Vorschlag B2

Fighting againgst discrimination

Outline the information on the life of African Americans in the 1960s as presented in the text.

(30 BE)

Analyze the structure and language used to convey Martin Luther King’s message.

(40 BE)

Choose one of the following tasks:

3.1

“Across the miles they joined hands, and took a firm, forward step. It was a step that rocked the richest, most powerful nation to its foundations.”
Assess what situations call for mass protest. Consider both the situation described in the text as well as more recent examples.

(30 BE)

3.2

For the website of the European Youth Forum, a platform of non-governmental youth organisations, write a blog entry in which you evaluate the effectiveness of ways of fighting different forms of discrimination in western societies.

(30 BE)

Material

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Why we can’t wait (1964)

The following text is taken from the introduction of a 1964 book by African American civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. It deals with the nonviolent protests of 1963 during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement.

It is the beginning of the year of our Lord 1963.

I see a young Negro boy. He is sitting on a stoop in front of a vermin-infested apartment

house in Harlem. The stench of garbage is in the halls. The drunks, the jobless, the

junkies are shadow figures of his everyday world. The boy goes to a school attended

mostly by Negro students with a scattering of Puerto Ricans. His father is one of the jobless.

His mother is a sleep-in domestic, working for a family on Long Island.

I see a young Negro girl. She is sitting on the stoop of a rickety wooden one-family

house in Birmingham. Some visitors would call it a shack. It needs paint badly and the

patched-up roof appears in danger of caving in. Half a dozen small children, in various

stages of undress, are scampering about the house. The girl is forced to play the role of

their mother. She can no longer attend the all-Negro school in her neighborhood [...].

The girl’s father is a porter in a downtown department store. He will always be a porter, for

there are no promotions for the Negro in this store, where every counter serves him except

the one that sells hot dogs and orange juice.

This boy and this girl, separated by stretching miles, are wondering: Why does misery

constantly haunt the Negro? In some distant past, had their forebears done some tragic

injury to the nation, and was the curse of punishment upon the black race? Had they shirked

in their duty as patriots, betrayed their country, denied their national birthright? Had they

refused to defend their land against a foreign foe?

Not all of history is recorded in the books supplied to school children in Harlem or

Birmingham. Yet this boy and girl know something of the part of history which has been

censored by the white writers and purchasers of board-of-education books. [...]

The boy’s Sunday-school teacher has told him that one of the team who designed the capital of their

nation, Washington, D. C., was a Negro, Benjamin Banneker. Once the girl had heard a

speaker, invited to her school during Negro History Week. This speaker told how, for two

hundred years, without wages, black people, brought to this land in slave ships and in

chains, had drained the swamps, built the homes, made cotton king and helped, on whiplashed

backs, to lift this nation from colonial obscurity to commanding influence in domestic

commerce and world trade.

Wherever there was hard work, dirty work, dangerous work – in the mines, on the

docks, in the blistering foundries – Negroes had done more than their share.

The pale history books of Harlem and Birmingham told how the nation had fought a

war over slavery. Abraham Lincoln had signed a document that would come to be known

as the Emancipation Proclamation. The war had been won but not a just peace. Equality

had never arrived. Equality was a hundred years late.

The boy and the girl knew more than history. They knew something about current

events. [...] They knew that Negroes living in the capital of their own nation were confined

to ghettos and could not always get a job for which they were qualified. They knew that

white supremacists had defied the Supreme Court and that southern governors had

attempted to interpose themselves between the people and the highest law of the land.

They knew that, for years, their own lawyers had won great victories in the courts which

were not being translated into reality.

They were seeing on television, hearing from the radio, reading in the newspapers that

this was the one-hundredth birthday of their freedom.

But freedom had a dull ring, a mocking emptiness when, in their time – in the short

life span of this boy and girl – buses had stopped rolling in Montgomery; sit-inners were

jailed and beaten; freedom riders were brutalized and mobbed; dogs’ fangs were bared in

Birmingham; and in Brooklyn, New York, there were certain kinds of construction jobs

for whites only.

It was the summer of 1963. Was emancipation a fact? Was freedom a force?

The boy in Harlem stood up. The girl in Birmingham arose. Separated by stretching

miles, both of them squared their shoulders and lifted their eyes toward heaven. Across the

miles they joined hands, and took a firm, forward step. It was a step that rocked the richest,

most powerful nation to its foundations.

This is the story of that boy and that girl. This is the story of Why We Can’t Wait .

