Kenji Yoshino Equality

843 Words4 Pages

in Kenji Yoshino’s essay “The preface of the new civil rights”, he argues the problems of equality, covering, discrimination, and the legal system. One of the main problems that Yoshino covers in his essay is the ongoing problem of discrimination in the U.S. culture. Everyone feels discrimination in some form which causes everyone to cover. Covering is something people do to protect or conceal who they really are from society. According to Yoshino, the old civil rights is a legal change based on shared oppression whereas the new civil rights requires social change. He believes that we should stop running to the law and start engaging with one another. The old civil rights are limited in achieving civil liberty or freedom. He is arguing for …show more content…

In his introduction to the new civil rights, Yoshino tells us that we basically need to come together as one in order for the old civil rights to be done away with. “For this reason, I do not think we can move forward by focusing on old-fashioned group-based identity politics. We must instead build a new civil rights paradigm on what draws us together rather than on what drives us apart” (540). With this, Yoshino goes into the first strand of detail about how we need to demolish the old civil rights. We need to be drawn together as opposed to driven apart. Covering due to discrimination is what causes us to be driven apart. If there was no discrimination we’d be together as one. But, it’s not as simple as it sounds. As previously stated people need to take other’s feelings into consideration. For example, the gay community is one of the highest most discriminated social groups. People hide their sexuality to fit in and to not be judged by society. If everyone worried about themselves there would be no discrimination. If we could all just build each other up instead of tearing each other down, those would be the first steps into creating Yoshino’s new civil rights.We need to show each other that we all care. Everyone covers something and everyone wants to be able to feel like themselves so, if we just all just take everyone 's feeling into consideration it wouldn 't be hard to