Discrimination Hurts Us All by Spencer Poku-Kankam

In a February 25th, 1961 article from the Milwaukee Journal titled, “Discrimination Hurts Us All,” Spencer Poku-Kankam from Ghana is quoted as saying, “When we experience discrimination, we wonder if this is the civilization we are supposed to copy. We cannot present America as the champion of democracy when we return to our countries because of our experiences in race discrimination.” The article goes on to say, “We have moral reasons for ending discrimination. They are buttressed by a selfish reason – we must validate our contention before the world that our way of life offers more to mankind than does Red totalitarianism.”

Discrimination - according to Webster, entered our vocabulary in 1648. 365 years later, the word stirs feelings of anger and resentment, cries for justice and demonstrates our ongoing debate in this country about who we want to be as a people. Not simply a matter of racism, xenophobia and homophobia, other groups experience discrimination as well. Religious minorities, women, those suffering from obesity, children, rehabilitated former criminals, the elderly, the handicapped and the poor are all victims of bias and frequently disfavored.

Proponents of the extremely controversial HJR6, then renamed HJR3 proposed amendment to the Indiana constitution which would permanently enshrine discrimination for Hoosiers demonstrates our unfortunate ability as a society to find minority groups in our society to marginalize. This amendment, though itself amended at the last moment now only reemphasizes that LGBTQ couples will not be allowed to marry those of their choosing, illustrating the point that while time passes and great strides are made, we have not fully unburdened ourselves to actively discriminating again...

... middle of paper ...

...ight think that a much higher percentage of blacks use drugs than whites; but that is statistically incorrect. According to a 2003 national survey on drug use by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, illicit drug use was nearly identical between blacks (8.7%) and whites (8.3%).4 Somehow, a far higher percentage of blacks are ending up in the criminal justice system, even though their rate of drug use is about the same as that of the white population.

Works Cited

1 “Gender Pay Gap Persists” by Christine Dugas, USA Today, October 24, 2012

2 Human Rights Campaign website, http://www.hrc.org/

3 Federal Bureau of Investigation website, http://www.fbi.gov

4 “Color of Justice: Does racism infect the criminal justice system?”, by Fran Quigley, Jacqueline Ayers and Elizabeth Stull, American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana website, www.iclu.org, April 1, 2005