Missionaries of the Sacred

As a country, we have made significant progress is overcoming discrimination, and we’d probably rather think that issues like racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are problems of the past. Unfortunately this is not the case. Various forms of discrimination continue to affect us and our children today. For instance, white men are twice as likely to get management jobs as equally qualified black men, and three times as likely as black women. Many employees do not receive equal pay for equal work. For example, the October 2009 Report of the Fourth Annual National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law showed that, on average, female equity partners earn almost $66,000 less than their male counterparts.

Discrimination may not be as obvious now as in the past, but it still exists. Depending on how we were raised, where we live and where we work, we may just have to look a little harder to see it. As one of our staff members remembers “Growing up, I was never discriminated against and don’t recall personally witnessing discrimination. Then, in my senior year, my family hosted a foreign exchange student and I changed schools. I was shocked by the way students and even teachers often treated my host-sister.”

Since we all have equal dignity and worth, we are also called continue to work to overcome the stereotypes and discrimination that violate this dignity.