I am finally back on track. This past has been very productive for me. I got a lot of work done ahead of time because I have couple of midterm test that I need to study for next week. I really wanted to take the midterm for this class but I have four other test in other classes, so I’m glad we have the option for this class. The time I would put in for studying for this one I could split between those other classes. I know I’m going to have to start looking back at our readings and notes so I could keep the information fresh in my mind. Anyway, the past few days have been very easy going for me. On Wednesday, my English class had gotten canceled so my day was done before noon. I was supposed to use all that extra time to do work and study but I slept instead. On Friday I went to the old school step show. It was kind of funny seeing some of the older greeks step because you wouldn’t expect a lot of them to still be able to do the steps, but they were really on point. It was a really great show. This was also family weekend, but none of my parents came. I didn’t really tell them about it plus they wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway. On Saturday I went to the little picnic they had. The food was alright. That night I was able to go to the basketball game and what that even better was that it was free for me. I tried to go to one of the after parties, but it was so packed that the lines weren’t moving very fast, so me and my friends ended up coming back to school kind of early. I was really looking forward to breaking curfew. It was kind of good that I didn’t get in because I still have ten dollars in my pocket.
This week’s blog required to do a little bit of research to support our project. Discrimination is such a large scale problem so I tried to get as close to the bone as I possibly could. There are many different types of discrimination, but I believe that are only a few important ones, that if we could do something to cut down on them alone that we could end the problem we are having with discrimination all together. The main forms of discrimination that I feel are the worst are age, race, and gender discrimination. According to the Third Age Employment Network, one in eight people over fifty are discouraged from applying for a job. I sort of experienced this first hand with my dad. He worked for Chevron Texaco and they were laying off people. One of the CEOs went to the site where my dad worked and basically told all of them that they were most likely going to be laid off because of their ages. In my opinion, I could see where it was understandable because my dad himself was fifty two. In three years he was going to retire anyway. However, I still don’t think that a person should be punished for their age if they are still capable of performing their jobs. This website also stated that about 50% of people over fifty experienced the same thing that my dad. This is wrong for many reasons other than being unethical. A lot of people who are older need money because their previous may not have provided them with enough benefits for them to live off of. Also, social security doesn’t cover that much of the bills that older people have to pay. The prices of medicine and medical expenses are getting so high that many older people are struggling to get the help that they need.
Race discrimination is still probably the biggest and most problematic form of discrimination that we have in this world today. In 2003, the EEOC, (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), received about 28,000 charges on race-based discrimination. This is only a fraction of the charges issued out for racial discrimination. Everyday someone is passed over for a job because the color of their skin. On example of racial discrimination was story that I read on Discrimination Attorney.com. An employer hired a lighter, white looking employee over a darker skinned African American, or Negroid, as said in the story. In my opinion, that is very ignorant. If a person is qualified to do a job they should the have the equal opportunity to get that job. Sometimes the people who are passed over are more qualified to do the jobs than the person that was hired. Being from the south, I often here stories about this happening. This is actually one reason that I don’t really believe in affirmative action. To me it’s a cop out for the employers. They hire someone just so they don’t get in trouble. Also, I wouldn’t want to be given something just because I was of color. I want to earn it. Affirmative action has a crippling effect because employers don’t hire because they want to. That means that they never get to see a person’s potential, and a lot of people miss out on jobs because the “quota” was reached.
The last form of discrimination that I feel is a very big problem is gender discrimination. According to the Employment Law Information Network, women earn about seventy-five to every dollar that male would earn. This is wrong because they are doing the same job, and a lot of the time better. Women are often passed upon for jobs for being female. They are also passed on for positions because a lot of men don’t want to take orders from women. However, it don’t that women are the soul sexual origin that gets discriminated against. You have to think about it for a second. Who are mostly hired to baby sit your kids? What about when someone is needed to clean rooms at a hotel? Wouldn’t you find it pretty creepy if you left a man taking care of your kids in your house while you weren’t home. We just need to get passed all these views on people and allow people to do the job that they can do. Older people can deliver pizza, too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 27th, 2005 at 8:45 pm and is filed under Project Progress, Week 07: Research Stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.