Discrimination Lives Within Us

One may argue that, today's world is perfect, any able-thinking human being would be able to see, plain as daylight that our so called 'perfect' world is not, in fact without flaw. One of the most obvious social issue that is present in every society is, discrimination. No matter how much we would like to deny it, acts of discrimination are being performed unknowingly despite the belief that we are superior, without flaws and able to think above our Neanderthal ancestors. In spite of this, we are still unable to overlook our differences, this results in petty problems that benefits neither party. Discrimination has many forms, for example, discrimination can be done based on racial differences, skin colour, appearance, religion, sexual orientation, social status, economic background the list goes on.

Case in point, one of the most obvious forms of discriminations is the act of discriminating against other races. This form of discrimination is described as being prejudiced against others solely based on their race this can also be a form of discrimination based on skin colour. People are more prone to discriminate based on skin colour because, it is a daily occurrence in our lives, namely, since we were young, perhaps our parents told us to stay away from other races due to their overprotective nature. Even as we grow with age and our mind matures, we will still have that inkling at the back of our minds to stay away or avoid people of certain race or skin tone.

Next, we have religious discrimination. This seems to be one of the biggest controversies in our country where every individual has the right to practice his or her own faith and beliefs, as it says in our Constitution. However, with all this freedom there are certain consequences, namely differences in religious beliefs have caused a sort of divide between the people of this nation.

A rising problem of discrimination in today's modern world is the act of discriminating another individual based on their sexual orientation, namely the gays and lesbians. These individuals are constantly under the media's eyes and are usually persecuted by others. These people are judged to be unclean especially in the eyes of most religions. They are denied most human rights, such as the right to adopt a child, not because they are unfit to care for a child, others believe that just because a child grows up with two mother or two fathers instead of the usual white picket fence family with one father and a mother, they will grow up "wrong" in their society.

The next form of discrimination is the type that one may see in big corporations where an individual has to climb up the ladder to succeed. In most white collar jobs, the discrimination against women is somewhat prominent. This is because most employers believe that a woman is too troublesome to hire, because a woman has the ability to get pregnant, this causes productivity to suffer when said pregnant women take their maternity leave. People are also under the impression that a woman is unable to do most of the things that men can do, namely physical labour. This creates a glass barrier for women, as the most they can do is reach this barrier and stay under it because they are unfit to exceed it.

Therefore, our world is hardly perfect. We as human beings, thought to be the peak of evolution are unable to look past petty differences, instead we pick at those differences until it becomes an issue and cause difficulties for other, in short, we seem to enjoy making a mountain out of a molehill. We should instead be ready to embrace the fact that we are all unique, and not everybody can be like us, we must be prepared to love our fellow man for as William Gladstone once said, "We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know peace"