Admittedly, it is within human nature to group similar people together as a way of organizing and making sense of the vastly diverse world around us. Psychology provides an explanation for this through the term social-categorization: the innate cognitive process in which people make sense of the complex world they live in by allocating similar individuals into social groups. Albeit being a natural human tendency, social grouping, more often than not, turns into stereotyping and discrimination. Consequently leading to discrimination and incorrect rationalizations of select social groups: the most compelling example of inappropriate social-categorization being classism. Classism is defined according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as
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Found in Tatum’s article, “Defining Racism”, he states that racism is not based on prejudicial attitudes because people of every color can have prejudice beliefs about another race, rather racism is a system of advantages. Whites on top, minorities on the bottom (Tatum). This definition may be controversial to most white people, but it is because they refuse to believe the reality that they are racist because of the ways they benefit from being white. White privilege and racism are detriments to American society and it is of absolute necessity that they be eliminated. Jane Elliot challenged both white privilege and racism in her 3rd grade classroom when she divided her classroom into two: blue eyes and brown eyes. Through some deception and later debriefing, Ms. Elliot gave her students a first-hand experience in discrimination. From her dedication to taking a deeper approach to multicultural education her students left her class as culturally aware children, all of whom grew up to be well-rounded and informed adults. Tatum also makes a suggestion with regards to racism, stating in his article that racism is like a walkway. Racism in this analogy takes on two forms: passive and active racism. Tatum explains that active racist are those that deliberately walk forward at a faster pace on the walkway, while passive racist are the people that do not move, but still allow the walkway to guide them in forward. Simply put, passive racists are perpetuating racism (Tatum). If passive racist would take the plunge and run in the opposite direction then racism in America could meet its timely
Found in Tatum’s article, “Defining Racism”, he states that racism is not based on prejudicial attitudes because people of every color can have prejudice beliefs about another race, rather racism is a system of advantages. Whites on top, minorities on the bottom (Tatum). This definition may be controversial to most white people, but it is because they refuse to believe the reality that they are racist because of the ways they benefit from being white. White privilege and racism are detriments to American society and it is of absolute necessity that they be eliminated. Jane Elliot challenged both white privilege and racism in her 3rd grade classroom when she divided her classroom into two: blue eyes and brown eyes. Through some deception and later debriefing, Ms. Elliot gave her students a first-hand experience in discrimination. From her dedication to taking a deeper approach to multicultural education her students left her class as culturally aware children, all of whom grew up to be well-rounded and informed adults. Tatum also makes a suggestion with regards to racism, stating in his article that racism is like a walkway. Racism in this analogy takes on two forms: passive and active racism. Tatum explains that active racist are those that deliberately walk forward at a faster pace on the walkway, while passive racist are the people that do not move, but still allow the walkway to guide them in forward. Simply put, passive racists are perpetuating racism (Tatum). If passive racist would take the plunge and run in the opposite direction then racism in America could meet its timely