Racial Bias And The United States Essay

Racial bias, defined as “unreasonably hostile feelings or opinions about a social group” by Dictionary.com in which the social groups are different races, has been a problem for a long time, and it still exsts today. People cannot ignore the truth that is being shoved in our faces on the media. There are multiple examples of racial bias in the criminal justice system. If you don't believe this, here are some statistics by the Huffington Post: In a California study, the ACLU found blacks three times more likely to be stopped than whites, African Americans are arrested for drug offenses at rates 2 to 11 times higher than whites stated in a May 2009 report by Human Rights Watch, the U.S. Sentencing Commission in March 2010 stated that, in the

America has had discrimination against minorities for a long time and it will continue to have it until people treat minorities with respect. Discrimination is when people treat minorities bad because of their skin color, ethnicity and the place they were born. For immigrants, the problems they had to arrive to America were not a good experience only by the struggle to gain acceptance among the population. Most immigrants came to the U.S. to have a better life and give education to their children. Almost all immigrants have experienced discrimination at some point in their life and even some are still experiencing it today. Most Latinos don’t have a choice but to deal with it because they know they are illegal and they can’t say anything

Across the nation, millions of Americans of all races turn on the television or open a newspaper and are bombarded with images of well dressed, articulate, attractive black people advertising different products and representing respected companies. The population of black professionals in all arenas of work has risen to the point where seeing a black physician, attorney, or a college professor are becoming more a common sight. More and more black people are holding positions of respect and authority throughout America today, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice and many other prominent black executives. As a result of their apparent success, these black people are seen as role models for many Americans, despite their race.

White people have a 65% higher per capita income than African Americans. This is why we must look at the causes of this racial bias and the effects. We cannot ignore the obvious disadvantages minorities face in America. When examining the ways that systemic racial bias affects the lives of Americans, it is important to first define what systemic racial bias actually is. For the purposes of this research paper, it is the tendency of racism to exist in a specified process. Throughout the past centuries, the presence of this bias changed significantly but not disappeared. In an age of media at every turn, the can influence so much and be so powerful. Unfortunately, one of the most apparent outlets of systemic racial bias is this proclaimed media, which tends to reflect and produce social perceptions of Americans and results in impacts on all Americans.

Grab the remote and take a seat. Put your feet up, and get comfortable. Now, turn on the television. What do you see? One day it is a police officer killing an innocent African American, and the next it is a crazy white man shooting and killing a mass of African American's. Notice a pattern? Every single news channel on television today broadcasts half of the truth. Yes, there are murders occurring. However, there is more to it than meets the eye. The media is racially bias, because they only report news stories where African American's are innocent, not where they are the culprits or killers.

“E Pluribus Unum”, “Out of Many, One”; Originally used to suggest that out of many colonies or states shall emerge a single unified nation, but over the years it has become the melting pot of the many people, races, religions, cultures and ancestries that have come together to form a unified whole, and even though America prides itself on being this melting pot racism is still alive and well today. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, the country that calls to so many; calling to them with the promise of freedom and prosperity, to live their lives as they see fit. As stated in the National Anthem, America is "the land of the free and the home of the brave." America is the country where dreams can come true. So if America has

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

Coupled with this information and this next quote from The Atlantic it is clear that police make a connection between African Americans and disorder. This is unreasonable because, as these statistics show, “Despite the racial disparity in stops, the Ferguson police department was more likely to find "contraband" on the white people they stopped and searched than on the black ones.” (Alexis Madrigal) In other words, blacks who are searched are less likely to be found with illegal substances compared to white people who are searched. The Ferguson police department officers are accusing African Americans without acceptable evidence. With that, we need to look at the way officers are being trained and how they react in certain scenarios and make dramatic changes to help put an end to this racist behavior. If courts let officers get away with these actions there is nothing stopping other police officers in other cities from doing the same. We know the statistics and they show a clearly biased task force and court system.

Present day world has made progress in different fields of life but we are still shackled by discrimination and racism which is ongoing cold war prevailing in our society. Various emotional factors leading to racial bias are anger, fear, disgust, repulsion, inhuman behavior and prejudice. Two cognitive factors include confirmation bias and victim blaming. Two social factors include, conformity and unconscious factors like acceptance in the society. Cognitive factors basically deal with a person’s way of perceiving things, attention, language use and thinking about an issue. Confirmation bias involves direct influence or favoring of desire on beliefs. This also favors information that confirms previously existing beliefs and biases. Victim blaming

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"The legacy of past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure." - Stanford Historian George Frederickson.

Most genetic variety is not between races, but within races. For example, two Germans are as likely to be as genetically different as a German and an African. However some people still believe that races can be superior to one another and a certain type of people maybe more intelligent or more eligible to rule the world than the rest. In the United States racism started along with the establishment of the country. From the Native Americans in the 17th century to Muslims, Mexicans and Latinos now, America has been one of the most diverse, yet most racist countries in the world. If you tried to define racism using Cambridge dictionary, the definition will be “the belief that people 's qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races.” In order for racism to occur, there must be a dominant ethnic group which tries to exclude and eliminate the rest of the groups based on this belief. On the other hand, these other groups, minorities, represent a large part of the workforce, student population, university professors and every other major part of the community. In the United States these minorities are not getting the same treatment they deserve with no proper explanation despite their tremendous effort in the establishment and the development of this country. Hate crimes against minorities, racist police brutalities, ethnic stereotyping, and fear of

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The population of the United States of America has been one of mixed race since its very beginning. Boatload upon boatload of enslaved Africans provided a labor force which would fuel the American South’s economy for many years, until national abolition and the subsequent civil rights movement created a primarily biracial population of blacks and whites. The US has come a long way since those days, and today every child born into the US is taught from an early age the evils of racism and the shameful actions committed by slave-owning US citizens in the past. From textbooks to televisions, the modern USA seemingly works tirelessly to teach its population that discrimination by race is wrong and that all races are equal. This has led to a great national complacence among whites, and a widespread belief that the US has mostly eradicated racial prejudices. But it is not so, and despite a population almost entirely composed of people who would not consider themselves racists, racism still pervades in the US. In many cases modern racism occurs at the hands of whites who almost absolutely are completely unaware of their discriminatory actions. In the films “Frozen River” and “The Visitor” racism was touched on repeatedly and played an evident part in the messages they were trying to portray.

Black youths arrested for drug possession are 48 times more likely to wind up in prison than white youths arrested for the same crime under the same circumstances. Many people are unaware how constant racism has been throughout the years. It is important to understand the problems of racism because it is relevant to society. Racism in America is very real and Americans need to know it.