Racial Stereotyping In Jodi Picoult's Small Great Things

(175). I noticed that people have been conditioned to see people of color in a certain light. Some people do not know that what they see in the media is just a fabrication and that people are more complex than what they see on the

Race is a social structure created by dominant groups that minoritize individuals. Race is not genetically or biologically defined. With race we also have racialization which is a concept that we imply on a person based on their race without being sure of the concept. Due to racialization and races came the idea of racism. Racism was conceived by the white supremacists that believed to be superior to the minoritized groups that they oppressed. It made the minoritized groups rivals against each other due to the class differences that they were divided by. After racism occurred, people were set into different classes that defined their social status. The social status defined who the person was, how they were treated, and what their everyday life was like for them living in their own community. Due to the whites being at the top of the social hierarchy, they become ignorant about

Race has been a part of people's judgement since its inception. We've heard many different situations of times where race has affected what people can do, how they're treated, and much more. A lot of the time, race is the first thing you notice about a person. When describing a person, race is often the first thing you tell someone. For a bulk of the 20th century, people in the United States were seperated by race. There were water fountains for just white people or an area of the buses just for black people. A lot of the times, this was because the majority of white people didn't want to mix with the black people. The black schools were often worse, as were the entrances and areas of the bus. This was eventually ended and is no longer around

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

There is a misconception that race is a biological concept, races refer to subspecies, and no subspecies exist within the modern Homo sapiens. In the historical context, race was created to understand the difference between populations by the phenotype of skin colour, body size, head shape and hair texture. This took a turn for the worst by creating a hierarchical framework of certain populations, for instance, white Europeans being the superior compared to native populations of Indigenous people, who were exploited and enslaved throughout North and South America. This is racism a socially constructed word by individuals reacting on the basis of social stereotypes instead of scientific fact, such as behavioural characteristic is not biology,

It ruins the day to day cooperation, promotes hate and war among neighbors, social injustice practices, decrease the rate of productivity at work, and promotes fear and tension in our lives. It is destroys what we have built, and argues that the quality of a human being is based on the color of their skin and not the content of one 's behaviors and acts. According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, Racism is defined as, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”. It is the most arrogant form of pride. It can be cultural, systematic, individual or even institutional. On the other hand, there is stereotypes. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines them as, “an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic. “Racism and stereotype are often confusing and many people have misused or misunderstood one or the other while others have argued that stereotype is a form of racism.

Racism isn’t hating someone because of their race. Prejudice is not a misconception of who a person is. Racism is being prejudiced because a person believes their race is superior; and, prejudice is a preconceived opinion not based on any prior experience. In other words, racism is when a person has a preconceived opinion about another person because they feel their race is superior. Racism and prejudice are probably two of the most talked about and controversial words 60 years ago and still today. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and Martin L. King marched on Selma they didn’t think we would still be in such a place today; we are in a place where people are not allowed to be themselves without facing judgment. This is the same prejudice and racism members of society face in schools, by students and educators which limits their ability to progress in a world full of competition and rise above what demographics say they are destined to become. As the great Charles Albert Tindley once said, “We Shall Overcome!”

Our society sometimes creates certain images and ideas that then is hard to get rid of. When we see something on television we tend to believe it. For example, media portrays a black man as a criminal, we get that image stuck in our brains, and it is what we then believe. Thus, whenever a black man is running, armed or not, they could possibly be in danger of getting shot because they could look suspicious (Cush). This image is so ingrained in our minds that even black police officers fear for their lives. A statement by an undercover detective says, “My greatest fear is being shot by a fellow cop, not by a suspect” (Cush). A black man, or anyone of color, does not deserve to be stereotyped because of the images we see on a television. Some people claim to not have a racial bias but claim there is a reason to fear someone based on race. For example, “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life… than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved” (Kennedy). That man believes that he has a higher risk of being robbed by a black man than a white man, this would be true in say a place where there was a higher black population but is still unjust. Race does not dictate what people do and this is just another example of someone stereotyping a human being.

Racism can be “defined as the hatred of one person by another or the belief that another person is less than human because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes” (“What”). The face of racism over the past 50 years has changed but yet, some still stay the same. People made laws against racism and it is not as blunt anymore. But opinions and stereotypes will remain which will cause others to still be treated differently.

When we hear the word "race" we're more than likely inclined to automatically think of the color of someone's skin. Though this isn't entirely inappropriate, there is so much more to race than that. Sociologists say that race is a social construction created in society, meaning it's basically a set of "stories" we tell ourselves and hear overtime to make sense of the world. Since we hear these stories over and over again, we act on them, ultimately making them true. This can be said of many aspects of culture and society, however, it seems to happen with race without our realization.

Racism is defined as the systematic subordination of certain racial groups by those groups in power . As a society, we must first eradicate ignorance in order to defeat racism. We must acknowledge that people have different ways of viewing the world and that even though someone may have a different opinion than you, it is not necessarily wrong. The idea that people have different ways of viewing the world stems from standpoint theory. Standpoint theory is based on the concept that people view the world differently depending on their social standing . A central theme of standpoint theory is that a person’s racial and or ethnic background deeply impacts how they view and interact with the world . Racial

Webster defines racism as poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race and the belief that some races of people are better than others, this leads to the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capabilities and that racial differences produce a superiority in a particular race. (Webster) With modern thinking and understanding we now know that this is truly not the case. Even in today 's society we still have a racial bias towards groups of people. In a classic study a group of people were shown a photograph with a white man fighting another white man who had a knife. After shown the photograph people were able to identify the correct person wielding the knife. When shown another

     Racism is really another word for ignorance. It's another way of saying that nature should have had only one type of flower or tree. It's another way of looking at the world with your eyes closed to diversity and change. Racism is another word for fear. Fear of the unknown is understandable, of course, and for many of us those of different races and creeds are the great unknown. Most of us are brought up in a particular environment with a particular type of people. For example, let me give you some statistics that I got from the US Census Bureau, on a large scale we have a total of 2,100,562 people in Utah, 1,999,509 of which are white that is 95%. There is only 18,613 total blacks, that is not

The origins of racism go as far back as the 1600’s. During the Enlightenment, people began to think that the human race should be unified and not separated by race. According to George M. Fredrickson, a professor at Stanford, “the climax of the history of racism came in the twentieth century in the rise and fall of what might be called overtly racist regimes.” The racist regimes that he is talking about are the main axis powers in World War Two. Based on this quote, the climax of racism was then, and has slowly gone down since. We as humans tend to categorize everything from colors to the amount of money someone makes or the ethnicity that someone is. We learn to categorize as early as preschool with colors, numbers, and shapes. Therefore, separating Caucasians from African-Americans and African-Americans from Native

Racism has taken place around the world for many centuries and is a concept that will never be fully eradicated but can be controlled or reduced. Every culture and society has at some point been the victim or perpetrator of racism and discrimination. Living in North America, the idea of racism is completely taboo but unfortunately even in the most developed and diverse places on earth, racism still exists and is not likely to go away anytime soon. Much racism is an extension of threat, an emotion that is instinct to us, as the idea of equality fringes upon one’s expectation of privilege and power for being a native of their own country. Discrimination is natural amongst human beings but unfortunately fuels racist thoughts, so if discrimination exists technically racism will too and stereotypes which were created to classify behaviours of certain races exists and as long people from that culture fall victim and become a stereotype themselves, racist thoughts will exist. Although we’ve come a long way, discrimination is almost built into our brains especially since it’s a concept we’ve been taught from a young age and can be mediated but will never completely be eliminated.