Racism has occurred throughout history and has been remaining an important problem from now and always. It has a negative impact on selected groups of people, discriminates their rights, and gives rise to social distract and disrespect. Despite the fact the most critical rasism manifestations in the United States of America has been left in the past, the modern world full of immigrants is still given to its influence, what, in turn, becomes an important problem of society. The goal of this paper is to look at manifestations of racism in the modern world, study its reasons and explain negative consequences, and try to find a response for a question how the problem of racism could be possibly solved. What would it take to solve the question of racism and to become color-blind? To rid the world of racism the one must acknowledge the racism, hate and discrimination they have learned and choose to no longer give those thoughts and feelings any power than educate others, especially the young generation.
For a start, it is necessary to understand that racism is a clash of different cultures. It is often difficult for one people to appreciate and embrace ideals and beliefs of other ones. This conflict has reflected in land settlements and conquests in different historical times, such as Anti-Semitism, slavery times in the United States, Spanish settlement in the Philippines, etc. Nowadays, in the age of immigration, migration, and interracial collaboration, relationship between white and colored people became an essential part of everyday life, and at the same time they became a key to increase of common ground between people of different skin color and to solving an issue of racism. However, colored people still face some conflicts during their assimilation into Western society. Quoting Mead, Hall states that Western people possess strong sense of self (Hall, 28). Imitating them, colored people begin to alienate themselves from their ancestry and culture, and to adopt Western ideas about who people of other races should be and what place should come in. Hall says that the more non-Western people incorporate a negative image of their races into their individuality, the more they will be dishonored in the cognitive of who they are (Hall, 28). This leads to decrease of self-esteem and taking the fact colored people could never be the same as the white ones. Quoting Maslow, Hall writes that desire of self-developing is common and natural for every person (Hall, 28). But, influenced by Western society convictions, colored people lose this desire; in their minds it becomes expressed less and less. They start to expend fewer efforts and, thus, cannot achieve their goals. Of course, those colored people who got lots of family love and leant how to respect themselves in childhood, can face these difficulties and proudly wend their way through life, but not everybody can do this. Lack of self-belief is widespread even among Western people, especially teenagers, and naturally becomes usual practice for living in Western countries colored ones.
However, visual manifestations of racism and existence of aggressively disposed racists are not the only problem. Another important part of this detraction of colored people is aversive racism. Pearson states that aversive racism is developed indirectly and reflexively (Pearson, 1). Together with his colleagues, he underlines that the challenge of aversive racism lies in a fundamental disagreement between mind and action (Pearson, 19). In other words, aversive racism means that some people are sure they are not racists, but their thoughts are remote from their actions. Quoting Dovidio, Person states, “Aversive racists are characterized as having egalitarian conscious, or explicit, attitudes but negative unconscious, or implicit, racial attitudes” (Pearson 4). Bright examples of aversive racism are seen in social politics, from health indices to disparities in medical treatment, level of wages and salaries, to access to basic services like education, housing, employment, etc. Also, Blacks and Whites have different opinions about the importance of race in American society. National surveys show that about 75% of Blacks and only 30% of Whites hold that racial discrimination is a major factor appointing disparities in income and education levels, and remaining 70% of Whites say they are satisfied with how Blacks are treated (Pearson, 2). The roots of aversive racism lie in history; social categorization is a largely automatic process nowadays. As it was mentioned above, Westerns have strong sense of self; this results in automatic recognition of similar to them people as intelligent, educated, and successful, while Blacks are considered to be lazy, aggressive, and impulsive (Blair, 2001). According to Sidanius, it also should be mentioned that another partials of negative racial attitudes are intergroup processes and perceived competition over material resources (Sidanius, 1999). The main danger of aversive rasism lies in hypocrisy; deeds of aversive racists usually are latent. They will never do something people around could see and judge, but their acts will harm colored ones while aversive racists themselves still remain non-prejudiced for others. Thus, the consequences of aversive racism can be more severe than the ones from its simple, or dominative variation.
In order to understand the consequences of racial discrimination, it is necessary to overlook its impact on colored people in modern society. Discrimination of colored people exists in all life spheres: health, education, employment, the media, the administration of justice, etc. Talking about racism, Boyle states that negative meanings to differences seem natural, but are not natural at all; it is just the thing people learn and is therefore the thing they can unlearn (Boyle, 1). Racism and anti-racism, first of all, are battle of ideas. Diene notices that interconnectedness of the world and high speed of globalization are not able to demise racism but, on the contrary, can give it a boost (Boyle, 3). He also underlines an importance of terrorist offenses in suspicious and anxious relations to colored people and their part in growth of racism (Boyle, 3). Indeed, the problem of growth of global terrorism and increasing of different terror groups are due in no small part to the question of racism and just activate additional racist movements.
