Discrimination Against African Americans

African Americans are often the victims of discrimination. Discrimination is the treatment or consideration of making a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing based on their group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs. Often we hear stories about racist incidents, regardless if they make the news or they are just personal experiences. Stories of discrimination are all around us in the modern world. Often this creates the mindset that “racism is out there” and spreading. Some racist incidents have nothing at all to do with racism. Why do whites discriminate against blacks? Is it because they feel threatened that blacks are up and coming? Or for another reason? There is still blatant racism in todays world. For

Whether they had a crime committed against them by an African American or they witnessed something that made them have negative feelings towards them. A lot of our attitudes are shaped when we are young. The attitudes of what our parents feel towards different races often rub off on us as children. Another issue that often comes up is why are people racist? Often, we tend to want to be around people like us. In the sense that they have the same interests, background, culture, and talk the same. It creates a sense of belonging. An experiment was done that took babies and showed them two dolls, a white baby was shown a white doll and a black doll. They white baby chose the white doll. A black baby was also shown the same two dolls. She chose the black baby doll. Thus, this shows that even without experience or education on different races, we chose the doll that is more like us. This is thought to carry on through out our whole life. Many times we are taught about other races by things we hear, and things we see. Popular culture tries to teach us the stereotype of each race. For example, black people are lazy, eat watermelon and are always late. Seeing these stereotypes time and time again condition us to think a certain way. Frequently, white people use black people as a mechanism for someone to blame when they’re angry. In comments such as “those people take our jobs” or “they receive government handouts all the time and they don’t work” show the venom in their