Pyramid Of Racism

It is safe to say that racism in this country has not gone anywhere. All you need to do is open your facebook, twitter, instagram, or anything really that has access to the larger world, you could even just google who we, the United States elected for President, Mr. Donald Trump. This however isn’t a surprise we have had many racist Presidents of the United States Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and that 's just to name a few (Kendi). Racism has always been a part of the United States agenda from day one and that has carried onto today. Just in case you have forgotten what racism is let 's define it. Racism is the systematic discrimination against or exclusion of a oppressed …show more content…
What is the pyramid of hate you ask? The pyramid of hate is a visual pyramid that shows biased behaviors and builds in complexity to the top. There are five levels to the pyramid the first level is bias which can be defined as stereotyping, belittling jokes, non-inclusive language, insensitive remarks, only accepting negative information about someone and only seeking out like minded people. The second level of the pyramid is prejudice, this can be defined as bullying, name calling, slurs, ridicule, social avoidance and dehumanization. We then have level three of the pyramid which is discrimination is all aspects (economic, employment, education, housing, political, etc.) and segregation. In level four of the pyramid we move into more of physical bias, this level is motivated violence and includes individual violence such as murder, rape, assault, and threats. In this level we also have community violence such as arson, terrorism, vandalism, and desecration. In the final level of the pyramid, level five we have the most intense stage because it encapsulates all of the levels previously discussed. Level five is genocide, which is the act of intent to deliberately and systematically annihilate and eliminate an entire people (ADL). I think that all of levels of the pyramid blend up into one another because you wouldn’t have bullying without first saying belittling jokes, or you wouldn’t be discriminatory behavior without some sort …show more content…
Everyday people past and present have faced level one of the pyramid, everyday every person of an oppressed group has face some sort of stereotyping like all Natives are alcoholics that live off the government and get to go to school for free (I get this one a lot) or non-inclusive language, like my friend Jay, their pronouns are they, them , their, yet people are always misgendering them. Discrimination or level three of the pyramid has happened in the past towards black folks when they weren’t allowed to drink out of the same water fountain as white folks or even eat in the same places as white folks. I feel that today we still have discrimination when it comes to housing and employment. Some examples of this would be when my work was located in the same area as the International Student Services, these students would ask staff to make phone calls for them to rent or see a place because we didn’t have accents and some places would outwardly say that they don’t rent to Middle-Eastern students. Not only were they being discriminatory they were also being bias and prejudice. When talking about past and present bias-motivated violence we can talk about it on an individual level for example women of color are far more prone to rape and sexual assault compared to white women and when you throw in trans women of color that number goes even higher. This can be linked