Who is Responsible for Race-Ethnic Discrimination? An Examination of the Roles of the US Federal Government on Two Sides of an Enduring Problem

Abstract

This research is designed to contribute to ideas and logic regarding attempts to resolve the problem of race-ethnic discrimination in the United States. Ethnic discrimination was already present in the land that eventually became the USA as native Indian tribes discriminated against and warred against one another on account of their otherness. The arrival of Europeans and Africans added to the existing cultural diversity in the land with additional “otherness” and consequential inter-otherness discrimination throughout the period of British rule. Upon gaining independence, the new government of the newly formed country developed a series of social structures that consecrated otherness and discrimination among the people of the new nation. With the passage of time and social change, the government began to dismantle its discriminatory structures. This study examined the structures of the US government in the establishment and the eradication of racial-ethnic discrimination and put the onus of responsibility for eliminating it squarely on the federal government. This is based on the assumption that the macro structures of the federal government determine what is legitimately accepted and possible at the meso, micro, and idio structural levels. Hence, it is the permissiveness of the federal macro structures for race-ethnic discrimination that allowed the problem to metastasize into all other levels of social structures.