The Fallacy Of Racism Essay

The first example of discrimination which causes a huge problem is the discussion of race. Even though the book is written based in the nineties, it was still

Throughout history African Americans have faced and still face many hardships. African American males in particular are often linked to negative statistics and stereotypes. In fact, they suffer more and are victims of racial profiling and racism more than any other ethnic group. Racism has a deeper meaning than most people may think. It goes beyond what the average person may think. Racism can be defined as, the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. In particular, it stems from one person thinking that his or her race is more superior to another.

Over the years, the face of racism has taken on many forms. In present day America, racism is a very taboo subject. It a common view that racism is not a big issue anymore, given the large strides that we, as a country have made towards equality. However, the inequalities that still exist between races point to a different situation. Instead of the blatantly discriminatory acts that our nation has witnessed in the past, modern racism practices are more covert and seemingly nonracial, making this kind of discrimination seem more acceptable and politically correct. The Civil Rights Movement forced society to implement a new, subtler way to perpetuate racial inequality. In Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva describes the justification

Throughout history in America there has always been the idea of racism. When Americans think of racism, they usually think of slavery and that racism is no longer a problem in America. However, this is not the case. Racism is still very apparent in America. It is true that since the end of slavery, the U.S. has made great strides towards becoming a less racist country. In reality, racism will never be extinct. In today’s society, all American citizens of all races have the same rights as one another, yet there is still racism. Racism can be linked directly to stereotypical mindsets of certain groups of people. It is human nature to make conclusions about other people, this is what leads to racism. Today’s racism is not limited to whites

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

This is when race was the central topic of world history. In the mean time according to him, the color line also has significant subjective dimensions. He also examines race as symbolic and experiential reality.  With our modern society, we see a great shift in the racism, or the color line. The perfect example given in our book is about the election of Barack Obama for presidency. As we know that was one of the biggest events in the history of the US.  Having a president of color, shows how far we have come. Children today will be less likely to take white dominance, because they live in a world where there are also education African Americans, such as Obama and the first lady.  However, as mentioned in the book “racialization continues to be a powerful force in the United States” (pg 349). Statistics show that there are still more black males in prisons than other races. White communities are still healthier, and have higher educational differences than people in color.

How race determined who was in and who was out. As Dickerson states “if race is real and not just a method for the haves to decide who will be have-nots, then all Europeans immigrants, from Ireland a to Greece, would have been “white” the moment they arrived here. Instead, as documented in David Roediger’s excellent Working Towards Whiteness, they were long considered inferior, nearly subhuman, and certainly not white” (69). This shows how race wasn’t about common culture or history but a concept to decide what race is good enough to be consider “white” or better than others. Even though the Europeans where the same race or color of the other people who considered themselves Americans or “white” they were still discriminated for being different and immigrants like everybody else. But soon they realized that identifying them self as being white gave them some sort of hierarchy. It gave them more class compared to the other races. As Debra Dickerson said, “If you were neither black nor Asian nor Hispanic, eventually you could become white, invested with enforceable civil rights and the right to exploit-and hate-nonwhites” (69). Being identify as white gave the power to have privileges that non-whites will never have since they are not the same color. Non- whites are treated unfairly compared to the white people in many ways. Discrimination not only took place between people of different races but

David R. Roediger displays the history of how the theory of “whiteness” has evolved throughout the years in America in his book, The Wages of Whiteness. According to Roediger, “whiteness” is much a constructed identity as “blackness” or any other. He argues that this idea of “whiteness” has absolutely nothing to do with the advantage of the economy, but that it is a psychological racial stereotype that was created by white men themselves. He claims that it is definitely true that racism should be set in class and economic contexts, also stating that “this book will argue that working class formation and the systematic development of a sense of whiteness, went hand in hand for the U.S white working class.” Roediger basically lays out the fact that “working class ‘whiteness’ and “white supremacy” are ideological and psychological creations of the white working class itself.

“E Pluribus Unum”, “Out of Many, One”; Originally used to suggest that out of many colonies or states shall emerge a single unified nation, but over the years it has become the melting pot of the many people, races, religions, cultures and ancestries that have come together to form a unified whole, and even though America prides itself on being this melting pot racism is still alive and well today. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, the country that calls to so many; calling to them with the promise of freedom and prosperity, to live their lives as they see fit. As stated in the National Anthem, America is "the land of the free and the home of the brave." America is the country where dreams can come true. So if America has

The conclusion of the Civil War in favor of the north was supposed to mean an end to slavery and equal rights for the former slaves. Although laws and amendments were passed to uphold this assumption, the United States Government fell short. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were proposed and passed within five years of the Civil War’s conclusion. These amendments were to create equality throughout the United States, especially in the south where slavery had been most abundant. Making equality a realization would not be an easy task. This is because many problems were not perceived before and during the war. The reunification of the country would prove to be harder than expected, and entry into a new lifestyle would be

There were also discourses about non-white people, namely immigrants. During the mass migrations after the Civil War, the different immigrant groups including the Irish, Eastern Europeans, and such were discriminated against, through over time these groups became 'white'. For example the Irish were seen as a, "threat of racial degeneration in the US population" (Roediger, How Race Survived U.S. History, p. 136). One of the most outspoken about this idea was Francis Walker yet as the tide of

"The legacy of past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that we have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some of us ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which we have no certain cure." - Stanford Historian George Frederickson.

Throughout this course we have learned about many things, one in particular would be Racism. We have learned about many different types of racism along with examples of racism. Before I go into specific examples of racism that I have learn about in this class, I will first define and explain the differences between racism, prejudice or also known as bias, discrimination, race, and racist so there 's a clear understanding of why I picked the specific examples. The definition of racism that we learned in class would be an “Institutionalized system with disproportionate unjust outcomes for a particular race”. Prejudice or also known as bias was defined as “A negative feeling, opinion, or attitude toward a certain category or people” this would be an feeling with no action acted upon, where discrimination is defined as “Action or inaction toward a category of people” which would be acting on the negative feelings or opinions of a certain group. The definition for race is a “Social construct, but a lived reality” while a racist is “Discrimination based on the category of race”. (Disadvantage privilege notes, 2016)

“There is nothing wrong with a little casual racism.” One of my friends recently commented this phrase to me, in a joking manner, but it struck me. Is just a little casual racism fine? I am one to err on the side of, “All things in moderation” but is it truly not a problem? In our society, today we see racism in our soup. In many ways, I feel as if the word communist has been switched with the word racist. No longer do we call each other a communist if they are stingy or different, we just stoop to the words racist or xenophobe. In the essay, written by Roxanne Gay, called, Surviving Django, Gay makes claims that she was offended by the racially insensitive, supercharged, ego driven film, created by Quentin Tarantino. She proceeds to

The population of the United States of America has been one of mixed race since its very beginning. Boatload upon boatload of enslaved Africans provided a labor force which would fuel the American South’s economy for many years, until national abolition and the subsequent civil rights movement created a primarily biracial population of blacks and whites. The US has come a long way since those days, and today every child born into the US is taught from an early age the evils of racism and the shameful actions committed by slave-owning US citizens in the past. From textbooks to televisions, the modern USA seemingly works tirelessly to teach its population that discrimination by race is wrong and that all races are equal. This has led to a great national complacence among whites, and a widespread belief that the US has mostly eradicated racial prejudices. But it is not so, and despite a population almost entirely composed of people who would not consider themselves racists, racism still pervades in the US. In many cases modern racism occurs at the hands of whites who almost absolutely are completely unaware of their discriminatory actions. In the films “Frozen River” and “The Visitor” racism was touched on repeatedly and played an evident part in the messages they were trying to portray.