U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

The U.S. Commission on civil Rights is a temporary independent, bipartisan agency established by Congress in 1957 and directed to:

• Investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived of their right to vote by reason of their race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin, or by reason of fraudulent practices
• Study and collect information concerning legal developments constituting discrimination or a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Constitution because of race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin, or in the administration of justice.
• Appraise Federal laws and policies with respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws because of race, color, religion, sex, age handicap, or national origin, or in the administration of justice
• Serve as a national clearinghouse for information I respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws because of race, color, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin
• submit reports, findings, and recommendations to the President and the Congress.

This was dated November 1981

Discrimination comes in many forms four of which are: 1) Individual discrimination 2) Organizational Discrimination 3) structural Discrimination and 4) The process of Discrimination - But #2

Organizational Discrimination

Discrimination, though practiced by individuals, is often reinforces by the well-established rules, policies, and practices of organizations. These procedures may be officially approved, formal parts of organizations decision making, or they may be unarticulated, informal ways of doing business. Whether formal or informal, they are the organization's standard operating procedures and are carried out by individuals as just part of their day's work .Therefore, discrimination at the organizational level takes forms that are similar to those on the individual level.

Superficially "colorblind" or "gender neutral," these organizational practices have an adverse effect on Blacks, Minorities and Women.As with individual actions, these organizational actions favor white males.

Even when taken with no deliberate intent to affect minorities and women adversely, they protect and promote the status quo arising from the racism and sexism of the past. Some practices that disadvantage minorities and women are readily accepted aspects of everyday behavior. Consider the "old boy" network in business and education built on years of friendship and social contact among white males.

Because such actions are so often considered part of the "normal" way of doing things, people have difficulty recognizing that they are part of a discriminatory process and, therefore, resist abandoning them despite the clearly discrimination results. Consequently, many decision makers have difficulty considering, much less accepting, nondiscriminatory alternatives that may work just as well or better to advance legitimate organizational interest, but without systematically disadvantaging minorities and women.

Such discrimination is not a static, one-time phenomenon that has a clearly limited effect. Discrimination can feed on discrimination in self-perpetuating cycles. (I copied this from the Federal Government Clearinghouse Publication Series 70 - November 1981)

Reading this article after some twenty-six years of continued disregard, disrespect for the Black Race.

Comments Please: Joseph

 

Joseph,

Thanks for sending along these items relative to prejudice which I have read.

My take is that there is nothing new and surprising here. I hold a Biblical view of the nature of man contrary to the majority of sociologist and humanist views and that is the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked as indicated by the condition the Bible calls SIN.

The hope is in a transformation of the heart and mind which is a supernatural act of God for all those who acknowledge their sin and recognize they need a Savior and new “heart”.This transformation creates a new creation where the old (including prejudice) passes away (and for some maybe not overnight) and all things become new. That means new values, new outlook, new choices, new hope and a new capacity to love.

Joseph, the paradox of losing your life to find it is the key to prejudice abatement. Here is my friends take on a true story of one who your mother likely named you after. You can be an instrument to bring the same proactive liberating message to our degenerate culture today.

I mount a campaign everyday that addresses this transformation in the lives of broken people and am witness to the fact that the transformation is possible and comes with the surrender of self and pride (which is the root of prejudice).Christ enthroned in the life instead of self frees folks to be all God intended for them to be in harmony with Him and one another. There is victory in surrender. There is freedom in committing your life to the One who made you, loves you and gave Himself to take away your sin. Anything less than giving God the Master key robs Him, you and others of understanding His transforming power to deal with all forms of sin including prejudice.

Blessings multiplied,
bud

Losing Your Life for His Purposes

by Os Hillman

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it. ~ Luke 9:24

When the time came for God to fulfill Joseph's dreams, Joseph himself had virtually no interest at all in it.Jesu's said, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for Me will save it" (Lk. 9:24). God wants to teach us a different set of values so that the kind of thing we start out wanting becomes secondary. God has something in mind for us that is far greater than the interest we began with.

Joseph's day of exaltation had arrived. Yet, through it all, a very real humiliation had to take place. We know about the humiliation Joseph had experienced for 13 years after being sold by his brothers into slavery, then taken to Egypt. We know how he was falsely accused and cast into prison.

Then came a different situation. Joseph had had a triumph and was given an exaltation, but the kind he really never asked for. He did not appear to be all that interested in what was about to happen. He watched as the Pharaoh took his ring off his finger and put it on Joseph's finger. Joseph never asked for that. All he wanted was to go home. He longed to go back to Canaan, to see his father, and to have his dreams fulfilled.

Therefore, here we find an extraordinary incongruity: a humiliation in the heart of vindication. A triumph that was the opposite of everything he, himself, could have envisaged. Joseph wanted to go home, but a one-way ticket to Canaan wasn't available. Before he knew it, he had Egypt in his hip pocket. He had never prayed for that. But God wanted Egypt. What God wanted is what Joseph got.

Joseph was given something that he could be trusted with because it didn't mean that much to him. [R.T. Kend all, A Treasury of Wisdom Journal (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour and Company, 1996), January 16 day reading, email books< barbour@tusco.net>].