Institutional racism is a kind of discrimination formed by society to target a specific race, compared to having an individual’s personal racist belief. Having a personal racist belief is centralized. It is influenced by the society but it is determined by a single individual. Institutional racism and an individual’s racist beliefs go hand in hand. A person will always have his or her own individual racist beliefs, but when a society has one, it is usually about one specific race but it does not showcase the true meaning and depth of life supported by Bettie (2002) “do not reflect complexity of life”.
The differences between institutional racism and individual racism are stark and clearly defined. Institutional racism is prejudice on a large a scale, usually in regard to a company or institution. It’s not hard to find examples of institutional, the United States government provides man different instances for consideration. Segregation is a huge example of intuitional racism, as there were many laws put in place with the purpose of keeping ethnic groups, aside from white people, from getting opportunities to obtain power or social standing. More recently the war on drugs was a political policy put in place in order to target specific ethnic groups. One example of drug laws as institutional racism was giving the use of crack cocaine a higher classification then regular cocaine. This is because crack cocaine
My results from the race implicit association test (IAT) suggested that I have moderate automatic preference for white people over black people. This came as a surprise to me. Given that I have always considered myself a strong liberal and have consistently placed equality as a top priority, the test definitely changed my perspective on how people think automatically. Compared to other people 's results, they most likely had the same realization I had. Many explicit attitudes did not correlate to the study of implicit attitudes. Stated in the results, over 50% of people reported having no difference in attitudes towards white people compared to black people; however, only 18% received such results. Strikingly, 68% received results having implicit attitude preferences toward white people over black people.
Miranda Fricker dissects and examines the problems of testimonial justice and injustice, in her book, Epistemic Injustice, Power and the Ethics of Knowing. By using the characters of Marge Sherwood in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird, Fricker draws in her audience and succinctly identifies two critical components to testimonial injustices. After examining her work, I feel her view of testimonial justice is able to be defended because people are not born to be discriminatory. Rather a person’s community and social interactions shape their development of testimonial justice, but there are ways to lessen a person’s testimonial injustice. Fricker’s argues that familiarity with people of different social identities
Racism has been a big epidemic since the early 1600’s and is still a problem throughout society today. According to Dictionary.com, racism is a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others. The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle exemplifies racism and discrimination by the dividing of communities from the impoverished minorities and the superior majority. Boyle reveals how more fortunate people stereotype the way minorities and poverty live rather than acknowledging
Racism has been around for a long time and it still exists today. It has been embedded to a degree that it reproduces itself. It is in the culture of the future generation. What is seen and taught to us in our environment is how we learn our behavior and actions towards others. Because of this, whether we realize it or not, racist behavior is taught and passed on. Dismantling this requires dialogue, reflection on ourselves (and others), and relearning our behaviors. In some cases, racism is subtle and in others, it is obvious. Since the Civil Rights Movement, progress has emerged but ignorance and denial of the past and recurrence of history still exist among many. This is covered in the reading, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Racism plays a large role in dividing entire groups of people and most of the time, the racism comes from stereotypes and assumptions made of each other. One example of insensitivity and divisiveness when maintaining stereotypes is when someone starts asking questions about the said stereotype to another who is affected by it. Such as if a white man goes up to an Asian girl to get help with math because ‘all asians are good at math’. These kind of stereotypes are very insensitive towards others. An example of racism that proves that society is oblivious to how people of ‘other’ backgrounds are treated is the pay and job gap. It is clear, even to this day, that caucasian men and women typically have higher paying jobs and make more than their coworkers of other races. Society should know by now that everyone doing the same job, should get payed the same no matter if they’re a man, woman, white or hispanic. Lastly, there are many examples of how maintaining stereotypes is hurtful to those who are judged accordingly. A large one in our society is the racism against Muslims. People assume the worst of them because ‘they cause so many terrorist attacks’, however, that isn’t true. They are blamed for a lot of horrible events because of their race and culture which in turn, really hurts them. Our world shouldn’t be full of racism anymore, but somehow, there still is a bunch of it
Racial issues are sometimes dismissed as history; they are thought of as issues of the past. People sometimes believe that since the government preaches equality, that most racial issues are resolved. This is not the case in today’s society, as racial issues are still prevalent in everyday life. Not only facing discriminatory practices in the job market, minorities face racism in many different aspects of everyday life. In the world we live in today, people tend to judge a whole group of people based on the actions of only a few. It is ironic that in the country that was founded on immigrants from every corner of the world can have people that discriminate against those that are from different ethnicities than them. There is a significant
Racism is the belief or idea of superiority of one race over another, often resulting in discrimination and/or prejudice towards people of the race. The ideology underlying racist practices often includes the idea that humans can be divided into distinct groups that are different due to their social behavior and their innate capacities as well as the idea that they can be ranked as inferior or superior. Since the late 20th century the notion of biological race has been recognized as a cultural invention, entirely without scientific basis.
This is known as institutional racism. Institutional racism is racism that is built into our society. A perfect example of this would be an institution such as a school. The white children are taught to be racist. They are not born racist. As they grow in school, it is built into their schooling system and other institutions around them.
In the program I watched I saw racial bias. The video shows how children are more inclined to believe positive things about their race, and negative things about other races. For example, the white children believed the ugly, dumbest, and meanest child was the darkest kids, and vice versa for blacks. I believe this is because the environment around them subject them to think like that.
Racism is an ever growing issue in the world, and something we can’t hide behind. According to dictionary.com the defintion of racism is: “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” Race was created socially by how people perceive ideas and faces people are not used to yet. It is the “hatred” of one person to another individual, solely based on that person's belief that the person is inferior because of their language, birthplace and skin colour. Racism is an issue that has lasted throughout history, providing justification for a group’s dominance over another. In this essay the main focus will be looking at a wide array of perspectives, including local in Hong Kong, global in USA, some solutions, and my own personal perspective.
Part I: During the last lecture sessions, Dr. Jendian talked about appreciating diversity, race, ethnicity, and racism. In his lecture, we learned that many people believe that race is something biological. However, the true reality is that race is a social construct and not a biological one. For example, in the documentary Race: The Power of An Illusion, we were able to understand that there are more variations among people in the same “race” than with people from another “race.” However, physical differences, for example, the most obvious skin color, has created prejudices against minority groups. These prejudices that “white” people carry leads to discrimination against people of color. During the lecture, Dr. Jendian explained about ethnocentrism as well. The definition that he provided states that we judge others using our culture’s values, beliefs, and practices. Therefore, we believe the way of doing things is superior, so other people’s ways are inferior. For example, the professor explained that one day he went to a Oaxacan restaurant and that he ate crickets. He explained that for people that don’t have the same culture, this food might be uncommon, however, it is not uncommon for the people of Oaxaca. According to Aguirre and Tuner in their chapter “Ethnicity and Ethnic Relations,” minority groups are single out living on unequal treatment, thus, becoming objects of discrimination. For example, one of the minority groups
“You don 't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.”
"Racism is an ideology that gives expression to myths about other racial and ethnic groups that devalues and renders inferior those groups that reflects and is perpetuated by deeply rooted historical, social, cultural and power inequalities in society."