Essay Sample on Social Perspectives on Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination in economics has become so rampant, not as an individuals would have thought. It occurs in the sense that there's discrimination in housing, employment, credit markets and has even gone further to discrimination in the payment of wages. In discussing racial discrimination, economists view it in both the descriptive type and the casual research one. This ensures they get to know all the point of views.

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Racial discrimination has generally adopted two perspectives. The first one is the taste for discrimination perspective, which holds that people often discriminate when they are very much willing to pay the price. Hence, as they do no interact or reduce the intimacy with a particular group of people, it is shocking that people can actually be ready to lose part of their wealth to get detached from a specific group of people. This discrimination is so dire since there is no building of each other, transfer of knowledge or skill between the individuals. Hence it generally brings retarded growth.

The other perspective is statistical discrimination, which mainly occurs to employers who have little information about potential employees, and they tend to use group characteristics to conclude which person to choose. The employer, determined to maximize his profits, tends to prefer whites and men over blacks and women respectively, because of the group notion that whites and men are reliable, they can be long term employees and can deliver better than the others. These notions however they are biased and there is no research that proves they are true.

Both racial discrimination types have been defined as bias-based. Economists further argue that sometimes, racial discrimination does not occur deliberately, hence implicit discrimination, which occurs outside the discriminator's awareness. Even with so much supporting evidence on this, it is still felt that racial discrimination emanates from the domain of psychology and consciousness of the unknown decisions. The discriminator already has a negative or much lesser perception about specific people, from individual backgrounds, of a particular gender or color.

There is also another type of racial discrimination called institutional discrimination, where the law defines differential treatment in terms of race. This organizational discrimination can be understood in the form of a norm, which is just a specific behavior that members of a particular organization must-have. Norms have generally brought all the members of an institution, especially learning institutions, to the same level, which should be positively encouraged. The law totally enforces this. Institutional discrimination has also taken the form of cognition, whereby members of a particular organization have a way of understanding a predicament in a particular organization (Arrow, Kenneth J. 1972). This makes a specific field; let's say in Institution's sound lesser than other fields, which should be highly discouraged because more people will tend to shy off, and those in those fields will be discouraged, and they may perform poorly.

Institutional discrimination should be a significant area of concern by economists because discrimination can also take the legal form in which members are discriminated against with regard to specific laws. Decisions of a discriminator to do so, whether intentional or unknowingly, lead to contemporary consequences. All groups of people deserve equal attention, and the perception about discrimination should be worked upon by all members such that attention made to each group is leveled.

References

Arrow, Kenneth J. 1972a. "Models of Job Discrimination." In Racial Discrimination in Economic Life, edited by A. Pascal, 83–102. Lexington: Lexington Heath.