Addressing the Racism in the Society
Introduction
Scholars present different definitions of racism by analysing the practise from diverse perspectives. Essentially, racism is the situation whereby a person or people discriminate against others based on their race. Many people in the society today experience severe problems because of their racial background, with a number of reported cases of people facing the rough impacts of racism across the world. However, universal agreement suggests that racism should be discouraged because it results to detrimental consequences. Many scholars have conducted studies that suggest the society is entirely motivated to eradicate racism. Statistical evaluations suggest that over 75 % of the people who face racial abuse at one point, experience trauma.
The detrimental consequences of racism affirm the significance of exploring this subject in order to propose strategies that can mitigate this problem. However, establish a solution to racism is challenging unless one narrows his or her interventions to a specific groups and systems. Racism solution has a wide scope, with the global interphone being the most effective solution to the racism menace. However, in order to address the challenge of racism, problem segmentation is important to enable visualization of the issue from different points of view. The young people face the greatest danger of the consequences of racism because they can easily fall to the influences of the society (Oikelome 142). The society can either eliminate the racial activities through the young people or use them to bolster the activities. The paper assumes a persuasive position to describe the steps that society can adopt to address the detrimental consequences of racism among the young people with the view of obtaining an aggregate solution to the problem.
Individual role in curbing racism among the youth
The first effort to stop the racist chants and treatment among the young people should come from an initiative by the same youths. The young people must play an integral role in stopping the racist treatment that a number of people all over the world face in the recent days. Firstly, the young people must learn to say no to unnecessary peer influence. It makes more importance for the young people to lose their friends who advise them to embrace the racist behaviours than stand and watch as other people suffer from their mistreatment and utterances. The young people must undergo training so that they can select the company around them well so they the society can naturally quarantine the people advocating for the racist treatments.
Furthermore, young people must have clinics and trainings on how to live in racially multivariate societies and how to deal with the few characters who may proclaim racism among them. It is impractical to assume that the whole population of the young people can accept to shun racism at the same time. Some of the young people in the society will take the initial steps to stop the racist behaviour, yet others will continue with the character for some time before stopping it eventually. At the time of bridging, the young people need a lot of guidance so that the ones who take the early step do not drag back courtesy of the few who remain in the act (Knickerbocker 101). At the same time, the young people should understand the globalization is real, and the people must live together irrespective of race. In this regard, the young people will eventually learn to accommodate the people from different races and live together harmoniously without necessarily abusing each other racially.
Teaching the young people to live racism-free lives will mean nothing to the young generation as the older generation still practices the vice in some instances. “I am also old enough to realize how one narrow slice of our society has learned to use the charge of "Racism!" to cow their foes and advance their political agenda” (Oikelome 142). In this regard, the young people face challenging huddles to avoid the external sources of the racial behaviours. The young people must learn that the environment can present the racial ailments to any person hence they must choose their idols well. If a young person chooses a racist politician as their idol ad role model, chances range high that they will also copy the racist behaviours ad even end up worse than the former. Generational pruning provided an effective strategy that the society can use to guard against the racist treatments of the young people.
Recreation role in curbing racism among the young people
Most of the young people learn their behaviours and actions through their interaction with other people in the society. Most of the contacts that the young people make come during their free time in their recreational pacts and groups. Concisely, the recreational groups that the young people assume shape their character, likes and even dislikes. Instead of the groups influencing the young people into loving racism, the society can turn the recreational activities and groups into good weapons against racism. There are very many ways that society can use recreation and leisure activities as weapons against racism. Initially, the recreational activities should encompass activities that bring people together and allow them to mingle irrespective of their races (Litvan 738). Promoting interaction is essential because recreational activities offer individuals with an opportunity of understanding others. In this context, one accepts that “inferior races” have no shortcomings as the racist people may suggest and that they have the same abilities.
Addressing racial prejudices foster good co-existence as people learn to love and associate with others freely regardless of their racial background. Furthermore, recreational facilities must have some sessions under which participants learn virtues and morals, which can help them stay harmoniously with each other. If the gym or any other recreational site had a separate room where all the people coming to the facility must attend for some time and learn the moral and social value in the society, the racists could never suffice at the facilities (Knickerbocker 101). However, in order for the recreational moral centres to work more effectively, the facilitators in the sessions must be people who believe in unity, love, and harmony between different races. There is no point of a facility teaching the participants to shun racism using a racist as the facilitator.
