Letter on Religious Discrimination

To whom it may concern,

As you may have noticed, the issue of discrimination has grown more popular in media. But one thing that people assume is that discrimination only has to deal with judging someone on the color of their skin and suctioning them off with people “like them”. However the issue goes much further than that. One of the different kinds of discrimination is religious discrimination. Instead of judging someone by skin tone, their religion is the dividing point. Religious discrimination has been growing and strengthening more so than ever. The problem with this issue growing in the background is it has wreaked the life of many by either preventing them from getting jobs to support their family or opening the window for letting people gang up on a group and abusing them just because of hatred of the religion.

One of the many different factors that play the role of strengthening this discrimination is ignorance, which plays a role in discrimination because ignorance spreads from adults to children who then learn the same hatred. In the TED Talk The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she says, “What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.” Adichie is explaining that the hatred that children learn comes from events and stories that the kids experience which comes from ignorance of others.

However there have been attempts to fix the issue of religious discrimination, at least in the workplace. An example of this fix in the U.S. would be Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under article VII of the U.S civil right act of 1964 there is laws stating that there has to be accommodations made for an employee for religious or medical purposes (“Facts About Religious Discrimination”). However the major problem with these laws is that there are loopholes in them that either can assist or provide harm to employers and employees. The main problem with this is that the accommodations must be made with both the employer and employee agreeing to insure that it would not interfere with the remaining workforce accommodations. This may not seem like a problem to you but the thing is that this is all opinionated which means that an employer technically has all right to deny the accommodation if he claims it interferes with work. This is the same scenario with firing an employee. Under the VII article you can't fire anyone base off of race and/or religion. But as long as the employer claims it is something else, the article cannot protect people. In addition they are made over ½ a century ago and could probably have renovations made to accommodate today's modern world.

As this issue have progressed through the centuries, there have had been attempts to address this issue. But as you may have assumed they have been proven unsuccessful or not been able to achieve as much as much of an advancing as their intended to be. I believe that if people were to take part in multiple religions or at least partake in a religious services of multiple religions, it would build up respect for the religions. Even if my idea doesn’t fix the problem, its intent would be to spark more ideas in others to help fix the problem

Works Cited

Information about the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA), www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/publications/fs-religion.cfm.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” Ted, Ted, www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.