What Is Racism In America

There is no doubt the scourge of racism is a black eye for the beacon of hope and light, which the US is supposed to represent. For far too long most of our citizens have been complacent with the status quo. Racism has grown as part of the very fabric of this country. Ideas of race and ideologies of superiority were state sponsored and fundamental to history and structure of the United States. From the slave trade, voter suppression, lynching, segregation, and human rights violations, the list is long and dirty of the atrocities minorities have endured while under the thumb of the US government. The problem is deeper and wider than American culture. The development and proliferation of racial bias is not exclusive to US. This is not

Ideas of racial superiority originate as far back as the Middle Ages. In addition, attitudes were sanctioned and further developed among Europeans during the Renaissance and Reformation. Europeans increasingly came in contact with African cultures and people of darker skin complexion. With uneasy feelings about differing cultures and physical appearance came judgement and justification for abhorrent behavior. Religion was used a weapon to offer rationale for physical enslavement of Africans (Fredrickson, 2003). In other words, prejudice began developing during the early modern periods of history. Europeans did not have intimate knowledge on the origins of man or the genetic likeness they had with their African brethren. This prejudice morphed into outright racism and a subjection of entire race of people. I use the term race as only to define the one varied characteristic, skin color. This one difference was used to drive a wedge within everyone’s comprehension of physical characteristics and create a separate and unequal category, black. This separate category was created in the name of science and used to perpetrate countless atrocities and enslavement against a continent of

Even the idea of ours and theirs shows up in the language of my essay. I understand my place in all of this. I have begun to challenge my friends, family, and neighbors on issues of race and racism in America. I am not trying to speak from a high and might perspective, but because I am a college student I am often met with grumblings and disdain for my support for an equal playing field. This makes me question everyone I know. With the recent presidential election, I have really learned a lot about values that people hold true. A day of reckoning is coming for white America. I chose on the right side of humanity and history. My progress as a human is measured by how I treat everyone unlike myself. We should address and value these differences, not try to melt them