Free Essay Example - Causes of Racial Injustice

Racial injustice is the overall disparities that are experienced by certain races within a population of different races. The injustices are mostly felt by the minorities who may not have preferences in a particular region. In the United States, people of color are known to undergo several injustices such as police brutality, unequal distribution of resources, employment discrimination, and seclusion in institutional funding, among others. Every country in the whole world practices racism in one way or another. Furthermore, immigrants are more likely to suffer from racial injustices than the country's citizens. Racial injustice begins from individual prejudices, which then grow to population biases hence encouraging a certain group of people to oppress another. Some of the major racial injustices experienced include political expediency, social bias, economic pressure, historical injustices, and institutional policies. This paper analyzes social bias, historical prejudice, economic pressure, and unfavorable institutional policies as the major causes of racial injustices.

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According to Holmes (2020), social bias is the number one cause of racial injustice in America. Social bias, also known as the attributional error, is the intentional act of giving people preference or deny them the preference and judge them negatively while trying to develop reasons for the particular behavior of a group of people. Unless it is a culture, no behavior belongs to a specific race. Social bias occurs when people associate a bad character with a certain group of people. For instance, in the United States, African Americans are associated with robbery, the Hispanic with drug trafficking, and the whites with fraud.

Consequently, this bias is taken further to movie roles hence passing a negative message to the community. The community then start looking at the race with the associated bias and are likely to blame them for related injustices. With this kind of bias in their minds, people will falsely accuse others just because they belong to a certain race whose characters in question are associated with them. As a result, the race suffers from injustices.

Historical injustices are another cause of racial injustices. Historical crimes involve some injustices that were done to a specific race in the past, yet people still associate the race with past practices today. A past injustice might have been rectified, but the general community still sees the race from the past. Also, a race that behaves as if they are still suffering from past injustice is likely to be judged from the past. An excellent example of historical injustice is black slavery (“Racial Inequality,” 2009). In the United States, African Americans have held slaves, whereby they were made to do hard work without pay. Years later, slavery was ended, but the community is still oppressed. They are often seen as the old slaves who do not belong to the country or own anything. People often refer to the history of a race to know them; hence if injustices were involved, their identity still carries the practices and will be treated accordingly.

Economic pressure, especially in the minority races, makes them vulnerable to injustices. According to Cater and Corra (2012), the minority groups of people in an urban area are likely to be ignored during economic budgeting. In most urban areas, there are more racial injustices than in rural or semi-urban. This is because the developed area hosts people of many races, and the majority often lead the region. Besides, a region with the minority is likely to be poor due to the unequal allocation of resources. In these regions, there is the most common race that will suffer lots of injustices. For instance, in a race living in slum areas are likely to suffer from police brutality because they are suspected to be criminals. Economic inequality is the number one cause of poverty in many countries. The gap between the poor and the rich and the poor is huge in these cases, and the same gap exists between the majority and minority races. The majority of races own the better part of the country while the minority owns almost nothing hence experience all sorts of injustices.

The last major cause of racial injustice is unfavorable institutional policies. Institutions hold policies that favor a majority race, but to the minority, they are unfavorable (Holmes, 2020). In the United States, there was segregation of the people of color from the whites back in the slavery days. The segregation policies were raised and implemented by institutions, and even though the practice ended, institutions still uphold a segment of unfavorable policies for the minorities. For instance, there are black community banks that loan the people of color because there exist institutions that cannot fund them. Employment discrimination based on race is also institutional. Some institutions are likely to hire a high number of the majority race for their staff and a few minorities to look like they are not discriminating the few. In these cases, the minority races are oppressed, and they may not have voiced their injustices due to their limitation in numbers. Similarly, in government institutions, the majority race in the country population is likely to have the top positions and a few or lower positions for the minority groups.

In conclusion, racial injustices are felt by minority groups based on social bias, historical injustices, economic pressure, and unfavorable institutional policies. The minority groups often live below the average standards because of poverty. Poverty is caused by inequality in the distribution of resources, which is done by government institutions. The minority are also judged with bad characters just because they are not highly presented in power. Social bias starts with individual prejudice and later grows to community racism. Historical injustices are experienced when a race is judged from past injustices. Racial injustice is present in many countries but most felt in the urban areas and especially by the immigrants and the poor who may represent the minorities.

References

Carter, J. S., & Corra, M. (2012). Beliefs about the causes of racial inequality: The persisting impact of urban and suburban locations? Urban Studies Research, 2012, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/242741

Holmes, M. D. (2020). Righteous shoot or racial injustice? What Crowdsourced data Can (not) tell us about police-caused homicide. Race and Justice, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368719900357

Racial Inequality. (2009). https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ContemporaryAmericanSociety/Chapter%2014%20--%20Racial%20inequality--Norton%20August.pdf