Racism Article PDF

In May 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was pronounced dead after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, despite Floyd's repeated protests that he could not breathe. Wide circulation of a bystander's video of Floyd's last minutes...

In May 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was pronounced dead after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, despite Floyd's repeated protests that he could not breathe. Wide circulation of a bystander's video of Floyd's last minutes triggered massive demonstrations in cities throughout the United States and across the globe. The event swayed American public opinion in favour of the Black Lives Matter movement while drawing wide attention to the problem of entrenched racism in American society.  Racism is not merely against blacks but also against other races, such as Asians. According to 'Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that became the authority on gathering data on racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic, m**ore than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents have been reported since COVID-19 began. **For example, a man and woman of Korean descent were shot in Seattle while waiting at a light in their car in June 2023. The woman, who was 32 weeks pregnant, was killed in the shooting. According to the Seattle Times and other local news sources, a Korean man surnamed Kwon and his wife were driving through the Belltown neighbourhood of Seattle at around 11 am on Tuesday when a person fired into their vehicle. Paramedics rushed Kwon's wife to the hospital, where they performed emergency surgery to deliver her baby. Though the infant initially survived the surgery, it later died in the hospital. Kwon's wife died in the hospital as well, having been shot four times. Kwon is receiving treatment for a gunshot wound. Police apprehended a 30-year-old man who fled the scene after disposing of a gun. Police said there was no known connection between the suspect and the Kwons or prior interaction.  Why did such events mentioned above happen? Should people be discriminated against by their race, colour, etc.? Where did racism come from? This article digs deeper into the roots of racism** t**o answer back to the questions.  **1. What is racism?** Racism claims the human species can be divided into different biological groups that determine the behaviour, economic, and political success of individuals within that group. This belief views races as natural and fixed subdivisions of the human species, each with its distinct and variable cultural characteristics and capacity for the development of civilizations. Thus, racists believe that biological factors can be used to explain the social and cultural variations of humans. Racism also includes the belief that there is a natural hierarchical ordering of groups of people so that superior races can dominate inferior ones. Racist thinking presumes that differences among groups are innate and not subject to change. Thus, intelligence, attitudes and beliefs are viewed as not affected by one's environment or history. The existence of groups at the bottom or top of the social hierarchy is interpreted as the natural outcome of an inferior or superior biological makeup and not the result of social influences. Racists reject social integration because they believe the mixing of groups would result in the degeneration of the superior group. Racism is frequently expressed through prejudice and discrimination. The belief can manifest itself through individuals, but also through societies and institutions. **2. When did racism start?** **Understanding the concept of "race" is the first step to comprehend racism because it is difficult to pinpoint when the first time an individual was discriminated against simply due to race. For thousands of years, people didn't categorize humans by race. They were aware of differences, but the concept of race didn't truly develop until the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the 16th century. When the demand for enslaved labour increased in the 17th century, white Europeans and Americans needed a justification for slavery. They found one in the form of "race" to magnify the differences between people of European origin and those of African descent whose ancestors had been involuntarily enslaved and transported to the Americas. By characterizing Africans and their African American descendants as lesser human beings, the proponents of slavery attempted to justify and maintain the system of exploitation.** **By the 19th century, racism had matured and spread around the world. Leaders of Western countries invaded many African and Asian countries, too. They began to think of the ethnic components of their own societies in racial terms and to designate "higher" and "lower" races. Those seen as the low-status races, especially in colonized areas, were exploited for their labour, and discrimination against them became a typical pattern in many areas of the world. The expressions and feelings of racial superiority that accompanied colonialism generated resentment and hostility from those who were colonized and exploited, feelings that continued even after independence.** **The climax of the history of racism came in the twentieth century in the rise and fall of what might be called overtly racist regimes. In the American South, the passage of racial segregation laws and restrictions on black voting rights reduced African Americans to a lower caste status. Extreme racist propaganda, which represented black males as ravening beasts lusting after white women, served to rationalize the practice of lynching. A vital feature of the racist regime maintained by state law in the South was a fear of sexual contamination through rape or intermarriage, which led to efforts to prevent the conjugal union of whites with those with any known or discernable African ancestry.