Discrimination

Why this Focal Point?

Most everybody has, at some point, felt the sting of being singled out for scrutiny or excluded from privilege. But discrimination is what happens when people are excluded or singled out at a systematic or cultural level on the basis of race, class, gender, sexual orientation or another group identity, regardless of their individual merit.  Discrimination is a timeless phenomenon, ancient as mankind, and some form of it lies at the heart of most human conflict.
 
In modern-day United States, most discrimination manifests itself less overtly than before. Gone are the days when laws in certain states mandated separate drinking fountains, schools, cafes, neighborhoods and bus seating for African Americans, for example. Or excluded women from voting. Or, most recently, prohibited same-sex couples from getting married. But the legacy of those laws is apparent in the glaring disparities between groups across the whole of society, including quality of education, levels of incarceration, treatment by police, conditions of housing and portrayal in the media.
 
At its most horrific, discrimination — when left unchecked — can lead to mass violence or even genocide. Each of the 56,669-plus survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides who have given testimony to USC Shoah Foundation felt discrimination in its rawest form. Each survivor has a unique story that underscores the sanctity of life and the grave dangers of making judgments about people based on the groups to which they belong.