Racism
Essay by 24 • November 8, 2010 • 574 Words (3 Pages) • 1,077 Views
What is Racism?
Racism is one of those unusual things which seem to escape the understanding of clear and to the point definition. Racism is a system of racial discrimination and prejudice. The concept of race as classifying people can be seen as misleading people and prejudicial as far as it's involved in the quality of human life. The term race has been quite confusing because of its four principle connotations.
1. Physical anthropologists have called races the various subspecies of the human race characterized by certain phonotypical and genotypic traits.
2. Laymen have profusely used the word race to describe a human group that shares certain cultural characteristics such as language or religion.
3. Race has been loosely used as a synonym for species.
4. Many social scientists describe race as a human group that defines itself and/or is defined by other groups as different from other groups by moral excellence of having an essential characteristics and unchangeable characteristics.(Van den Berghe, Race and Racism pg. 42)
The last key term to define racism is any set of beliefs that organic, genetically transmitted differences between human groups are associated with the presence or the absence of certain socially relevant abilities or characteristics, hence that such differences are a legitimate basis of invidious distinctions between groups socially defined as races.
Racism in America
There is no nation in the world that sees "racism" as a greater fear than the United States. The press and public have become so used to seeing murder, rape, robbery, and arson that any crime except the most shocking ones are pushed to the side. Racism is never pushed to the side. For example when a white law school student at Georgetown reported that black students were not as qualified as white students, it made a big controversy about racism. If the student would have murdered some one it would have caused less attention. Racism is an obsession. Universities are always on top of it, newspapers and politicians reject
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