Racial Discrimination The social problem studied in this paper is racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is any discriminatory act against a person based on race. A subtype of racial discrimination would be racial harassment. The magnitude of racial discrimination is very high: according to the FBI's most recent HCSA report, 51% of reported hate crimes are based on race (Hate Crimes in America, 2015). However, as Blank, Dabady and Citro (2004) point out, "simply identifying an association with race is not equivalent to measuring the magnitude of racial discrimination or its contribution to differential outcomes by race" (p. 72). In other words, it is not easy to define the magnitude of racial discrimination because distilling the cause-and-effect relationship requires testing and in complex socio-economic environments, experiments are difficult to conduct with adequate controls. Nonetheless, a qualitative magnitude may be discerned in the narratives of men like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose legacies depict a kind of magnitude of racial discrimination in America that has broad historical associations and origins.

The problem can best be understood, in causal terms, by identifying the tension in American history between White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) elites and the disenfranchised (formerly-enslaved) blacks. The history of WASP-based oppression of blacks and other minorities in America can be seen in the American eugenics movement led by racists like Margaret Sanger, who promoted birth control as a way to control and eventually eliminate the black population (Jones, 2000). Essentially, the WASP elites discriminate against minorities in America based on race (although culture is also a motive for this discrimination, as ethnicity, culture and race are essentially bound up in the discriminatory outlook of WASP America). The key figures and groups affected by this problem are mainly black...

Key figures have risen in the past to lead black movements -- men like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. -- both of whom were assassinated.
The history of America's attempt to deal with this problem is seen in Lincoln's abolishment of slavery during the Civil War. However, this act did not end black oppression or racial discrimination in America because Jim Crow laws soon replaced the law of slavery and forced segregation and oppression continued into the 20th century. With the Civil Rights movement, blacks began to protest for equal rights and protection under the law and some laws were passed to give them hope that their voice was being heard, but when their leaders were killed for protesting against the White Establishment, the movement lost steam. Today racial discrimination continues as a result, but it is subtly enshrined and institutionalized so that people do not even recognize it. For instance, blacks who are incarcerated are viewed as less than human or less than civilized and deserving of imprisonment. Few consider that the laws that put them there are unfairly enforced, unfairly adopted as laws in the first place, and unfairly designed to cripple black culture.

Blacks are not the only ones to be discriminated against based on race in America, but they are the main group. Other minorities have also been discriminated against, such as Asians during World War 2, Muslims of Middle-Eastern races and ethnicities following 9/11, and Mexicans since the adoption of NAFTA (as well as prior to this trade agreement -- as Operation Wetback in the 1950s showed). The history of America's attempt to deal with this problem has been, essentially, to not deal with it. WASP elites are still by and large in positions of power in America, and even though a black President is now in the White House alongside a black Attorney General, the…