How many of us have ever felt like we did not fit in? Have ever been put down, excluded or physically attacked because another person or group believed we did not fit in or did not measure up to their standard? Though most of us have been treated unfairly at one point in our lives, we may still fail to realize a much larger scale problem that exists in our society today; a problem which I strongly believe a majority of people are unaware of, and is really something that needs brought to the table. This problem being racism - 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. Many people remain unaware of this
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One problem is many people stereotype races, most likely not even aware they are doing so, this is especially true on social media. For example; I can be scrolling through the comedy channel on Vine for 10 minutes and see at least four racist vines the time I am on there, and I have witnessed dozens of people on Twitter just throwing around racist slurs and jokes like meaningless table talk. Stereotypes exist in the real world as well. How often do we assume that if we are in a “ghetto” neighborhood that there will be African-Americans and they will behave violently? That is a ridiculous assumption. We see a Hispanic person and assume he or she is an illegal immigrant. I find this just as outrageous. Adding to this issue, there are racist jokes. Some people have this mindset that if you tell a joke about something-no matter the degree of how sensitive the topic is-that it is acceptable and that minority or person the joke applies should not get offended, in no way is this reasonable, it’s like if someone told me a “Yo-Momma” joke, I would really get offended because I lost my mom. This same concept applies with racist jokes, these people cannot change who they are, where they are from and what they look like, so for someone to make a jest of that is very thoughtless. Portraying these stereotypes and jokes has become so common that we just …show more content…
The substantial differences being the opinions of diverse races in America, “Americans are divided on the extent of the racism problem in this country. 73 percent of blacks call it a big problem, compared to 44 percent of whites. (Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post)”. More black citizens believe that racism is a “big problem” as opposed to the amount of whites that believe this. This divide, I assume, is because blacks are the ones experiencing the majority of racism first-hand and the whites are usually the ones dishing it out. White-Supremacists in our country today still believe that all other races are inferior to our race, this is an underlying problem. People are still living a life of hatred and letting themselves believe that all humans are not the same because of differing skin color or descent. We continue to let this happen. Why? Because it is not happening to us-the white citizens-we are the ones causing this, and it just shows what meager progress we have made in dealing with this
One problem is many people stereotype races, most likely not even aware they are doing so, this is especially true on social media. For example; I can be scrolling through the comedy channel on Vine for 10 minutes and see at least four racist vines the time I am on there, and I have witnessed dozens of people on Twitter just throwing around racist slurs and jokes like meaningless table talk. Stereotypes exist in the real world as well. How often do we assume that if we are in a “ghetto” neighborhood that there will be African-Americans and they will behave violently? That is a ridiculous assumption. We see a Hispanic person and assume he or she is an illegal immigrant. I find this just as outrageous. Adding to this issue, there are racist jokes. Some people have this mindset that if you tell a joke about something-no matter the degree of how sensitive the topic is-that it is acceptable and that minority or person the joke applies should not get offended, in no way is this reasonable, it’s like if someone told me a “Yo-Momma” joke, I would really get offended because I lost my mom. This same concept applies with racist jokes, these people cannot change who they are, where they are from and what they look like, so for someone to make a jest of that is very thoughtless. Portraying these stereotypes and jokes has become so common that we just …show more content…
The substantial differences being the opinions of diverse races in America, “Americans are divided on the extent of the racism problem in this country. 73 percent of blacks call it a big problem, compared to 44 percent of whites. (Christopher Ingraham, The Washington Post)”. More black citizens believe that racism is a “big problem” as opposed to the amount of whites that believe this. This divide, I assume, is because blacks are the ones experiencing the majority of racism first-hand and the whites are usually the ones dishing it out. White-Supremacists in our country today still believe that all other races are inferior to our race, this is an underlying problem. People are still living a life of hatred and letting themselves believe that all humans are not the same because of differing skin color or descent. We continue to let this happen. Why? Because it is not happening to us-the white citizens-we are the ones causing this, and it just shows what meager progress we have made in dealing with this