Discrimination in Social Issues

Because of some reasons, the black are got the inhuman treatments for there are not specific laws for help them. Other fact which shows the discrimination which limits people’s right to equal treatment from society is that there are some laws which regulate for people according to their race. This condition is supported by the following quotation: “ The booklet is simply a list of laws stating what colored people can and cannot do, in an assortment of Southern states. I skim the first page, puzzled why this is here. The laws are neither threatening nor friendly, just citing the facts: No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men are placed. It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls. The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white persons. Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.” Stockett, 2009: 173 What Skeeter said in the quotation above is the evidence that the tradition has treated the black differently from the white. As far as the people have the differentrace from other people, they cannot be the part of them. Here is the discrimination has limited people’s right to have equal treatment from society. During Jim Crow, each of these representing societies in which the laws and cultural institutions manufactured and enforced systematic inequalities based on group membership. Although the vestiges of Jim Crow have long since disappeared in the contemporary United States, there remain features of American society that may contribute to persistent forms of structural discrimination Massey, 2007.

4.3.3 Discrimination in Social Issues

There is one fact in Kathryn Stockett’ The Help that shows that racial discrimination limits people’s right to equal treatment from society. It means that the society in the novel has different assumption in viewing white and black people. Something that is done by white people is valued differently compared with the same thing is done by the black people. Universitas Sumatera Utara The Help has quite a few sections where there’s unequal treatment of the races. One subtle example of discrimination the reader sees is the treatment of Constantine, a black woman, the housekeepernanny for the white family. Although she is treated fairly, it is obvious that she is considered to be on a lower social level than the white people. “ Being Negro with white skin....in Missisippi, its like you belong to nobody. But it wasn’t just hard on the girl. It was hard on Constantine. She....folks would look at her. White folks would stop her all suspicious what she doing toting round white child. Policemen used to stop her on State Street, told her she need to get uniform on. Even colored folks....they treat her different, distrusful, like she done something wrong” Stockett, 2009: 358 The quotation above describes the forms of the Whites racism faced by Afro-Americans dealing with prejudice. Prejudice always appears when there are dominant and minority group. There are some phenomena that tell about prejudice to minorities group that have different race with the Whites. If there are phenomena which argue about race still continue repeatedly in the next, the equity of different races will never be reached successfully. Thus, two different groups dominant and minority are needed together to realize an egalitarian community. Prejudices against poor people of every color and background are obvious, as are the prejudices of minority groups who have bad feelings about other minority groups, as well as minority groups who harbor prejudice toward the perceived majority culture. Other prejudices include stereotyping, discriminating against, and even attacking, people based on their sexual orientation. Not only happened for Constantine, another maid like Minny feel the same way. While working in Hilly’s house, she has a few rules to followed. “Mama turned me by the shoulders so I’d look at her instead of the cake. Mama was a crack-whip. She was proper. She took nothing from nobody. She shook her finger so close to my face, it made me cross-eyed. “Rule Number One for working for a white lady, Minny: it is nobody’s business. You keep your nose out of your White Lady’s problems, you don’t go crying to her with yours—you can’t pay the light bill? Your feet are too sore? Remember one thing: white people are not Universitas Sumatera Utara your friends. They don’t want to hear about it. And when Miss White Lady catches her man with the lady next door, you keep out of it, you hear me? “Rule Number Two: don’t you ever let that White Lady find you sitting on her toilet. I don’t care if you’ve got to go so bad it’s coming out of your hairbraids. If there’s not one out back for the help, you find yourself a time when she’s not there in a bathroom she doesn’t use. “Rule Number Three—” Mama jerked my chin back around to face her because that cake had lured me in again. “Rule Number Three: when you’re cooking white people’s food, you taste it with a different spoon. You put that spoon to your mouth, think nobody’s looking, put it back in the pot, might as well throw it out. “Rule Number Four: You use the same cup, same fork, same plate every day. Keep it in a seperate cupboard and tell that white woman that’s the one you’ll use from here on out. “Rule Number Five: you eat in the kitchen. “Rule Number Six: you don’t hit on her children. White people like to do their own spanking.” “Rule Number Seven: this is the last one, Minny. Are you listening to me? No sass-mouthing.” “Mama, I know how—” Stockett, 2009: 39 This quotation shows that the black and white is not same, black maid have a few rules when working in white house. Since the whites think that they are different from the black americans and make a far distance with them, there are many race riots happen. Discrimination can be practiced by an individual or an institution. Institutional discrimination occurswhen some large organization for example, a government engages in practices that are unfair to members of some groups and puts them at a disadvantage. Individual and institutional discrimination differ in the following respects. Individual discrimination is carried out by people acting on their own. Institutional discrimination occurs when an institution makes laws or rules that affect the behavior of large numbers of people.

4.4 The Impacts Of Discrimination