Why Are People Still Racists?

 

Tablo reader up chevron

Why Are People Still Racists?

Looking back at the tons of efforts that have gone into educational articles, videos, and forums aimed at fixing the question of racism, one may think this feeble-minded way of regarding of different race is washed away leaving people with a common understanding of universal humanity, but this is far from reality. It is unfortunate that we racism is has become exceedingly difficult to kick out of the way into mutual existence freed from racial bias.

But what keeps racism surviving? It isn't so difficult to understand. We often learn a lot from society and our cultural heritage. Jennifer Richeson affirms that parents have a role to play in stemming out issues of race by bringing up children that appreciate diverse humanity. Racism springs from our immediate environment.

 Richeson gives a solid illustration of how upbringing can influence racial mentalities in children by showing us how they instinctively form a bias around a new student in a school. When a child enrolls into a new school, he/she in addition to seeking assistance from grades fixer or any platform that offers educational assistance, they are busy figuring out what other kids are made up of, singling out those cool and those not cool, the nerds and so on. Soon this child finds a way around these categories and establishes his/her alignments.

It, therefore, moves from home to school and then into the streets in which racism thrives following the map below:

·Too much Belonging. Wanting to spend time around people who hold the same believes as us, speak our language and share our culture and our religion is a natural course of humanity. But much of this "like us" attitude tends to draw lines between groups of people which might then develop into thinking that the "like us" are better than any other people.  

·Being Judgemental. The mentality of judging may grow to the levels of putting labels on other people. We want, for instance, to associate a particular dressing with some gangster music, or some privileged school with a privileged background. Stereotyping different racial backgrounds with phrases like "lazy," "Mandingo," "brainy," "coal black Africans" among other labels culminates into severe cases of racism.

·Stereotyping. It comes with passing judgment over the entire racial group without solid grounds. We need to judge people based on the content of their character and not the existing racial stereotypes which often do not hold for everyone.

·Laying blames to the people of a different race concerning our challenges. In most cases, we find this the best way to fend our frustrations without noticing the continued rift we create along our racial lines. We point fingers at people who look and speak in a different ways from us with comments such as, "all the best jobs go to those people" and "the government gives them special attention, and we are neglected."

"An as the mentality is, unfortunately, a basic party of our biology," says Eric Knowles, a psychology professor at New York University. Evidence has revealed people's ingrained tendency toward the ‘In a group,' which are unfortunately defined on social and not biological terms and which eventually draw divisions along racial lines in some ways dictated by the society.

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...
~

You might like Gregory's other books...