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Kalie Hoover
English 202
Argumentative Research Paper
Oppression and Discrimination and How It Negatively Affects Racial Minorities
Oppression and discrimination are a part of American history that is often overlooked,
but important to the current state of the society we live in now. Contrary to what the history
books taught, the end of segregation didn’t end America’s race problem. If anything, it
strengthened the idea of “the other.” The other is unknown, or often seen as dangerous or bad
because they are not understood. By treating groups as if they are different, it creates a division
and a hierarchy within the society. These social issues are directly connected to oppression and
discrimination towards racial minorities. I firmly believe that the effects of oppression and
discrimination negatively affect those of a racial minority group.
First off, the base definition of discrimination and oppression are key to understanding
the argument being presented in this paper. Many people confuse the two terms or think they’re
the same thing. Discrimination is when a group is negatively or positively treated different than
other groups because of, for example, their skin color or sexuality. The main differences between
oppression and discrimination are that discrimination can occasionally be positive, while
oppression is always negative, and that oppression is a power-hold on groups lower in the social
hierarchy for an extended period of time. An example of positive discrimination would be a
company hiring a minority or a disabled person over a white, able-bodied person. While this
seems unfair to some, mainly white people who didn’t get the job, this contributes to the overall
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diversity of the workplace. Positive discrimination is only ever seen as a bad thing from the
perspective of someone who has enough privilege to not be on the receiving end of it. Positive
discrimination can be seen in schools and businesses with people who are minorities, but not
much is seen with hiring someone because they’re part of the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transgender Queer and more, represented by a +) community.
Poor race relations in America is directly linked to the oppression and mistreatment of
POC in the past. Race issues that have been looked over in the past have been getting more and
more attention now because people are becoming more aware of the oppression and
mistreatment placed on people of color (abbreviated by POC; also I will be using the terms black
and POC interchangeably through this paper) for centuries and how it contributes to today’s
societal issues. This is going back to the days where slavery was legal and very common among
the white, rich property-owners in the United States. Black men, women, and children were
taken from all over the continent of Africa and used as things such as sex slaves, nannies, and
obviously hard labor workers as well. Black people as a whole were not seen as people, they
were seen as workers. Once they were freed, they still weren’t seen as equal. Even though legally
they were seen as equal, socially they weren’t. When segregation was ruled unconstitutional, that
didn’t stop white people from thinking that black people weren’t equal, and it sure did not fix the
relations between white and black people. This led to a current society where there is still
oppression and discrimination happening every day against POC.
Although this paper is mainly about oppression and discrimination, racism plays a part in
both of these. Racism isn’t always calling a black person the “n–word” or if we were in the
1930’s, lynching them. Those are called macro–aggressions, which we don’t see nearly as often
as micro-aggressions. Micro-aggressions are more damaging to society as a whole because
people usually don’t realize they’re doing it. They’re things like saying “you don’t act like a
black man/woman” or “I don’t see you as a black man/woman; I see you as a person.” Micro–
aggressions are “a subtle but offensive comment or action directed at a minority or other non–
dominant group that is often unintentional or unconsciously reinforces a stereotype (Merriam-
Webster).” Those might not seem harmful but digging deeper into what they are actually saying
is examples of textbook micro-aggressions of racism. For the first one, “you don’t act like a
black man/woman”; it poses the question of how a black man/woman is supposed to act,
therefore reinforcing the stereotypes that society gives them. These micro-aggressions are
inherently problematic because they’re marginalizing a group of people and casually
stereotyping a large group of people from all different backgrounds. These have a direct effect on
the discrimination of POC because by saying those things, they’re feeding into the negative
stereotypes presented. This is linked to discrimination because there is a stereotype in the
