Essays from Contemporary Culture - Essay Example

? Explore Prejudice and Discrimination Essays from Contemporary Culture, is a text book that contains a set of eighty selections that addresses issues or topics of importance in the present world. The main aim of the textbook was to encourage critical writing and reading at college level. These selections are arranged in nine chapters that thematically move from personal issues to subjects that can affect the entire American society. The themes presented in the chapters of the books include: Insight, Role Models and Heroes, Popular culture, Transition, Self-Perception, Relationships, Violence, Ethics, Morals and Values, and Prejudice and Discrimination. Each chapter contains seven to eight selections that present themes in different angles and different life experiences. This work is mainly focused on illustrating one of the chapters, Prejudice and discrimination. The main purpose of this article is to illustrate how different authors, in their essays, wrote about prejudice and discrimination. These essays originate from various sources such as books, newspapers, the internet and magazines. Due to this variation, these essays vary in style, purpose and tone. Therefore, the aim of this article is to relate different ideas of the authors concerning their opinion on the subject matter by comparing their varying styles, tone and purpose. In the analysis of the essay, “The Word Police” written by Michiko Kakutani, the author uses definitions, examples and illustrations to support argument that language is on the edge of absurdity because people hide their true personalities and inequalities with euphemisms. He also states that due to euphemism, people are likely to distract their concentration from the main problems of prejudice and discrimination or injustice in the community. This essay is persuasive and well supported though the author does not show persuasion on his unbiased audience due to the tedious and repetitive criticism of politically accepted movements. In addition, the author, in her argument, lacks absolution because she failed to give her audience an alternative solution. Kakutani’s essay opened with a claim that political correctness is common in today’s society. She therefore used several examples of icons in order to support her claims with familiar mainstream products that helped in swaying her audience in her direction. Furthermore, she used sarcasm in renovating words like, Superman and Miss in order to show her aversion to politically correct movement. Kakutani defined Political Correctness as a revelation of a more just and inclusive community whereby sexism, racism and prejudice of all kinds have been erased (Katherine 367-368). She further claimed that Political Correctness had a good intent though the methods employed by its activists to accomplish their goals were too extreme. This essay of Kakutani, “The Word Police” is a refreshing observation of a literally world policed by the P.C. (Politically Correct). She mainly poked the efforts of the P.C. police such as Maggio Rosalie the author of s Dictionary of nondiscriminatory language and The Bias-Free World Finder. During her mock, she mainly emphasized that the P.C. police efforts were over exaggerated. According to her, the excessive exaggeration of the P.C. contributed in complicating words thus diluting the message. From this essay, we can learn that accountability can be considered a worthwhile tool for the individuals who make every effort to better themselves. For that reason, the P.C. police efforts should be criticized and applauded due to punishing of many citizens abiding by language and for their keenness and determination to improved language mainly for inclusiveness respectively. Lakota Woman is another essay written by Mary Crow Dog that talks about prejudice and discrimination. Lakota woman is an autobiographic book of Mary Crow who was an Indian American woman. In this book, she tells the story of her life as an Indian American in the community of the white Americans. Mary Crow was married to Leonard Crow Dog, medicine men that helped her to recover her true identity as a real Indian Woman through cultural practices and traditional religion. According to this article, Mary Crow was a half Indian woman bearing the whites blood from her father’s side. Due to the rate of discrimination and prejudice in the country, she wished she could free herself from her state. Mary explained that right from her childhood, she hated everything about the whites due to the way she was treated and regarded. For this reason, she decided to tell her mother that she only wanted to be an Indian even though she was brought up in Christianity. This was a technical idea for her mother because she thought that it would be a life with lots of struggle. However, Mary had already faced a lot of life challenges and struggle starting from her childhood that made her hate the whites with all her strength. As she explained, during her childhood she experienced difficulties while struggling for a way of survival. She mentioned that men indulged in alcohol due to lack of jobs and idleness. She therefore, explained that she was taught to drink at a tender age of ten. She also claimed that she received a lot of beating at the age of twelve and most surprisingly, that she was raped at her teenage. She therefore never wanted to compromise with others even though her life was very complicated. Mary explained that she started experiencing misunderstanding and racism from her school where she boarded because her mother worked a hundred miles away. She was then taken to a boarding school where she first encountered racism and cultural encounters with the whites. She could not bear the social discrimination that surrounded her hence leading her into more troubles. This book is talks about a painful life encounter suffered by the Indian American people living in the whites land. Mary who grew up in poverty without a father and unaware of her identity tells the story about being woman in a cruel society that is focused on raising warriors. She described the historical struggle of the Oglala Sioux people against the U.S. government and the discriminations she faced in the Catholic school. Her main aim is to provide her readers with a clear vision of hopelessness and helplessness of the innocent individuals due to racism, discrimination and prejudice. This book allows readers to have a clear understanding about the history of the American Indians. The story is full of affliction and agony. It illustrates how innocent people went through torture and discrimination. Additionally, it enables us to see that the apparent destiny was an excuse for the white people in order to exploit the Indians, steal land, kill the innocent and even rape them. Affirmative Action Debate is an essay by Stephen Steinberg. The main issue discussed by Stephen in this work is whether minorities have a right to be given a special treatment both at work place and at school. On one part, he discussed that people in the minority group requires a governmental aid in order to be on the same footing with those in the majority group. On the other hand, the opponents of the affirmative action claim that differentiating group due to their ethnicity or race is a clear racism and could lead to a reverse discrimination. However, racism would lead the creation of unhealthy society. For that reason, affirmative action should be considered outdated and very much harmful to the society. In his essay, Stephen argued that being same or equality in a society is an impossible act without the governmental aid and involvement. The main function of the affirmative action is to crack down wall of work-related separation that exempts women and racial minorities from the all work sectors throughout the American history. Affirmative action had achieved its strategic objective which is extensive reunion of American workplace both for minorities and women. This can be seen in corporate managements, in professions as well as in the main blue-collar industries and public areas where one out of three black workers are employed. Relating all these essays, the main common theme in all is about discrimination and biasness. The three essays relate because they both talk about racism, discrimination and suffering faced by the minorities. Each essay explains and illustrates about Prejudice and Discrimination using different ways, styles, examples and tones. The essays therefore use different ways to illustrate the same thing. Work cited Katherine Anne Ackley. Contemporary culture, Wadsworth Publishing; 5th edition, 2003. Print. Read More