The time span of the alien discrimination is a sign of the longevity ofdiscrimination in the United States and in South Africa. In over 20 years inthe film’s timeline, the condition of the aliens remain horrible. A commonmisconception is that discrimination ended with the death of the Jim Crow era.
The belief that Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy were progenitors ofthe death of racism is exactly the reason racism slips through the crackstoday. Shaila Dewan writes “In each of the study’s 8,000 tests, one white andone minority tester of the same gender and aged, posing as equallywell-qualified renters or buyers, visited the same housing provider oragent…the white tester was usually favored.
” This subdued racism is detrimentalto hardworking men and women who are just trying to make their own version ofthe American Dream a reality. Dewan describes this type of racism as”door-slamming,” an apt term for having a door slammed both literally andfiguratively on an individual or a family. Another instance of discriminationin the current societal climate can be found with sentencing for crimes. TheU.S Sentencing Commission indicates that “African-American men serve longersentences than white men for the same crime” (King).
King further states “theracial disparity can’t be accounted for by whether an offender has a history ofviolence.” The same crime being committed by a black man and a white man willresult in the former receiving a noticeably longer sentence than the latterregardless of prior history. Considering the United States has one of thehighest incarceration rates in the world, it is not surprising why that happensgiven the information from this new article. These studies show thatdiscrimination is not something that can be changed with policy. It is oftenincredibly difficult to identify racism and discrimination—and whenidentified—can be easily passed off with excuses.