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Racism And Discrimination Research Paper

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I participated in my philosophers walk with classmate, teammate and friend Jeff Espinal. The questions that I posed for discussion were, what do you think causes humans to be racist and discriminate amongst each other? Why do we feel the need to separate ourselves from others? Will this ever change…in our lifetime maybe? I stumbled upon this topic of racism and discrimination by just contemplating the state of the world today. I picked out the biggest flaws in society and figured this would be worth investigating. I ended up being correct, for this was an enjoyable and enlightening experience that helped me grow my understanding of a sensitive topic through honest dialogue.
Prior to the discussion, I was thinking this was a good, very relevant …show more content…

For example, When I presented my question, Jeff answered by saying that they start with a few people who want to make themselves feel superior to others and then others bandwagon with those few. We contemplated the possibility that one some people see others being discriminated against they capitalize on the situation of others being the valued and use it to forward their own lives. Unfortunately, we came to a conclusion that lots of discrimination and racism comes from misunderstandings and the errors in human nature. Humans are naturally drawn to others and we have a basic, primal need to feel safe and secure. This is problematic for relations with others because if we do not know or understand another person then we are going to put our guard up and distance ourselves from then rather than try to understand them. We also hypothesized that racism occurs because humans are too quick to judge other individuals and that we use racism as an excuse for not learning about other people/cultures. Following this pinnacle in the conversation we thought that when individuals hold nothing in common they tend to distance themselves from each other rather than find something to enjoy together. We looked at this on a micro level by analyzing our own lives. We understood that once you have a group of friends you tend not to venture out as much to meet new people. …show more content…

This being said, my mind was not changed on this topic but rather I was able to see multiple points of views by the end. Additionally, I could understand some roots of racism and discrimination. Jeff helped me to see multiple other sides of the argument, none of which I would have seen on my own without collaboration. I learned many new things but mainly I was just able to understand the idea of racism and discrimination much better. I found through my discussion that racism is a very petty and unnatural thing. Humans are not born to hate but rather are afraid of new things so to secure ourselves we push away those who we do not know or understand and keep our circles closed

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