Racism In Planet Of Slums

According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a “citizenship is the common thread that connects all Americans” (“Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities”). However, regardless of possessing a citizenship, there is an apparent divide in race, highlighted in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, as the author exposes the daily experiences of having dark skin in the United States, which can strip the feeling of being American for people. For every citizen to feel like a true citizen of America, a citizenship should not be the only “thread that connects all Americans” (“Citizenship”). Rather, each citizen should have the common feeling of belonging to society, which is accomplished by people fulfilling their

Racism is a socially constructed concept used by multiple groups of people and creates a hierarchy of sorts based purely on the color of a person’s skin or their cultural origins. It has been an idea that has existed since the beginnings of civilization. A more modern iteration of this concept was made prominent in the 16th century as European settlers began to explore different areas of the world, specifically areas in or around Africa. But slavery can be seen back in the 1500s all the way to 1880 and was most likely a leading example of what helped define racism up to the 20th century. In Ali Rattansi’s book, “Racism: A Very Short Introduction” , the author connects how slavery and race are closely tied together. European explorers would ignore the cultures the invaded in order to see these people as nothing more than native groups that were meant to be seen in a subservient role. Slavery would continue to grow across the Atlantic and seen as an institution that created large amounts of wealth for those who could reap the benefits from it. As long as money was being made, slavery persisted and was justified. Race and racism was conceived the way it was because the slave owning system was controlled by European colonizers.

Neoliberal reforms are, “economic changes focused on opening up the economy to global markets and reducing state spending on social welfare” (Golash-Boza). The U.S. created many neoliberal reforms with South America allowing for the trade of American goods. One very well know reform would be the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This reform eradicated tariff barriers between Mexico and the U.S. and caused mass unemployment in Mexico. The eradication of tariffs meant that Mexican farmers were unable to compete with the prices of

While coming up with a topic for this paper, one of my questions dealt with war and cultural groups. I will be the first to admit, Racism was the last thing on my mind. The original question being, “How does war affect a Social Culture and how does it stand today?” When I started thinking about Cultures that had been so deeply affected by war, one of the first that came to mind were the Japanese in World War II. Then I recalled what one person had told me of their younger days at college, when they were attending school. Their name will remain anonymous; I do not want to make the victim’s name public as it has a very personal nature.

Today’s world is characterized by a global environment of rootlessness. Political upheavals, poverty, and opportunity cause populations to shift and move, and people that are citizens of one country to move to another. The resulting disconnect between the traditions of their homeland that they have internalized, experiencing these as “home,” and the new environment that they move to where the culture is vastly different calls into question what “home” really is, and what citizenship means.

If one were to drive down any random road in South Carolina today, they might spot a Confederate Flag hanging proudly from a building or a house or even a national monument. The ones who support the display of this flag say that it is more to do with cultural history than racism, however, the history that this flag represents is what motivated Dylann Roof to kill nine innocent people in a South Carolina church in 2015. In this day and age, how did something like the Charleston church shooting massacre occur? This essay will explain how racism, although not as common as it was in the past, still exists today and how this racism is connected to the story of Dylann Roof. Although certain racist laws, such as Jim

This issue of racism is popular by name but tends to be sugar coated by the way people see it. In order to truly understand racism you need to take a bite into the topic in order to get a taste of what it is really like. Racism comes in many different forms and can be seen many different ways. But why even care about racism at all? Why does it even matter? One would think that with such a harsh background regarding racism in America it would no longer exist in society today. But sadly that is not the case here, racism continues to show up all over the country sometimes being worse than others but still racism is racism. People should all be considered equal regardless of what they look like, talk like, or even do that makes them who they are.

