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Racism Paper

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Aaron Riehle March 30, 2011 Racism Paper Prof. Thompson Racism is the systematic oppression and exploitation of human beings on the basis of their belonging to a particular racial group or people. “Systematic” indicates that we must look at the status of the group as a whole, and not at those few individuals who may have climbed a “ladder of success” in the white society. The word “systematic” also connotes practices and policies which are pervasive, regardless of whether they are intentional or unintentional. Racism is different from individual prejudice because it requires the possession of genuine power in a society. So racism is not merely prejudice, but prejudice with power. Once a colonial system is established historically, …show more content…

To be ignorant of racism is to assure that we cannot move beyond it. Multicultural education is valid only when the racism that has denied minority cultures is first confronted and studied. The trouble with most attempts at multicultural education is that they lack an anti-racist thrust. In the US multicultural education all too often fails to address questions of racism. There are some things from the course that I think are important to talk about as well. Some things from articles that really stuck in my mind are, like in chapter one of the book it talks about how people are afraid to talk about racism because it makes them feel like they are going to say the wrong thing and offend people. To overcome this we need to talk about racism often and in many different places. I also thought it was interesting about how many lies or textbooks have told us. Mainly about how Columbus didn’t really discover the Americas, he conquered them. I also think the article the news media Monopoly. It talked about how these big corporations don’t even compete anymore. They all also share many of the same CEOs and are all in some form of collusion. Big companies also get a lot of government help. They pay for high priced lobbyists to persuade. The only true business left is the small business. I have learned many new things in this class. Many things that will help me become more of an ally to people of color,

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