Should The United States Respond To Social Conditioning And Assimilation?

In 1870, our country was openly very divided on the topic of slavery. As we learn about in our history books, this division of hearts and minds lasted centuries before being “corrected” through the actions of the civil rights movement of 1954-1968. The aforementioned triple header of amendments laid the groundwork for change, but the process of changing the views of the American people took decades and is still occurring. We have all seen in recent news stories how our beloved media likes to spin things one way or another during every newsworthy event involving people of different races, thus leaving the

Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown all these names are well-known in the black community of America. In today’s era where we recently had an African-American as the President of the United States, does that mean America has become post-racial? As former President Obama said in his farewell address “... such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.” So after 152 years of slavery abolishment and forty-nine years have elapsed since the Civil Rights Movement, why is America still avoiding the fact that racism is still prevalent? In the novel Night by Elie Wiesel depicts racism perfectly: indifference is worse than hatred. Racism is still rife in America whether

Did the Age of Jim Crow ever end? Americans see “race” as a defined, indubitable feature of nature. Racism- the act of ascribing bone deep features to people to then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them- inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. White supremacist ideals, for instance, espouse unfounded ideas that revere the white man and scorn those of color, while also serving as a nonsensical justification for practices such as slavery, racial segregation, and Jim Crow. In “The Trouble with Diversity”, Walter Benn Michaels dismisses the concept and veracity behind race, as if it weren’t a societal issue worth addressing. To ignore the reality of race would be the equivalent of ignoring the plight and shared experiences of minority groups. “The Trouble with Diversity” insinuates that “diversity” is incompatible with the society we live in; this does not mean that people of color should have to encounter racial prejudices, whether in subtle or discernible ways.

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

Assimilation is the manner in which people of a cultural group start to lose their individuality that makes them different from the more dominant culture, as they seek to fit in. America has been a melting pot of different cultures for centuries, whether it was by choice, forced or for a better life. History has proven that assimilation in America was not acceptable but that has changed over time.

My third concept is classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a learning process through a response by a previous stimulus. I will focus on classical conditioning in humans at the homeless resource center.

Reading Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley, readers are led to a dystopia in which the World State takes control over everything including reproduction, consumption and the most important of all‐conditioning. Although Lenina and Linda are not the main characters that bring the story to its climax, they play significant roles in the story as they represent the people being affected by the World State conditioning.

In the year 2008 the world was a much different place. Before countless racial protests and riots in streets, before NFL players knelt during the National Anthem for what they believed in, and before our president spoke of nonsensical chauvinistic principles on a regular basis, our country appeared to have a greater sense of unification. This unifying bond between the American people was due in part by Barack Obama, whose entire campaign to become president may have been the most difficult struggle for anybody in the lineage of presidential candidates to go through. As part of his strategy to win over voters and soothe the skepticism of whites who may have had any doubting questions, Obama gave this speech on race; a speech which still

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was enacted by the 88th United States Congress, outlawing any discrimination in the United States. With the Civil Rights Act, and the election America’s first Black president Barack Obama, in 2008, America was gradually becoming a post-racial society after a long history of racism that dates back to the 17th century. History, in conjunction with current events, exposes how America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is nowhere near a post-racial society because of white privilege, a broken system, and a new form of slavery; all created by the majority of the United States.

“Racism still occupies the throne of our nation,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pronounced just before his assassination. Almost fifty years later, we are still faced with the same unchanged threat that makes the words of Dr. King true. As individuals, communities, and a proud nation we have made an everlasting fingerprint for the children of our future, yet we lack the strength of acknowledgment to alter the course of racial discrimination and conquer prejudice. Has the formation of structural discrimination rooted itself too deeply into our subconscious that hope for rehabilitation seems unattainable? As a nation, we voted a man with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya as the first multiracial President of the United States. Racism has not been eradicated because of the racial background of President Barrack Obama and we have not accomplished victory because of his African decent because prejudice has been too deeply fixed within our society. Social circumstance and the insinuation of race continue to change over time, precisely because race has become a social construct that serves political ends. The prior and present leaders of our nation organize, generate, and endorse the laws and public policy that ensure racism continues to maintain itself against people of color. Our historically racist foundation, the rising effects of structural discrimination, and the view of modernized racism all actively participate in shaping our structural

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

Post-racial is an adjective that denotes or relates to a period of society in which racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist. Many believe this is a term applicable to the current state of America. The popularity of this term in correlation to American society blew up when the 44th president of America, Barak Obama, was elected in 2008 making him the first African American president in this country. This was a revolutionary election in history which gave hope and a newfound perspective for many young African Americans who have been searching to see a role model resembling their own skin color and for old African Americans who survived the unjust prejudices inflicted by governmental law only decades ago. Martin Luther King’s great dream for his children to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the character of their person was finally granted, and America has finally overcome all racial issues. Everyone could finally rejoice and walk the country truly free knowing race could no longer hold any obstacle or boundary for the people of America, right? Unfortunately, that idea is far from the truth. This idea that America is now a post racial society has even been denounced by Obama himself in a commencement ceremony at Howard University. The president states that his election did not create a post racial society, though he does note it is important to note and respect progress ("Remarks by the President at Howard University

Today many people believe that we have obtained racial equality. However there are multiple reasons and statistics that contradict those arguments . For decades African Americans has been deprived of basic rights, “If America had racial equality in education and jobs, African Americans would have two million more high school degrees…(Raines)”. There are many drastic racial gaps from education to owning property. Throughout America’s history blacks have been limited, when it comes to education, property, and other things. If people truly believe that after four hundred years of enslavement and limited rights, can be fixed within one generation they are wrong. The African American community has faced

When I was in my psychology class in high school, we spent a month talking about classical conditioning and we did many interesting experiments involving it. We also touched on operant conditioning and social learning, so I have some background knowledge in this subject. Classical and operant conditioning, along with social learning, are all ways to teach animals or humans how to behave. These theories developed because psychologists wanted to understand why people behave the way they do and many famous experiments have been conducted to answer this question. It was very interesting to learn more about these theories and how they work, and relating them to my own personal experiences.