Protection through Discrimintion

At the end of the novel, The Great Gatsby, Tom and Daisy are protected from any actions they had performed earlier that would have caused them to be labeled as disreputable. Nick thought that "they were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures"( Fitzgerald 187), but he knew that nothing could be done because they could just "retreat back into their money or vast carelessness" (Fitzgerald 188). Tom and Daisy are shielded from the punishments of their actions simply because they are rich. If it were someone poor or of low status who was having an affair, he or she would have surely had their reputation slandered or even ended up dead. This clear example of discrimination can be compared to that of how white people are treated compared to other racial groups. In a study using FBI data, John Roman found that "in non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent" (Childress). The graph below also shows that blacks who kill whites have a much lower percentage of being found justifiable than a white person killing another white person in both Stand Your Ground and non Stand Your Ground states. A Stand Your Ground state is a state that has a law that doesn't require someone to run before fighting back.

Another example of this racial discrimination can be seen in the media. Often times when someone from a minority group, such as a Muslim, is found the be the cause of a shooting or other horrific event, they are portrayed in the media as a "terrorist" and that racial group gets ostracized. However if it is a white person who performs a similar crime, the media uses kinder words such as "troubled" or "disturbed". Similar to how Tom is protected because he was born into wealth and status, these people are protected simply because they were born white rather than something else.