Effects of prejudice, racism and discrimination in society

Discrimination involves treatment of an individual or a group of people based on class or category. It can be personal, legal or institutional discrimination. It involves denying an individual or a group of people an opportunity that is available to other individuals or groups. Discriminatory actions can be done in different ways but they all involve in one way or the other some form of rejection.

There are different forms of discrimination which include but not limited to the following: Age discrimination, , castle discrimination, employment discrimination, sex orientation and gender discrimination, language discrimination, reverse discrimination, disability and religious discrimination (Camponovo, 2003). According to Dunn & McDonald (2004), age discrimination involves unfair treatment of an individual or a group based on age. It usually occurs in one of the three different forms: Adultism (discrimination against adults), discrimination against people older than 40 and also discrimination against elderly people.

It mostly happens in employment where by employees prefer younger people for employment ignoring older people with their experience although laws have been put in place to help reduce the practice. Gender discrimination involves negative believes and attitude based on gender. Employment discrimination involves locking out a group of people from applying and receiving jobs because of race, disability, religion, age and sexual orientation (Michinov, Dambrun, Guimond & Méot, 2005).

Racism refers to discrimination of individuals based on social divisions that may not always be connected to race. Prejudice involves an opinion or judgment made before facts are verified. The judgment is mostly based on gender, race, ethnicity, social class, disability and also age. There are different forms of prejudice; cognitive, affective and behavioral (Guerin, 2005). These types of discriminations have led to unequal distribution of jobs and resources in general. Because of inequality, most groups have been denied justice.

Examples include legal discrimination against Black South Africans and also different post-civil war laws that exist in the southern American states which disadvantaged blacks living there in regard to property ownership, employment and other factors such as movement, where Blacks are not allowed o pass through Whites’ residential areas. This has led to increased crimes and hatred among people. It has raised tensions between countries like the Muslim countries and America (Mcdonald, 2009). For peaceful co-existence, there is need to ensure equal treatment amongst people regardless of their age, religion and other differences that may exist.