[W Forum] The Pandemic of Discrimination

Min Bo-kyung, Associate Research Fellow at the National Assembly Future Institute

On May 25th, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, sparked large-scale protests, bringing global attention back to the issue of racial discrimination. At the memorial service, the voice of Floyd’s family lawyer, who stated that Floyd died not from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but from a pandemic of discrimination, asserted the structural injustice of racial discrimination.

Around the same time as Floyd’s death, Amy Cooper, a white woman walking her dog in Manhattan’s Central Park, falsely reported to the police that a Black man was threatening her after he asked her to leash her dog according to park rules. She became angry when the Black man, whom society defines as vulnerable, showed an attitude of instructing her, a white woman, and sought help from a structurally racist society to attack the Black man.

In social science research, to measure intimacy between races and social classes, questions are asked about whether people can accept others as coworkers, and further as neighbors, friends, or spouses. Cooper, who worked in finance, may have accepted Black coworkers, but it seems she was unwilling to accept them as true neighbors or friends.

Paradoxically, no society is as sensitive to discrimination as the United States. Many laws opposing or prohibiting discrimination support this. For example, in addition to civil rights laws, there are various anti-discrimination laws related to race, age, disability, pregnancy, gender identity, as well as the Homeless Bill of Rights and executive orders improving service accessibility for people with limited English proficiency, all prohibiting discrimination in diverse ways. Nevertheless, the deep shadows of hate crimes, racial discrimination, and profound distrust of the government handling these issues do not easily disappear.

The pandemic of discrimination is not confined to American society. Article 11, Paragraph 1 of our Constitution stipulates the right to equality, declaring that all citizens are equal before the law and shall not be discriminated against. Discrimination based on gender, religion, social status, or any other irrational reasons is prohibited. The National Human Rights Commission Act details the areas and recognized reasons for discrimination, and the Labor Standards Act declares the prohibition of discrimination in labor relations. Thus, “discrimination” may be relatively well restrained in our consciousness, whether in the United States or Korea.

Most of us would agree with the principle of prohibiting discrimination. However, supporting policies that ensure everyone is treated equally as “us” becomes another matter. Although we consciously know that vulnerable and marginalized people should not be discriminated against simply because they belong to certain groups, unconscious defensive psychology operates when it comes to accepting “them” into “our” daily lives.

Discrimination feeds on negative prejudice. Over time, such prejudice becomes a social stereotype. Whether the prejudice is rational or not is not questioned. Moreover, for the discriminated race or group, discrimination is not a one-time event. “They” live in constant anxiety, always tense under the threat of discrimination. The social tension created by this is not beneficial to others who must live together. We need to examine ourselves to see whether we are excessively focusing on certain social characteristics of specific groups rather than accepting individuals as they are, thereby excluding or distorting other traits that make up those individuals.