The New Racism The word “Racism” is thrown around a lot now a day and used in an improper way. Racism is a way of stereotyping people in the world we live in today. Believing that a certain race is more dominant than other races in terms of traits, abilities, and appearance is considered racism. The Oxford English Dictionary defines racism as a belief or ideology that all members of each race have characteristics or skills specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being superior or inferior to another race (The Oxford Dictionary, n.d.). It also can be defined as a belief that race is the one that determines a person 's traits and capacities and that the difference in race produce superiority or inferiority of a racial group, according to the Merriam-Webster …show more content…
Therefore, we should examine the causes of racism. Sometimes racism can develop among people of different race because of the lack of knowledge about the other race culture, belief, and history. For some people, they are taught to dislike another race by their family or someone who has profound influence on them and in some instances, they tend to pass what they were taught to the next generation. Your family is your biggest influence so most people tend to follow in the beliefs of their parents or grandparents which I believe we need to break that cycle. If we could just break the cycle of believing what our old generation family members believe then we would have the opportunity to change this world around. People need to be more open minded and educate themselves more on different races and beliefs. Based on the definitions and examples of racism, I think it was made clear that although racism is somehow related to stereotyping, both are not equally the same. People should be more informed about what racism is and the outcomes of it so that it could be slowly removed from society. The belief that a certain race can produce better people in terms of skills and physical appearance is not a logical