Environmental inequality, contrary to what we may imagine, is a social and political problem rather than a simple environmental problem. Environmental inequalities are deeply tangled with political, economic structures and institutions; adding more problems to the social inequalities that already affect our daily lives (Brehm, 2013). So, what exactly is environmental inequality? It refers to the fact that low-income people and people of color are disproportionately likely to experience various environmental problems by living in high risk and polluted areas. If we look at this problem closely we realize “that black, white, and Hispanic households with similar incomes live in neighborhoods of dissimilar environmental quality” (Downey, 2008) and that most people who suffer the consequences of living in neighborhoods with high hazard levels are racial minorities. This allows us to conclude that environmental inequality it is also linked to racism.

Explanations that justify the use of racism directly relates to differential treatment of minority groups and contributes to racism’s existence as an unstoppable social problem. The foundations of these explanations are based on the common misunderstanding of the definition of race. Thus, problems that tend to concentrate in one race are mistakenly judged as “race problems”. This judgement leads to the establishment of a system of inequality between a superior race and inferior races. However, the logic behind these explanations don’t account for the true reasoning behind minority individuals value status. In fact, these explanations contribute to minority individuals’ further struggle in life.

In the short story borders by Thomas King, the concept of home is illustrated on the focuses on the nationality and identity of a person rather than the place they call home. The viewpoint of the home creates a diverse idea in which a home is not where one lives but who the view themselves as. This is seen I the interaction of the mother and the border patrol over who she claims her citizenship as. “‘citizenship’? ‘Blackfoot,’ my mother told him” (pg. 257).

The idea of race has been constructed over hundreds of years, with numerous cultural implications arising from this construction. Since Johann Fredrich Blumenbach’s racial hierarchy, the inventor of a “…modern racial classification" (Gould 1994:66), the idea of race as a scientific truth justified slavery, colonisation and other existing racial structures. We see these racial hierarchies with notions of white superiority affecting events around the globe everyday; regardless of the fact that race has been proven as a flawed biological concept, with racial categories a result of ‘pseudo science’. The events following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 are evidence of the racist attitudes that linger in our society, institutionally and in everyday life – racism is more than simply individual attitudes, and is embedded in the social structures of society.

Fundamentally, gender, racism and class are three controversial social issues that have for a long period triggered heated debate in the American society. In essence, this issues concern the daily lives of American citizen and immigrants disregarding their class, social status, educational level or the position they hold in the society. Therefore, it is imperative that these issues are analyzed comprehensively in order to take an informed stand about the impact they have to the society. This paper, seeks to critically examine how gender, racism and class are addressed in the two movies “Bread and Roses “and ”Hammering it”.

Citizenship confers on an individual an ability to participate in democracy such as decision-making and inclusion in policy making processes, (Michels, 2011). Citizenship gives one participatory power; in the decision making process of their country of origin, in the same way citizenship can be a form of capital to an individual. ‘Citizenship constitutes a strategically constructed form of capital which manifests in formal (legal and institutional) and informal (practiced and cultural) forms’’ (Bauder H., 2008:315).’’People who possess a certain form of capital are able to distinguish themselves from others who lack that form of capital’’ (Bauder, 2008:318). Such distinctions can increase gaps in social class orders and increase feelings of relative deprivation between migrant families and non-migrant families (de Haas, 2010).Capital forms the foundation of social life and dictates one’s position within the social

Note: This essay intends to explain the differences in first and third person narratives, highlighting examples within the two stories “Let them call it Jazz” and “A sense of shame”, both of which deal with racism and its subcultures in a first and third person perspective, respectively. The arguments presented are limited to that of first and third person perspectives only.

To understand whether or not racism is learnt, we first have to divulge into the nature of racism. It is usually assumed that racism has been a part of civilisation since civilisation started, that it is embedded into how people work and that no matter what, it will always exist. Another assumption is that racism derives from the capitalism of the slave trade by white elitist men seeking to dehumanize people for economic gain, and used racism as a way to mask their financial motives to justify enslavement as righteous. After anti-slavery movements began to happen, the capitalist motives behind slavery “took on a new form as the justification of the ideology of imperialism” [4].