In the case of competitive recreational activities, the facilitators should shun the activities that allow only people from a particular race in one team whereas all the others suffice in the other teams. The racial competition is likely to spark feelings of superiority, inferiority, or segregation among the people hence the racial characters may even spread more. When people find out that their group has only one race, they will tend to treat the other group as a pact of a race and compete with them n the basis of racial superiority. At the same time, some people may feel intimidated at the appearance of the racial grouping hence; they will treat the other group with revenge based on their racial intimidation. However, the recreational facilities must avoid such occurrences by encouraging the racial integration, mix so that people learn to value, and love each other irrespective of their race.
Sponsorship and display play a very vital role in the competitive sports. In most cases, the people who value the competitive sports as the base of their recreation will have a very high reflection of the sponsors and their displays. According to Dummer (65), sponsors must use displays that do not present one race as superior over the others and that do not segregate the people in any way. When the sponsors prepare to sell their products through sponsoring the recreational activities, they must do so knowing that they serve the interests of the society as a whole and not the interests of a certain racial group. By using the displays that arouse senses of equality among the people, the sponsors will simply show the people that the most important element of life includes building friendship relations no matter the race that a person hails from. Sporting and recreation can become the greatest weapon of fighting racism among the young people because over 90 % of the young people have either direct or indirect attachment to some recreational activity.
Parental role in curbing racism among the youth
Parents have the first contact with the young people in their tender ages. The beliefs of the parents have the highest tendencies of adoption from the young people because the young people consider them as perfect people who are free from any errors (Dummer 65). The parents can either help the society to curb racism or increase it depending on what they give to the young people at the early ages. However, the parents must take the role of the forerunners in the fight against racism. They must be the first people to condemn the activities even though they do not necessarily have to tell the children that racism is the act they stand against. Their acts must show that they do not believe in the racist activities. Parents can stop the racist activities through a number of ways.
Initially, parents must show good examples to the young growing children as far as racism stretches. The children will find the situation hard to avoid if the parents practice it carelessly. At the same time, the children may consider the words from their parents as pretence if the parents are racists yet they advice them against it. In the first place, the children do more through observation than listening. With that in mind, the parents must engage in activities that show they love other races before they tell their children to love them.
“The doctrine of racism asserts that blood is the marker of national-ethnic identity. Within a racist framework, the value of a human being is not determined by his or her individuality, but instead by membership in a so-called ‘racial collective nation.’ (Burns 19)”
The parents must shun the identity ego especially when interacting with young people. Inviting friends of other races, the parents can show the children that all the people are equal, and love must reign.
The parents should choose the right mentors and idols for their children in order to protect them from the racist world (Zaltsberg 57). The people who influence the direction of the young people especially in the adolescent stages are the mentors and idols they choose. If allowed to choose such people on their own, the children may likely land on racist mentors and the pain of racism will spread to their generation. However, the parents must choose the mentors for the children so that they can screen them well and present mentors who believe in love and harmony among different races and not the racially bias mentors. The morality of the young people will depend mainly on the decisions that parents make regarding their children. It is imperative therefore, that parents make racism-free decisions for the young people in order to help stamp out racism.
Conclusion
The young people present the most promising group of people to fight racism in the world; however, they are the most delicate group in terms of racism. In order for the society to succeed in curbing racism, the young people must heavily come into the focus of the society. Racism is a bad act in the society because it can cause serious consequences to the count of people murdering each other. However, in all the activities that the society organizes for the young people, racism should not feature. Parents and mentors should remain sensitive to activities that may foster racism in order to avoid them. Furthermore, racism should be discouraged in the recreational activities children relationships for the war against racism to succeed.
Works cited
Burns, Jimmy. "Blunkett Attacks Media for Stirring Up Racism." Financial Times Mar 15 2003: 6. ProQuest. 27 July 2013 David Blunkett has attacked sectors of the media for stirring up racist attitudes over the asylum issue. According to Home Office officials, Mr Blunkett was anxious to reaffirm the government's commitment to fighting racism amid concerns within ethnic minority groups who vote Labour that the issue was falling by the wayside as his department focused on crime and the threat of terrorism.
