History Of Racism In USA And How We Can Combat It Today (Term Paper Sample)

RACISM
Institution:
Name:
Racism may be defined as a belief that a certain race or ethnicity is either superior or inferior to others. It involves different acts where a particular group of people is treated unfavorable may be because of their color, nationality, race nor ethnic origin. It may involve name calling, stereotyping or even insulting. It may also involve commentary probably in the media and speeches at public. A good example is the speech of US president Donald Trump which has brought nothing less than hatred between Africans and United States.
Racism is known to emerge in early 1902 when U.S developed a policy tackling Native Americans. The term racism in the social science is new (Barot $ Bird 2001). There are two development that made the term racism popular; to start with the first development, which was rumors against the racial eugenics as well as anti- Semitism which was targeting Germany’ s Jewish people back 1930s and also during the era of second world war (Blaut 1992). The second development that made racism popular originated from U. S activists back 1960s. From the activists’ point of view, political independence gained from former African colonies as well as Asia colonies was of no important at all since did not change economic conditions of the newly established independent states (Nkrumah 1965). Victories of United states civil rights did not change the economic inequality which existed between white Americans and black Americans. Moreover, the movements safeguarding civil rights did not have particular strategies to eliminate the covert. Therefore, the hierarchy of racism was exercised in different ways in the Midwest and northern parts of united states. These problems were the foundation of “black power” criticism in their movements of fighting for their civil rights (Levy 1998). Martin Luther Jr.and southern Christian leadership conference addressed these problems though their attempts were unsuccessful and did not chance the idea of economic inequality (Ralph 1993). Therefore, they needed to establish a better way of expressing what they were against and also how to go about for changes to happen. This paper has two core objectives: The first thing is to see various forms of racism and the second thing is to evaluate whether we can eliminate racism among ourselves or not.
In this paper we are going to base our arguments in three common forms of racism: Individual, cultural and institutional racism. To begin with, individual racism is somehow related to prejudice (Jones 1997). Although prejudice is conceptualized to be an attitude, its scale in most cases include items that are used to determine elements of racism. For instance, to come up with a statement that brings in group differences, defining one group inferior or superior and coming up with policies that strengthen group differences are very key when it comes to definition of individual racism (Brigham 1993). From Brigham’s point of view, individual racism manifests itself either by overtly or covertly. Moreover, individual racism can openly be expressed by someone who needs to fulfil his or her personal needs. Therefore, in the event where groups are categorized by race, then racism takes its path (west 1993).
According to Sears theory of symbolic racism and Mcconahay theory of modern racism, the negative feeling that whites developed towards African Americans in early years, has chances of persisting into adulthood. However, their expression is indirect and symbolic mostly in terms of resistance and opposition to busing. Furthermore, McConahay (1986) and Sears indicated that as it pertains aversive racism, there is observation of negative effects of symbolic and modern racism which manifests itself when discrimination brings itself out on basis of other factors apart from race. This opens door to institutional form of racism.
Institutional racism may include different effects of practices, laws and policies on individuals of a particular racial group. It can originate from intentional racism; For example, limiting or reducing immigrations by assuming superiority or inferiority of the other groups. This is meant to motivate someone to provide resources to his or her group only. For example, Caucasian Americans came up with racial ideas that aided to justify the law which opened a way for them to acquire two crucial forms of economic exploitation i.e. slavery and take away lands from marginalized tribes (Klinker $ smith 1999). Typically, this form of racism is recognized as unfair to races since it takes into considerations laws that are assumed to be right and probably moral to races. This form of racism is ritualized and it has some racial ideologies that favors one’s perspective view of things. According to Cox (1993), institutional racism is not particularly intentional or race based but its operation is inferred from systematic disparate results between ethnic groups which can be identified by unfair policies. These effects seem to appear economical (Jones 1997). Jones also claimed that” racial ideologies and values often become so deeply embedded in the fiber of one’s culture that they begin to define what is moral and appropriate to the society.” This phenomenon is commonly referred to as cultural racism which we are going to discuss below.
Cultural racism occurs when one groups has powers to dictate cultural values to be used or followed by society (Allport 1954). This racism does not only revolve around the culture, values and heritage of one’s group but also undermining the culture of other groups. The term “cultural racism” has been used historically and to date with raising frequency to capture attention to racism as social customs, behavior and manner, moral beliefs, religion among other activities (Halstead 1988). For this matter, this form of racism involves prejudicial to other group or individuals simply because of their cultural values (Thomas 1991). The results of this form of racism is that minor groups may be forced to adopt cultural practices of the majority hence become assimilated (Halstead 1988).
Having discussed deeply on how racism is exercised in our society, we now come to the big question of whether we can combat racism. My answer is simply yes! We can stop racism through three major ways. First, we need to educate ourselves on racism as much as we can. secondly, we have to see people next to us, our neighbors as equal and human being as well. Then the final thing to do is to speak up if you see someone embracing racism in the society and in the globe as well.
As we have mentioned above, we need to educate ourselves about...