Origins Of Racism Summary

Watching The Origins of Racism, A Class Divided, and The Pathology of Privilege made me embarrassed to be white. I am aware that the intention was not to cause embarrassment, but I cannot help but question why white people allow racism to continue. I know many white people who would deny that racism is alive and present today, but that is not the case. Racism has just changed form from what it was in the past. I will reflect on my personal feelings on the subjects of the origins of racism, white privilege, and discrimination. Some terms may sound like a blanket for a whole race, and that is not the purpose. I merely intend to speculate on what I have encountered by way of majorities.

Personal Feelings

It is hard for me to tell which video

I struggled to see how a community could go from seeing black people as coworkers, friends and neighbours to seeing them as slaves. The colonies had even expected to rely on mainly white labour. It is incredible that within one generation, where a black child had had the potential to be born free, they now were born to inherit slave status.

In contrast, it is easy to see how white superiority began. According to the video, of the three slaves who ran from their master, the one punished with servitude for life was the single black person, while the white servants had one extra year to serve. That was the first servant on record to ever serve a master for life. The judge who ruled that verdict had singlehandedly created the first account of slavery. It is astounding that the vicious, murderous, torturous cycle of racism that would span hundreds of years had begun with a simple ruling singling out a black servant. It took mere years for white people to convince not only themselves, but also black people, that white people were better. All of this progressed for the purpose of attaining money. I look at this and wonder how white people could justify their actions based off of wealth. White supremacy had been accepted so quickly in America that it was easy to see that the elimination of racial division would

Even though there are statistics and facts and data that show white privilege is prevalent, white people will testify to their own hard work and efforts, saying that it is equal to that of people of colour. It is recognised that as humans we have hardships, no matter the colour, and white people do have misfortune and trials to work through. But we do not recognise how easy it is to rise up as a white person in comparison to the struggle black people have to rise up just as high. White people choose not to see. We have become blind to it because to see it means to address it, and to address it means that we will no longer be having these benefits. But to not address it entails allowing another million black people to die just because they were born with darker skin, like Tim Wise explained. That number of dead black people is so significant that it is impossible to believe that white people are not privileged. We will survive longer, and more often, than our counterparts with darker skin, solely because we are white. Another example of non-white oppression from the video that spoke to me was the “war on drugs.” The way I saw it was that the war on drugs is a code name for the war on non-whites, specifically Latinos and blacks. Even though, statistically, white males are much more likely to have drugs in their cars than Latinos or blacks, they are so much less