the fight against it. There are several very measurable and, therefore, seemingly real social disadvantages faced by people who are not members of the dominant group. For example, it could be inequality in income and wealth, unequal access to jobs, unequal representation in politics, and more. I think that each concept of the articles will help to better understand the features of the topic under study and consider sociological issues from different angles.
While each of the articles is of particular value to sociology and beyond, I would like to take a different and more detailed look at the first reading of Lynn Weber’s (2016) Defining contested concepts. It is quite difficult for me to determine for myself a position regarding the content of the article. On the one hand, I do not agree that the oppression of various groups will always be present; only the dominant groups will change. I believe that in modern society, changes are taking place much more rapidly, even seemingly in concepts laid down for centuries. Even without taking into account the information society today, there have also been significant changes toward the elimination of discrimination, for example, in the field of education, which is now available to everyone.
On the other hand, I cannot deny that over time, new groups come to the fore and are subject to social rejection; that is, there is an oppressed group and an oppressor group. For example, earlier discrimination based on race was much harsher. Even though today there is an active struggle against this, no one of the progressive countries has finally coped with this. In addition, in recent years, oppression based on gender and sexuality has actively begun (Weber, 2016). However, I believe that this happened again due to the high pace of development of modern society, which, is not fully ready for such rapid changes in the usual paradigms.
In any case, social differentiation is a complex and contradictory process without which the development of society and the individual is impossible; at the same time, differentiation leads to sharp social inequality. That is a specific form of social differentiation in which individuals, social boundaries, strata, and classes are at different levels of the vertical social hierarchy and have unequal life chances and opportunities to meet needs. Social discrimination most often takes covert, nowhere prescribed forms, and any significant difference in a person, for example, nationality, gender, religious beliefs, marital status, and so on, can act as a sign. Thus, we see that social discrimination is a complex and ambiguous process that has been formed over time, which also takes place in modern society, but can rise and fall.
References
Crawley, S.L., Foley, L.J., & Shehan, C.L. (2016). Creating a world of dichotomy: Categorizing sex and gendering cultural messages. Sage.
Desmond, M., & Emirbayer, M. (2009). What is racial domination?Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 6(2), 335–355.
Weber, L. (2016). Defending contested concepts. Sage.