Source: Martin Luther King, Jr, Why we can’t wait, New York 1964, pp. ix–xi.

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Note:
Our solutions are listed in bullet points. In the examination, full marks can only be achieved by writing a continuous text.

The book published in New York in 1964 titled "Why we can't wait" Martin Luther King Jr. explains why colored people in the U.S. were still disadvantaged in the 1960s and why protests broke out in the summer of 1963.

Introduction

people of color lived in poor housing conditions and many were unemployed or even addicted to alcohol and drugs
mothers had to leave their children to work as maids, for example, which required them to stay overnight at the workplace
accordingly, children were left alone at an early age, young girls had to take responsibility for young siblings and then often could not attend school
and if they did, it was in segregated schools with poor educational opportunities
in principle, the labor supply for black people was meager, with no opportunities for advancement, even if they had the necessary qualifications to do so
they were also categorically excluded from certain jobs, which were only available to whites
despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal, courts ruled in favor of black activists and that slavery had already been abolished a hundred years ago

$\rightarrow$

Black people suffered from poor living conditions, racism, and segregation

in 1960, black people in the U.S. still suffered a lot of disadvantages and injustice
Martin Luther King Jr. used in his introduction to his book the examples from the life of a typical "Negro Boy" from Brooklyn and a typical "Negro Girl" from Birmingham as an illustration
he used the examples from New York and Birmingham on purpose because in 1963, those two cities were also the location for mass protests at the time
to empathize with the poor living conditions, unequal treatment, and overall disadvantages blacks suffer from $\rightarrow$ King Jr. uses a variety of linguistic devices for illustration

Introduction and referring to the task

the excerpt of the introduction of his text is stylistically written like a speech
he begins both of his examples in the first person perspective "I see ..." (l. 2 and l. 7) $\rightarrow$ thus he creates a closeness and connection to the readership, draws attention to himself through his own narration, and thereby builds trust $\rightarrow$ this strategy is also often used in speeches to capture the listener's attention
furthermore, he uses anaphoric structures to introduce both examples - the one of the Negro boy and the Negro girl
not only does he use parallelistic sentence structures, but he also uses the same phrases to emphasize the fact that this is not a single problem and that black people all over the world suffer from racism
to illustrate life in the ghetto, he uses examples that he uses according to the rule of three $\rightarrow$ "[t]he drunks, the jobless, the junkies" (l. 3/4)
the work in the past that was automatically assigned to black workers he describes as "hard work, dirty work, dangerous work – in the mines, on the docks, in the blistering foundries – Negroes had done more..." (l. 30/31)
in his introduction, Luther Jr. uses another linguistic device that is often used in speeches $\rightarrow$ rhetorical questions (cf. l. 15-19 and l. 50)
with these questions, he points out that there was no valid reason for the discrimination of blacks and at the same time contrasts the labor and physically intensive work they did with the unfair treatment they received
he uses anaphoric structures "They knew" (cf. l. 36 - 41) to emphasize that the black population was well aware of political developments and the fact that politicians nevertheless refused to recognize the rights of blacks that were judicially granted to them
the personification of equality "Equality had never arrived. Equality was a hundred years late." (lines 34/35) $\rightarrow$ underscores the fact that despite the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, equality for people of color was not in sight
moreover, King Jr. uses words with negative connotations to describe freedom, to make the point that despite all the supposed celebrations, it is not yet here "freedom had a dull ring, a mocking emptiness" (l. 45)
illustration by metaphorical expressions $\rightarrow$ "pale history books of Harlem and Birmingham" (l. 32) to allude to the fact that the history books were written by whites and "freedom had a dull ring" (l. 45) as if freedom were a bell that could dully be heard

Structure and linguistic devices

all in all, Martin Luther King Jr.'s introduction contains the typical traits of a speech, the structure, rhetorical devices such as the rule of three, rhetorical questions and anaphors, etc.
the introduction does not give an overview of what the speech will be about, but rather a call to action
King Jr. uses the "Negro girl" and the "Negro boy" as a symbol for the entire black society and uses their example to explain why the protests increased in 1963.
he concludes the introduction with a powerful metaphor "Across the miles they joined hands, and took a firm, forward step." (l. 52/53)

Conclusion

3.1

mass protests are usually triggered when people feel that they are not being heard and not being seen $\rightarrow$ especially when it comes to the violation of fundamental rights and politicians do nothing about it
protesting gives people a sense of power and being active and making a change in history
in the introduction written by Martin Luther King Jr., he describes the unjust situation which made the protests inevitable
black people still suffered from poverty, poor housing, and unequal job opportunities despite the abolition of slavery, and did not have the same rights as white people, which is why the author called for action to join his protest that changed the history of black people

