Discrimination
Discrimination implies any distinction, exclusion or preference, which denies or belittles the equal fulfilment of individual’s rights in the society. The country and its citizens are obliged to respect and ensure that all individuals in the territory and within the country’s jurisdiction have the same rights without distinction of any kind notwithstanding their race, skin colour, sex, language, religion, political, national or social origin, and any other background or belonging (Fulero & Wrightsman, 2009). The recipients of discrimination can be any person who experiences unlawful acts based on his or her belonging to a particular group. In particular, the refusal to provide individuals with opportunities that could be provided to members who belong to some specific group should be considered discrimination. Acts of discrimination can be sporadic or systematic and cause psychological, material or physical harm to the victims. Discrimination is closely related to the concept of hate crimes. There are different types of hate crimes depending on the criminal law and the law of doctrinal propositions; they can be based on the grounds of racial, national, ethnic hatred or enmity. Further, they can be motivated by religious hostility or hatred as well as directed against sexual and other minorities. Unfortunately, hate crimes are the current problem of the contemporary society and they involve crimes committed by young people as well. For instance, there was a case when an African-American man was beaten by the white teenagers (Ten sentenced in hate crime, 2015). The man died and the offenders were sentenced to prison.
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action policies have appeared as a measure to combat discrimination and to compensate and align people’s rights. These policies imply giving priority to minorities in a particular area of life (social, political) by establishing privileges or quotas for them. The policy is used as a method of protection of interests (Fulero & Wrightsman, 2009). It should be noted that an inevitable consequence of the policy is the problem of discrimination of the majority of the ordinary people. This problem is not limited to legal aspects but also considers society as a whole. In this regard, there is a need to establish the objective criteria for the policy measures. For instance, there were cases when individuals did not get admission to educational institution due to their skin colour; however, the court did not decide in their favour (Affirmative action, 2016).The courts of constitutional justice that evaluate such measures in terms of their compliance with constitutional values play an important role in determining the limits of affirmative actions. The practices of affirmative actions have become the subject of litigation. The eligibility criteria for such measures have been developed; nevertheless, they remain debatable. The public policy considers the employment discrimination as well. For example, the law has established the quota system, whereby a certain number of jobs in the public and private sector are retained for the people with special needs. In some countries, the legislation defines actions to be undertaken by the employer in order to support persons with disabilities.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is very close to sexual violence. Despite the fact that it is difficult to prove that someone was sexually harassed, the increased publicity of such cases that resulted in court proceedings, has helped to raise the awareness of people (Fulero & Wrightsman, 2009). However, this problem is still unresolved due to the law imperfections. The sexual harassment situations are rather common but many people tend to remain silent while going public can cause serious psychological trauma because hearings are usually accompanied by the harming interrogations. Nevertheless, there were cases of harassment when the victims managed to prove the guilt of the perpetrator. For instance, Ms. McMiller was sexually harassed by her boss but managed to prove his guilt; though, being fired (Shea, 2014). The problem of violence remains acute despite the fact that people are better aware of it. It relates to the whole society while the rights of individuals to security, physical integrity, and moral dignity are violated.
References
Affirmative action: Court decision. (2016). Web.
Fulero, S.M., & Wrightsman, L.S. (2009). Forensic psychology. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Shea, R. (2014). Two weird sexual harassment cases, with eight lessons for employers.