The United States has had a long and contentious history with its ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities since the very origins of the country. From whipping slaves in the cotton fields to sending Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II, our nation has left behind a troubled legacy that hinders our progress towards becoming a true "melting pot" culture. We have come a long way since the days of slavery and Jim Crow, but there are still many issues that our country needs to come to terms with as we enter a more diverse and cosmopolitan age.

Racial Profiling

While the overt bigotry of slavery and the Jim Crow laws has largely been done away with, racial profiling still lingers on as an ominous specter over African Americans and other minority communities like Latino Americans and particularly since 9/11, Arab Americans. Owing to the inertia of a criminal justice system rooted in a less progressive past, blacks are more likely to get arrested than their white counterparts for committing the same crime and their neighborhoods specifically are more heavily monitored by the authorities. This issue also ties in with the ongoing nightmare that is police brutality and the need for a group like Black Lives Matter to continue pointing out and spreading awareness of this injustice within our country.

Discrimination of Gay/Trans People in the Workplace

It is true that the LGBT community gained a major victory last year with the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples were guaranteed the same right to marriage as traditional heterosexual couples. However the community still has to contend with a lot of bigoted push-back from across the country. Over 29 states do not provide any sort of employment protection to LGBT workers, so you can get married anywhere you want but in a majority of the country, you aren't guaranteed a stable job based on the employer's whims.

Gender Pay Equity

While men and women have come closer to reaching that ideal equal state than ever before, men are still placed on a higher pedestal than women in a number of ways. One issue that should be addressed is the pay gap between the two genders. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), women were paid 79 cents for every dollar men made back in the year 2015. Even though this issue is not limited to the United States, as no country in the world thus far has been able to achieve pay equity, this is just one of many areas we should act on in recognizing men and women as true equals.

The Continued Plight of Native Americans

Ever since the arrival of Columbus, the native peoples who have been living here for thousands of years have received nothing but the short end of a cruel, wicked stick from the European settlers and future United States. Everything from smallpox to forced conversions to Christianity, deportations, genocide, and the overall destruction of their ways of life have left the Native Americans forever scarred and without a Civil Rights movement of their own to highlight the pain they've endured. The struggle continues today as an oil company destroys the burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe just to build another worthless pipeline and releases the hounds on anyone who challenges them. Now more than ever, these people deserve our support.

Prejudice Against Religious "Nones"

Even though irreligious Americans like myself are not remotely in the same danger as those living in places like Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia, we still do face a decent amount of scorn from the more devout general public. Despite religious tests being ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, seven states still have laws on the books that prohibit atheists from running for office. If these laws had applied to any other group of people, the backlash would be swift and furious (and rightly so), but because we just so happen to be one of the most distrusted groups in the country, there's hardly a cricket chirp in response. With that said, I remain hopeful that as the number of irreligious people continues to grow, there will be a greater understanding amongst our God-fearing brethren (including former presidential candidate John Kasich) that they have nothing to fear from their fellow nonbelievers.