Dummer, Kathy. "Talk Box: Fighting Discrimination." School Library Journal 48.1 (2002): 65. ProQuest. 27 July 2013 Gr 6-9-Journalist Kati Sai hosts a talk show about racial diversity with a group of multiethnic adolescent girls and boys. Many of the participants tell how they have been hurt by racism, and how they think racism and stereotyping can be eliminated. Those interviewed agree that peer pressure is a very strong motivator and very difficult to overcome.
Knickerbocker, Brad. "Racism Flaring, Northwest Fights Back ; the Number of Skinheads in the US has Doubled in the Past Year." The Christian Science Monitor Apr 26 2004: 01. ProQuest. 27 July 2013 The West Virginia-based National Alliance - one of the largest and most active white supremacist groups in the country (it inspired Timothy McVeigh and is behind much of the "white power" music aimed at young people) - has become very active in the Northwest, leafleting in many communities and showing up at antiwar rallies with big signs saying "No More Wars for Israel." The idea here, says one observer who tracks hate groups, is that 9/11's massive attack on the United States, and fighting in Iraq against people described as unchristian and non-whites, will attract those with racist attitudes. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last week issued its annual report on hate groups. The number of racist skinhead groups in the United States has doubled over the past year, and the neo- Nazi Aryan Nations has 11 new chapters. The SPLC tracked 751 hate group chapters in 2003, 43 more than the previous year. While more-populous states and the South generally have more such groups, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon (three of the least ethnically diverse states in the US) have significant numbers of neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, and racist skinhead followers. Volksfront, a white supremacist group based in Portland, Ore., grew from five to eight chapters in 2003, according to the SPLC.
Litvan, Laura M. "National Issue Fighting Racism: Epa's New Role?" Investor's Business Daily Mar 25 1998: 0. ProQuest. 27 July 2013. Others thought Shintech Inc.'s proposed plastics plant would only add to the mix of toxic fumes in the air. St. James Parish, nestled along the Mississippi River, is near several factories, including an oil refinery and two fertilizer plants. If the EPA sides with Shintech's opponents, it could signal a new era for a growing "environmental justice" movement. As early as next month, the EPA could order Louisiana to pull or revise Shintech's permit - or risk losing federal funds. The problems in St. James Parish began in August '96, when Shintech said it wanted to open a new plastics plant. Local and state economic development officials thought it was a boon for a parish with an 8% unemployment rate. The national jobless rate is 4.6%.
Niemeijer, Marsha. "Fighting Racism at Work and in the Community." Labor Notes 03 2005: 8. ProQuest. 27 July 2013 The scholar argues that she constantly try not to let racism come into the union. When she sees racism geared towards Blacks in the union, she becomes very outspoken. However, she feels that she would do the same when it is directed towards white folks. The Scholar articulates that when she sees racism, she tries to pull the white racist brother aside and explain that they are not better off than she is because their skin is white. She observers that in their household they talked about unions, racism, and Black history; thus, she developed a foundation of these concepts. She observes the need of promoting such education to empower workers with interaction skills.
Oikelome, Franklin. "An Exploration of "Working Against Racism: The Role of Trade Unions"." Equal Opportunities International 25.2 (2006): 142. ProQuest. 27 July 2013 A report on a conference titled "Working Against Racism: The Role of Trade Unions" is presented. The report is generated through general observations, notes, and tape recordings. Racism is still endemic in British society. Trade unions risk alienating their black constituency unless they venture out of their comfort zone, rebuild confidence within the black community, and improve organisation, participation, and recruitment of black members in the movement. This report is valuable in exposing the problems the trade union movement in the UK is faced with and the extent to which black members are at odds with trade unions regarding the approach to adopt in fighting discrimination in the work place.
Zaltsberg, Bob. "Anti-Racism Expert: Tinley Park Attack was 'Self-Defeating'." McClatchy - Tribune Business News May 25 2012 ProQuest. 27 July 2013 Tinley Park police say masked attackers armed with metal clubs and hammers marched into the Ashford House Restaurant and began fighting with patrons, mainly a dozen or so people the attackers identified as white supremacists.
