Internalized Racism

As children, we are taught about racism and physical differences that make us diverse; however, have we genuinely grasped the concept of how we are not different? Outside we may look different, but what is inside has no discrepancies. Coincedently, this belief adds on to what goes on in people's minds. Two reasons; internalized racism and internalized white supremacy. M;l.,m/any people get confused and mix these two reasons and their meanings up. People seem to think that the internalized racism is correlated with whites and the internalized white supremacy is correlated with African Americans. This has become the result of our school systems failures. In this day in age many people need to understand the differences between these two terms.

As racial minorities hears these prejudice’s, it is hard for them to avoid the racist messages. Thus, many different ethnicities have moved towards a more white supremist mindset. In Class in America, it states “As individuals, we feel hurt and angry when someone is treating us unfairly, yet as a society we tolerate unconscionable injustice” (Mantsios). This is almost close to the term “brainwashing”. It does not just affect older people, it starts at a very young age. An example being bullying. In schools young children are bullied because of their skin color, hair, or they way they talk. Many children see this as a gateway to bully them about their ethnicity or their lifestyle. With all of these hate messages coming into the young brain, it is easy for the child to loathe them self. They bring in these negative messages and harbor them in themselves until they feel that whites are superior. Most of the time, minorities tend to pull racism inward when they see privileges given to whites and not people of

One being in our school system. Throughout history schools have sugar coated what is right and what is wrong. Many children do not get told that what they are saying could be offensive and the child continues to say it. From a firm belief, schools should train their staff or have programs that teach how to tell children about the racism problem happening around them. Schools also only focus on the large facts that some children might not understand. The information that is going into a child's brain should be told at their education level, because then the child will remember it better. Teachers should not focus on the large idea but focus on the small ideas that have formed the large one. Take for instance Martin Luther King Jr. Telling children just that he was a civil rights leader who was assassinated is not doing anything for the child’s knowledge. Instead a teacher should go more in depth of what he was fighting for, his background, and how exactly he made his mark on the world. Another reason schools should inform children better is because, as I said before, bullying. Millions of students are bullied whether it be how they look, how they talk, or their ethnicities. Schools should have a more hand on approach with bullying so that children can understand that what they are doing is wrong. Now any approach of changing the schools is not going to fix problems right away. But if we start and make a little