Discrimination In The 1800's

The agrarian era ended in the early 1800’s to give rise to the industrial revolution (Healey, 2003). This new society wasn’t centered on land but instead industry and commerce. It was the market and the owner ship of capital wealth that dominated in this Paternalistic society. This new economy had no place for slaves in it, with the majority of labor being placed in cities and the increasing difficulty of the labor. The age of man and machine pushed out the old ways of dominant-minority relations which paved the way for a new process to maintain that racial stratification and white privilege.
As the U.S. transformed into an industrial society the paternalistic ways of thinking led to a rigidly competitive system. Under this system minorities
We now have practices that follow suit with past discrimination. An example would be the system of seniority, where the employees that have been there the longest are usually the last fired. In the past minorities were put through this system and it gave the white workers an unfair advantage over them (Triana, M.). Another modern example is the standardized tests scores that many public schools rely on. Studies have shown that minorities tend to score lower on these tests and therefore it leads the researchers to conclude that they are racially biased (Triana,
tried to overcome modern institutional discrimination is through over compensating with the affirmative action plan, which is a group designed to reduce the effects of past discrimination and increase diversity within the job market and within the school system (Healey, 2003). Although this decision may seem sound at times it can reverse its intentions by making the majority group now the under privileged group. For example the case of Ricci vs. Destefano with the firefighters from Connecticut (Healey, 2003). This division had administered a promotional test to all the candidates that qualified for a promotion but when the results came back they noticed that no African Americans who had taken the test passed so they decided to throw out the test on a count of its unequal racial results. But the other individuals that had passed the test which were made up of Hispanics and whites filed a lawsuit against the company claiming that by throwing out the results they reversed the racial discrimination on to their group (Healey, 2003). Which begs the question of fairness in the work place. How far is too far to combat racial discrimination in the workplace, is there any way to truly be neutral and unbiased in this evolving