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To discuss discrimination, it is first necessary to define it. We can define discrimination in this sense as “Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners” (Heritage Dictionary, 2004). As this implies, discrimination requires some form of action to be so, and usually one with a defined outcome. An example of this is the stereotypical landlord who refuses to rent property to black tenants. This is an important discrimination from prejudice, which is defined as “Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion” (Heritage Dictionary, 2004). We can therefore see that the two are likely to be related in cause but are very different in practise as it is only discrimination that causes a difference in outcome for a member of the discriminated against group - indeed it is when prejudice manifests itself in an action that it changes to being discrimination.

In theory, the legal structures that prevent discrimination were set in place via the Race Relations Act (1976) and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000) to fight racism, the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) to fight sexism and the Disability Discrimination Act (2005) to fight discrimination against the disabled. In contrast to this, although the England and Wales made homosexuality legal via the Sexual Offences Act (1967), it is notable that Northern Ireland only legalised this via the Homosexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 1982 S.I. 1982/1536 (N.I. 19), and indeed the UK foreign territories were only forced to accept the legality of sodomy by a 13 December, 2000 decision by Her Majesty in Privy Council (PlanetOut News, 2000). The Equality Act 2005 has however explicitly outlawed many forms of sexual orientation discrimination.

It is notable that although the legal frameworks may have been set up to protect people from acts of discrimination, widespread enforcement of these Acts has been comparatively slow in coming. In the case of the RRA, for example, the initially low number of ethnic minority citizens within the UK meant that racial stereotypes went unchallenged by social contact, and so daily interactions could be highly discriminatory. An example of this was the reaction to the introduction of black players into football during the 70s and 80s (Class hand out, 16/01/2007), with large scale fan and managerial racism often preventing black players being hired on purely discriminatory grounds. This has changed in football, but it is noticeable that even now, with 30 years of the RRA, levels of economic activity remain very different among different racial groups. The statistics would certainly seem to support this view, with 2004 white employment standing at 79.4% for men and 71.6% for women, when compared to black or black British employment of 65.8% for men and 54.9% for women (Lindley J and Dale A, 2004). The size of the gap here would suggest that there is still a large amount of room for improvement in the employment process, as educational attainment is now approaching equality. One major criticism of the RRA can be made here: although the RRA did disallow discrimination on racial grounds in employment, the lack of any compulsion to report levels of racial representation within an organisation or to provide reasons for rejection of candidates meant that it was and remains extremely difficult to monitor claims of racism, particularly in small or secretive organisations. The effects of this on ethnic minority communities are obviously numerous: the lower average income produced by this disparity produces poverty, and the greater historical impact of both racism and immigration from a poorer culture has often produced cycles of deprivation, resulting in historically lower levels of educational achievement (OFSTED 1999), for example.

Another example of a culture of pervasive secrecy producing institutional racism was of course the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, which criticised the lack of accountability of the police with regard to racial matters.of law and police work (Commission for Racial Equality, 2006). This criticism has continued into matters of national security such as terrorism, and here the acts of the police and legislature have combined with tabloid coverage of the issue to produce a large scale of discrimination in the views of many. An example of this discrimination is the perceived undue use of stop and search on members of the Muslims community. Statistics on this broken down by racial group are apparently impossible to obtain, but the main issue for community relations and thus less detectable discrimination in other areas both from and towards Muslims is largely created by the perception that other communities and the police view terrorists as Muslim by nature. Tabloid and internet coverage of this issue, as with issues of asylum and immigration, has often been stridently xenophobic, with even the traditionally left-wing Observer running headlines such as “Islam has become its own enemy - Muslims in denial” (The Observer, 2001). The effect on community relations is shown in the continued tension between Muslims and other communities, and merely built on the more general Asian/white cultural strains that led to problems such as the 2001 Oldham riots.

Similarly, women still face major problems. The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 made it unlawful to discriminate against somebody due to their sex in employment, training and education. However, more than 30 years later, women employed full time are still earning just 87.4% as much as men (Women and Equality Unit, 2006). Women are also less likely to be employed in the highest paying jobs, with a report from the Equal Opportunities Commission stating that only 10% of FTSE100 companies have women employed as boardroom directors, with more than a quarter of boards having no women directors at all (The Times, 2007). Furthermore, 44% of women are employed part-time, with women making up 78% of the part time labour market (Hurrell, 2005). Part-time employees not only earn less due to working fewer hours, they also miss out on promotions (and the resulting pay rises) and receive a smaller pension upon retirement (Russo and Hassink, 2005).

The effects of women less than men can be seen in the child poverty rates in Britain. Families headed by lone mothers make up 23% of households in the UK (The Sunday Times, 2002) and single mothers are twice as likely as married women to experience financial hardship, despite being twice as likely to work full-time (Brown and Moran, 1997). The same report stated that single mothers are also twice as likely to experience episodes of depressive illness, leading to absence from work and exacerbated poverty. With women earning less than men, children in families with just a female breadwinner are more likely to experience poverty. It is estimated that a third of children in Britain are living in poverty and the causes are cited as expensive childcare that does not permit women to work full-time, and poorly paid part-time employment, according to research conducted by the London School of Economics (BBC News, 1999).

Homosexuals also face large scale discrimination, and the reasons for this include factors such as the UK’s Judeo-Christian political heritage. Historically, the King James Bible often formed the source of religious viewpoints, and it is very clear that homosexuality is forbidden, as in the following passage from Leviticus 20:13: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them” (King James Bible, 1611). This meant that homosexuality was not only forbidden, but immediately made taboo by defining it as a mortal sin. Because of this level of social censure any gay members of the population were also unlikely to want to discuss homosexual desires with others, and so a long period of extreme prejudice and discrimination was created. In this we can see a reflection of the way that societal attitudes are set by media today, as the Bible was viewed as the major source of truth. Indeed, sodomy was only legalised in the Sexual Offences Bill (1967), and the attitude of bare tolerance by the Government even at that time can be seen in the fact that the age of consent was set by the bill at 21, an explicit measure of discrimination when compared to the heterosexual age of consent of 16. This formed the basis of a social settlement until the time of the 1980s, with a situation of neglect towards sexual orientation discrimination by the authorities towards homosexuality meaning that homosexuality was merely decriminalised rather then viewed as a choice of equal value.

The effect on this on the gay community was to allow one to form: rather as we would not expect an open society of cat burglars, a political voice for the gay community was all but impossible at a time when to admit acts of buggery would invite legal sanction. The gay community did however solidify in the usual way of oppressed groups, and won major victories in the 80s in social terms through acts like the willingness of Princess Diana to hold gay AIDS victims and be received sympathetically in the press for doing so. This new shift in public opinion was reflected in the eventual 90s removal of many of the more discriminatory practises of law, such as the Section 28 guidance that prevented schools “teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” (Wikipedia, 2006).

In the UK today, the effects of the Equality Bill include “Regulations to be made to prohibit sexual orientation discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services, in education and in the execution of public functions. The Government now intends to bring these regulations into force on 6 April 2007″ (Women and Equality Unit, 2007). As this would imply, such rights do not exist at present, and indeed issues such as the provision of civil partnerships for same-sex couples as opposed to a full civil ceremony mean that discrimination on sexual orientation is not even dead at the formal, legislative level.

Word count: 1640

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American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2004). Prejudice Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Retreved on 15 January, 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/prejudice

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Class handout, 16/01/07

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