Essays on Institutional Racism

Institutional Racism towards Black Americans

Racism, as several experts describe, has been a way of life, for quite some time in the United States (Nesbit). The rise of the pre-colonial era, and immigrations, slavery and the way people drifted towards different shores in search of power can all be accounted to the present day situation that we face in America. While slavery and apartheid ended long before, what is left over is our own complicated melee of whites, blacks, and Asians, and many more races, in a mixed colorful bouquet, and yet, creating a lot of confusion in the minds of both people and ...

Critical Analysis

As Delgado and Stefancic point out, the critical race theory (CRT) as held by most pragmatists and civil rights activists helps in explaining the issue of racism that is so entrenched in the American society’s legal, social, political, and economic systems (23). According to them, race is not a biological but a social construct which means that it is embedded in people as they interact with people from different racial backgrounds. Critical race theory also helps in explaining some of the historical racial injustices such as discrimination that people of color have had to go through for a ...

The right wing media has long held the position that white-on-black racism in the United States is “dead.” Certain facts are thought to prove this point. The fact that, in 2009, a black man assumed the office of President of the United States is proof that racism is over. Also, black students now have an easier time getting accepted to college than white students because of Affirmative Action, proving racism is no longer a problem (Weissmann, 2012). And anyway, racial discrimination is illegal now – the Civil Rights Act took care of that over fifty years ago. While it is ...

While the bulk of the poem Capital Punishment by Sherman Alexie concentrates on an Indian facing capital punishment through the eyes of the prison cook, the last few lines take the focus off of the man about to be executed and places it upon the reader themselves. In these few lines the prison cook basically points out every one of us is guilty of something in life, saying, “,,,if any of us/ stood for days on top of a barren hill/ during an electrical storm/ then lightning would eventually strike us/ and we'd have no idea for which of ...

Footnote: sources used are Cannon, de la Fuente, Dominguez, Laing, Shecaira,

Skidmore, Steur and Telles. Comparative Racism Between the United States, Cuba and Brazil Racism in the Americas is the societal result of colonization that took place from the end of the fifteenth century to the neo-colonialism of the last century. Then, as these eras ended, different countries adapted to the plurality of races that now existed in their own ways, some better than others. In most cases, but not all, there was European-American sentiment of superiority over other races that they now lived with. They now had freed slaves that they mistreated and subverted for hundreds of years, as ...

This article provides a comprehensive review of the article by Lin (2002). This article addresses how media portrays racism and its influence to lifestyle and health. A sociological approach to the problem of racism is applied, arguing that the society needs to understand the different forms of racism, biological origin of racism, and its meaning in the society. Therefore, sociological concepts such as ethnocentrism, race, and ethnicity can vastly influence media’s perception on racism. The three concepts have different meanings, but are all related and can influence health practitioner’s ability to evaluate media’s coverage of racism issues. ...