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Racial Discrimination And Discrimination

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Racism has consistently been used as a way to express hate and to oppress others on the basis of race. In many cases, racism results as acts of violence, such as the events that took place in Charlottesville, VA on August 11-12, 2017. In this regard, racism is often actively and blatantly oppressive and hate filled. However, racism is does not always consist of expressing hate and promoting oppression. Many times, an odd paradigm exists where individuals, many times white people, are trying to repair the division between blacks and whites, but in doing so they are unintentionally racist. Rose demonstrates this in Caroline or Change when she tries indirectly to give Caroline a raise based on Caroline’s status of a black maid. Although, Rose …show more content…

Angelo Corlett defines Roses actions as an example of benevolent racism where “an agent who appears to be doing something good for or with a target because of the target’s ethnicity” (Corlett 28). Hence, Rose attempts to help Caroline but her request becomes offensive because it asks Caroline to do something she is uncomfortable with, taking money from Noah. In turn, Rose’s request only widens the gap between Caroline and Rose instead of bring them together. In this light, Corlett describes how Rose is “epistemically responsible for monitoring herself in regards to the beliefs and attitudes which shape her own moral character when it comes to minimizing her use of ethnic stereotypes which might support ethnic prejudice” (Corlett 37). In other words, Rose has the ability to prevent herself from being benevolently racist by considering how her request might be received by Caroline. In this respect, it becomes the agent’s responsibility to think about the cause of their thoughts before acting on them so that the resulting action does not discriminate based on ethnicity.
However, sometimes an individual’s personal experience and culture can blind them and prevent from considering possible consequences to their actions and how their actions might be received as offensive. In this light, the

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