Racism highly influences on mental health of colored people. Williams and Mohammed state that racism is one of the main health determinants, and it has an impact in social status, proximal pathways, and responses to them (Williams, 1157). Living under the pressure of racism is always stressful; it is an everyday battle, everyday resistance and self-esteem examination resulted in affecting central nervous system and immune, causing anxiety, depression, fear, and panic attacks. In conditions of Western supremacy, colored people start to think about how it would be if they had been born with white skin and how much better then would their life be. However, not only going throw manifestations of racism hurts people but anticipating of it also. Sawyer et al. studied that expectation of being discriminated causes heightened vigilance that can lead to activation of nervousness, negative emotional state, increasing of blood pressure, and sympathetic nervous system activation (Sawyer et al., 1026). Colored teenagers have the largest risk of appearing of health consequences caused by racism, but the co-occurrence of multiple diseases increases with age. Williams and Mohammed argue that throughout history racial variations in heath have been explained as biological and genetic, but indeed institutional and cultural forms of racism have always been and continued to be main contributors to initiating racial inequalities in a broad range of social outcomes that, in turn, lead to creating inequalities in health (Williams, 1166).
In order to solve the problem of racism it is necessary for parents to explain their children racial differences and to teach them that people with other skin color are not better or worse than Whites. Children start to ask questions in early years, but rather often their parents do not give them proper answers. Derman-Sparks states that adults often think that children are color-blind and non-prejudiced, and they will grow with the same view if nobody tells them about racism (Derman-Sparks, 2). However, denial and avoidance are not the best decisions. Children in the United States start to understand that they differ from their comrades with another skin color at an early age, even at a very early age. Ignorance of racism and importance of being anti-racist can lead to intellectual damage and dehumanization of children. Quoting Katz, Derman-Sparks states, “Racism and ethnocentrism envelop them so that they are unable to experience themselves and their culture as [they are]” (Derman-Sparks, 2). And an understanding of racism is necessary not only for Western children, but for Third World ones also. Colored children should learn how to respect themselves, grow self-esteem, how to value traditions and culture of their ethnicity. They should accept that nature made them different, but it is not bad; it is not a sentence and they should live their lives the way they would like to without being pinched or despised.
In solving the problem of racism, it is hard to underestimate the role of education and laws. According to January-Bardill, the United States adopted bigger amount laws aimed to solve the problem of racism than any other human rights issue (Boyle, 4). But it is known that the question of racism in the United States is more critical than in any other countries. Interracial conflicts here appear more often, and sometimes without serious reasons, and interracial relations are tenser. Becoming color-blind, respecting each other and people of other races is a very pressing problem for Americans. Tomasevski offers to integrate learning of human rights into academic programs in schools, colleges, and universities (Boyle, 4). In her opinion, this can significantly decrease racial prejudices and intolerance. If children are begirded with the idea of equal rights for everybody, color-blindness, and, hence, anti-racism not only, for example, in their families but also in social environment where they spend a lot of time, it could lead to upbringing in them tolerance to colored people and understanding of their culture and beliefs. This, also, will help children, whose parents are racists, to make a right decision; their view on races will be dual, with benefits and implications of each position, its reasons and consequences.
The problem of racism is discussed on a worldwide basis. On the one hand, such careful attention to problems of discrimination is laudable, but, on the contrary, all these anti-racism laws and politics people can see nowadays bring too much notice to difference between races. Most talks and discussions about racism are needless, and they hamper acceptance of white and colored people as equal every time underlining their distinctions again and again. Solving the problem of racism requires tolerance and understanding, maybe knowing biological reasons of why people on the Earth are so different, and agreement with them. The basics of being color-blind should be learnt from an early childhood, engrained by parents in their children, without any additional news about interracial occurrences of no importance and additional attention to race stratification existing in the modern world.
In conclusion, it is necessary to say that racism is the global problem of humanity, one of the most important ones. It affects not only the social life of colored people, but at the same time their health and self-esteem, and the only reason of such their detraction is belonging to race and culture different from Western. Nobody can choose of what race and with what skin color he or she will be born, and, naturally, nobody should suffer because of something he or she could not have an impact on. People should comprehend this and get to be more large-hearted and broad-minded, should learn how to become color-blind and to judge people by their deeds, not ideals and skin. They should get clear sight of what racism is, how proved its reasons are, and how significant are its consequences for people with other skin color literally for nothing special. And, what is more important, they should teach these simple principles their children, both in family and at school. Then the problem of racism could be solved.
References
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