What is Racism?

Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior and 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.

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. Racism is something something we have ve all witnessed. Many individuals fail to believe that race is not a biological category, but simply an artificial classification of individuals with no scientifically variable facts. In other words, the distinction we make between races has nothing to do with genetic characteristics. Race was created socially, primarily by how individuals perceive ideas and faces that are foreign to them. Racism still exist in our society.

Some people may argue that racism has no place in our society no we abolished slavery, and had our first african american president. Do not forget there was a controversy that would have stripped former President Obama his presidency if it was proven that he was not a natural born citizen. No president was ever accused of not being a natural born citizen. The difference was that President Obama was our first colored president. All of those are true however, racism is not just towards one race. Yes, the treatment to the colored community has improved but it is not totally gone. If racism is totally gone how come hate crime rates has increased during the year President Donald Trump was elected. We as a country have voted and seated a racist white male as the president of arguably the strongest and most powerful country in the world. President Trump tweeted, Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike! Mr. Trump also said on an interview about immigrants from Haiti and other African countries “”Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”” These two outrageous comments should have never been said by an individual who is the commander in chief of a country that can turn countries to ashes. Lone and behold President Donald Trump bombed Syria after just being a president for less than 4 months.

Racism has been imprinted on us since the beginning of time. We are suspicious of anyone that we are no used to. One example is when someone is not used to seeing something that is different we tend to associate them with what we have seen.This all started after a group of 19 men affiliated with Al-Quada performed one the biggest terrorist attacks in U.S. soil. This horrendous event painted the Middle Easterners as evil and violent. Comedian Peter Russell shared a story about his performance/show in the Middle East talking about how welcoming the people were. Now if you open the news or media and they are talking about terrorist it would seem that all Middle Easterners are evil because of the was a terrorist attack they blame the Middle Easterners. That predisposition that was ingrained in our brain that individuals does not realize that causes racism towards other nation and races. So how much we try to say that racism no longer exist is complete false.

Mass Media has played a large role in shaping people minds, Movies by Hollywood has been used for propaganda during world war II and the cold war and the same goes for comic books. The Captain America Marvel movie series has Captain America fighting Red Skull which was first a commander of Hydra which in the movie a subsection of the Nazis. In another Captain America movie now was fighting Buckie which was a Soviet Union assasin, This were first comic books which was used to recruit military men for the wars. This was a long time ago now we have movies such as Olympus Has Fallen where the main villain was a Korean national and The Interview which had plot two men going down to North Korea to interview their leader Kim Jung Un and they were recruited by the CIA. Although this was supposed to be a comedy, it still disrespected the North Koreans in the movie they were using the stereotypes of what we viewed North Korea. For, most individuals it was viewed as comedy however, not every see it that way imagine a child who is just learning by watching had watched that particular movie and that does not realize that was supposed to have been a harmless joke and took the lesson that North Korea was bad. This was the same the silent movies that portrayed that black men were evil and the came to rape white women. Now of course we know simply that is not true but during that time if a black man was seen having a relationship with a white woman that their was big possibility that the people would have had him hanged. People love to categorize and label everything, Individuals also love to think that they are superior in some way and what would be the perfect target? That target is no other than the minority.

Racism is just part of discrimination there are other forms such as sexism and gender roles. According to healthychildren.org we learn gender roles at around age two and at by our third birthday we can easily identify ourselves with our gender. Until recently being a homosexual is something to be ashamed of now we as a society we accept welcome them and let them be who they are. However, when it comes to our races we still have negative stereotypes that comes with certain races.

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