Introduction and referring to the task

mass protests against police violence, racism and inequality that went around the world
sparked by the death of George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer
already in the past there was extreme unequal treatment between white and black people especially in police operations
black citizens have been stopped by police, searched without suspicion, and suffered police violence far more often than white people
there have been several cases in the past where blacks have been racially discriminated against and injured by police officers without any threat of repercussions
this was shown, for example, by the case of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, who died in March 2020 during a police operation after being shot 10 times - the police officer responsible was not fired until mid-June

Protests against racism: such as Black Lives Matter

no generational thinking - politicians often only discuss current issues and prioritize their own election campaigns and do not discuss far-sighted future issues that could have an impact on two or three generations after us
therefore, young people often get the feeling that politicians are not really thinking about their future
another issue is that under 18s are not allowed to vote to make a difference
environmental issues often lead to mass protests, such as Fridays For Future started by Greta Thunberg, which was joined by many young people because they felt heard and seen
often shocking events lead people to rethink their reality and views and start protesting, such as after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, which led people to join the anti-nuclear movements

Environmental protests: such as Fridays For Future

another reason for the formation of mass protests is when people's civil rights are violated
the Covid-19 pandemic was such an event that posed a new challenge to politicians, businesses and the entire population
politicians had to make hasty decisions, and the population - unable to grasp the urgency of the situation due to the unprecedented situation - questioned every decision made
there were different opinions circulating in society, one side thinking that public life should have been stopped earlier and the other side thinking that the lockdowns and closures were not necessary at all
as people were generally overwhelmed by the situation and found it difficult to understand, many of them turned to mass protests

Protests because of violation of civil rights: Covid-19 protests

all in all, it can be summarized that mass protests often arise due to dissatisfaction with politics or existing inequalities within society
external and shocking events can also be a trigger for protests, as they are reported in the media and therefore perceived by many people
as protests grow, protesters feel increasingly powerful, while politicians either take over policies, start criticizing protests, or even violently put them down

Conclusion

3.2

Discrimination based on age (ageism) - meaning that people in certain age groups are denied rights because of their age or are categorically excluded from jobs or even housing
Discrimination based on disability - when environmental conditions do not create equal conditions for everyone to participate; e.g. when access in stores is not wheelchair accessible and people in wheelchairs are therefore excluded from using them
Discrimination based on gender and/or sexuality: unequal treatment and/or gender roles, e.g. lower pay for women in the same profession as men or for people who are undecided about their sexuality
Discrimination based on faith/religion: unequal treatment of people with different religion or faith and exclusion of certain activities
Discrimination occurs when people are treated differently because they do not fit into the image that is considered normal in the general society
the ultimate goal should be to create a society in which everyone can participate

Different forms of discrimination

the most obvious conclusion to fight discrimination are anti-discrimination laws
the difficulty, however, is that discrimination is often subliminal and hard to prove
for example, if you are shortlisted for a job, but are not chosen, it is often difficult to understand what the reasons are, whether you are too old, of color, or whether there was a more suitable candidate
the fact that discrimination is therefore often difficult to prove means that anti-discrimination laws often fail to be effective
in addition, psychological mechanisms often ensure that people who belong to certain groups for which new members are sought tend to choose people who are similar to them - be it gender, skin color, or religion

Ways to fight discrimination:
Anti-discrimination laws

since anti-discrimination laws have often had little effect, certain quotas for employment have been set by the government
however, when quotas are set for certain groupings e.g. gender - people will always argue that they are being discriminated against because they do not fall within the quota system
men may feel discriminated against as they may not be selected as the male quota is met or transgender people as there are no explicit regulations for them
it is almost impossible to develop a fair system and at the same time allow employers to select people who are actually qualified for the advertised position

Introduction of quota regulations

people who belong to the "marginalized groups" often need support to be heard
as they often lack the opportunity, energy, time, or support to stand up for themselves
the awareness of our society needs to be raised in order to create an inclusive society
call to action: if we notice that someone is being discriminated against, we must stand up for them, talk about it and work together to eliminate it
politicians of course also have to contribute and pave the way from the legal side, but for a fundamental change it needs the participation of all
we as a community need to protest, raise our voices, support, and work together for the change we want to see in our society $\rightarrow$ equality and unity for all

Seeking change and conclusion: raise awareness and advocacy

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