Real Talk About Discrimination

Hey everybody, and welcome to Week 4 and our discussion of civil rights! This is one huge topic and given that we're going to focus on key concepts: civil rights, public discrimination, private discrimination, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, and state action. It's important to understand what types of discrimination are and are not allowed under existing law... and that's often going to depend on which groups we define as not covered by the law (e.g. do we base it on age, sex, race, etc.). Our civil rights amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th along with the 19th, 24th, and 26th) will outline what limits we have on discrimination but the reality is that many times discrimination is allowed in our political realities when it should not be according to the words of those amendments. To wrap this discussion, I will ask you to complete a timeline on a group of your choosing... covering the history of all groups is simply impossible, but it's important to allow you and others to investigate civil rights more in-depth than we could ever go in class!