How and to what Extend can Our Society Defend Our Civil Rights?

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How and to what Extend can Our Society Defend Our Civil Rights?
To a certain degree, there is an unwavering force that wants everyone to belong, perhaps to their ‘race, national origin, sex, religion, or disability’, yet we all need to belong to the mainstream and thus lose our true identity. Fear of stereotyping and sidelining by the society has made everyone culpable, either consciously or unconsciously, as put by Kenji Yoshino, of ‘covering.’ As postulated by Kenji Yoshino, covering has been adopted as a means of repressing “a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream”. The need for conformity has forced many people, especially the minority groups, to assimilate to the white majority in America thus questioning the efficacy of civil rights. Wesley Yang has depicted in his article, "Paper tigers", how Asian-Americans and “faceless Asian kids” strive to fit in the white majority country. In the face of assimilation and covering that has been embraced as a means of promoting peaceful coexistence and social interaction in America, the society has failed in its role to strengthen, complement and defend our civil rights in the wake of increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in the USA by promoting integration and embracing social diversity.
Covering, racial and cultural prejudice and societal stereotyping has denied members of the society a chance to live their lives to full potential both in the social life and workplaces. Federal civil right laws enacted to protect members of the society are blatantly ignored and broken and their point of mere existence questioned. Kenji Yoshino posits that “today, race; national origin, sex, religion, and disability are all protected by federal civil rights laws” (535). These aspects that define the very fabric of our identities and cultural constructs of the society are ignored despite being protected by the federal laws. Good social interaction and peaceful coexistence between members of the society from diverse cultural backgrounds should not be restricted or defined by their ability to cover. The society has failed in embracing the existing cultural differences and instead has underpinned that assimilating and covering to resonate with the mainstream as crucial in eliminating racial discrimination and prejudice. Yoshino portrays a minority society that is increasingly in dire need to assimilate and belong in the mainstream as a way of expressing a sense of belonging . Consequently, society fails to protect the very civil rights meant to protect them as they embrace their diversity. Wesley Yang decodes the ever-growing racial profiling in the corporate ladder using “the ‘Bamboo Ceiling’—an invisible barrier that maintains a pyramidal racial structure throughout corporate America, with lots of Asians at junior levels, quite a few in middle management, and virtually none in the higher reaches of leadership” (7). Yang notes that despite the impressive number of Asian-Americans graduating from Ivy-League universities in comparison to other racial groups, only a meager number ever gets to the top management in big corporations. The so...