Discrimination in the United States
Open-knowledge reference entry
Discrimination comprises "base or the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit, especially to show prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or a similar social factor". This term is used to highlight the difference in treatment between members of different groups when one group is intentionally singled out and treated worse, or not given the same opportunities. Attitudes toward minorities have been marked by discrimination in the history of the United States. Many forms of discrimination have come to be recognized in American society, particularly on the basis of national origin, race and ethnicity, non-English languages, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.
History
Racism
Colorism is a form of racially-based discrimination where people are treated unequally due to skin color. It initially came about in the United States during slavery. Lighter skinned slaves tended to work indoors, while dark skinned worked outdoors. In 1865, during the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed and it abolished slavery. This was soon followed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States", and the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that protected the rights to vote for everyone. These Amendments passed during the Reconstruction period extended protection to the newly emancipated slaves.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5282083. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Discrimination in the United States” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.