Remark on the Sorting Exercise
The sorting exercise was challenging. Personally, it was extremely difficult to sort the photos according to the races each belonged to while also specifying the criteria employed. I have always treated all people as equal and evaluating friendship based on their content of character and intelligence. Generally, the results of the sorting exercise compared with my colleague’s highlights an inconsistent classification of the human race. Human beings worldwide differ based on their genetic composition and physical appearance (Wilson, 2019). For instance, physical traits, such as skin colour, hair, and eye shape, among other features, are mostly influenced by genetic make-up. It is for this reason that the ancient societies categorised people according to class, religion, language, and status, and not physical traits (Bader et al., 2017). Also, people enslaved each other out of war or conquest, and not based on physical characteristics or inferiority complex. This exercise highlights that race is a contemporary idea. The development of the racial idea has made the underlying racial inequalities as natural, which is not the case.
Difference between Individual and Institutional Discrimination
Individual discrimination refers to the behaviour of an individual ethnic or gender group whose action harms the other ethnic or gender group (Wilson, 2019). On the other hand, institutional discrimination refers to the implementation of policies by a dominant ethnic or racial group that has an intended harmful effect on the minority ethnic or gender group (Bader et al., 2017). One of the recent individual discrimination that I witnessed on video footage is a police officer pressing his knee on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes, killing him in the end.
References
Bader, B., Bader, A., & Schuster, T. (2017). Just Locker Room Talk? Individual and Institutional Work Place Gender Discrimination of Expatriates. Academy Of Management Proceedings, 2017(1), 10561. doi: 10.5465/ambpp.2017.10561abstract
Wilson, S. (2019). Racism Is Real. Racism Is Complicated. Racism Is Real Complicated. Family Medicine, 51(1), 8-10. doi: 10.22454/fammed.2019.413518