** **Racist ideology was eventually, of course, carried to its extreme in Nazi Germany. It took Hitler and his cohorts to attempt the extermination of an entire ethnic group based on a racist ideology. Hitler, it has been said, gave racism a bad name. The moral revulsion of people throughout the world against what the Nazis did, reinforced by scientific studies undermining racist genetics (or eugenics), served to discredit the scientific racism that had been respectable and influential in the United States and Europe before the Second World War.** **3. What were the measures taken to combat racism?** Since the mid-20th century the world has realized that racism elicits hatred and distrust and precludes any attempt to understand its victims. Many societies attempt to combat racism by raising awareness of racist beliefs and practices and by promoting human understanding in public policies, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, set forth by the United Nations in 1948. In the United States, racism came under increasing attack during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, and laws and social policies that enforced racial segregation and permitted racial discrimination against African Americans were gradually eliminated. Regulations aimed at limiting the voting power of racial minorities were invalidated by the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited poll taxes, and by the federal Voting Rights Act (1965), which required jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression to obtain federal approval ("preclearance") of any proposed changes to their voting laws. Despite constitutional and legal measures aimed at protecting the rights of racial minorities in the United States, the private beliefs and practices of many Americans remained racist, and some group of assumed lower status was often made a scapegoat. That tendency has persisted well into the 21st century. **4. Examples of racism** **4-1. Using racial slurs and spreading racial stereotypes** **Racial slurs and racial stereotypes are two of the clearest examples of racism. Slurs are offensive words and phrases used to degrade and discriminate against individuals or groups of people from certain racial and ethnic groups. Many slurs are widely condemned and may even constitute hate speech, which several countries have laws against. Racial stereotypes are generalized beliefs or perceptions about people based on their race, and while many are negative (i.e. certain groups are prone to violence or criminal behavior), some are more positive. Negative stereotypes can be especially harmful as they lead to discrimination, social exclusion, and psychological harm. Even positive stereotypes are still disrespectful as they project oversimplified expectations onto people.** **4-2. Discriminating against people based on race** **Racial discrimination is one of the most prevalent forms of racism. It refers to the unfair and prejudicial treatment of individuals or groups based on their race. Around the world, it manifests in employment, housing, education, the justice system, healthcare, and more. Racial discrimination is often subtle. Laws and actions don't need to mention race to be discriminatory. As an example, Black girls are more likely to face extreme disciplinary actions at school in the US, but there's no acknowledgment that it's because of race. In 2014, a 12-year-old faced criminal charges and expulsion after writing the word "hi" on a locker, while the white female classmate who was involved got a more merciful punishment. There was no policy stating that Black girls would get harsher punishments, but it still happened. Discriminatory actions can still be discriminatory even if they don't mention race.** **4-3. Dividing society by race** **Known as "racial segregation," dividing society by race means restricting access to resources, institutions, services, and opportunities based on a person's race. The two clearest examples are apartheid in South Africa and the Jim Crow laws in the American South. In both, Black people were forced into separate neighborhoods, schools, public facilities, and sections of public transportation. In the United States, a doctrine of "separate but equal" tried to justify this segregation, but Black Americans always got worse treatment and services. The same thing happened in South Africa. Dividing society by race with the intent to hoard resources for "superior" races and prevent race-mixing is blatantly racist. Even if things were "separate but equal," enforced segregation is still a violation of human rights.** **4-4. Eliminating people based on race** **Killing someone based on their race is a hate crime. When a large number of people are killed based on their race, it's genocide. Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a specific ethnic group or nation with the intent to eliminate them completely. The Holocaust is a clear example of this. Because Jewish people come from a variety of racial backgrounds, they don't belong to one race, but the Nazis defined being Jewish as a separate race. Racializing Jewish people was the first step in marginalizing and dehumanizing them. Once the Nazis had dehumanized Jews, they segregated them, isolated them from society, and then began to systematically kill them. The Holocaust represents the worst form of antisemitism, which has been around for hundreds of years. Although it existed before our modern concept of race, many experts call it the oldest form of racism.**