Racism
- Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Racism and discrimination have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns.
Racism is also a very touchy subject for some people, as issues concerning free speech and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
come into play. Some people argue that talking about supporting racial
discrimination and prejudice is just words and that free speech should
allow such views to be aired without restriction. Others point out that
these words can lead to some very dire and serious consequences (the
Nazi government policies being one example).
“Europe
has a regional human rights architecture which is unrivaled elsewhere
in the world”, Amnesty International notes in their 2010 report on the Europe and Central Asia region.
But the human rights watchdog also adds that as well as guarding a
proud reputation as a beacon of human rights, “it is sadly still the
case, however, that the reality of protection from human rights abuses
for many of those within its borders falls short of the rhetoric.” In
recent years, one of those forms of abuses has been in the area of race,
often growing with changing economic circumstances and increased
immigration to the region.
From the institutionalized racism
especially in colonial times, when racial beliefs — even eugenics —
were not considered something wrong, to recent times where the effects
of neo-Nazism is still felt, Europe is a complex area with many cultures
in a relatively small area of land that has seen many conflicts
throughout history. (Many of these conflicts have had trade, resources
and commercial rivalry at their core, but national identities have often
added fuel to some of these conflicts.)
Racism has also been used to justify exploitation, even using “pseudo-science”:
Debates over the origins of racism often suffer from a lack of clarity over the term. Many conflate recent forms of racism with earlier forms of ethnic and national conflict. In most cases ethno-national conflict seems to owe to conflict over land and strategic resources. In some cases ethnicity and nationalism were harnessed to wars between great religious empires (for example, the Muslim Turks and the Catholic Austro-Hungarians). As Benedict Anderson has suggested in Imagined Communities, ethnic identity and ethno-nationalism became a source of conflict within such empires with the rise of print-capitalism.
In its modern form, racism evolved in tandem with European exploration and conquest of much of the rest of the world, and especially after Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. As new peoples were encountered, fought, and ultimately subdued, theories about “race” began to develop, and these helped many to justify the differences in position and treatment of people whom they categorized as belonging to different races (see Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History).
Another possible source of racism is the misunderstanding of Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Some took Darwin’s theories to imply that since some “races” were more civilized, there must be a biological basis for the difference. At the same time they appealed to biological theories of moral and intellectual traits to justify racial oppression. There is a great deal of controversy about race and intelligence, in part because the concepts of both race and IQ are themselves controversial.
- Racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Racism is one of the primary issues of today's economy. It was a long history in the United States of America and was invented by the society. People nowadays are being blinded by the idea that we are now being associated with "race". The people during the past years were being deceived by the things they thought that only one race could do such things and that they are way much better than the others. Races are being judged by how they walk, talk, think and how they do things different from theirs. During the American colonies, the first laborers were the Europeans they were being forced or obliged and necessary to work for other people. Status of the people were being defined by their wealth as well as their religion and not by physical characteristics or their skin colors. But over the time, physical looks and differences mattered. But as time goes by the European slaves were being replaced by enslaved Africans who were being forced to commit as slaves. Soon, a new structural emerged. It was being based primarily on skin colors. English ancestry at the top and the Africans and American Indians at the bottom.
Our economy today faces several issues. One of theses is racism. People tend to look for people who they think could do more than the others. Today, Africans and American Indians were being viewed as less than human and not deserving as the same liberties with the White Americans. It was also supported by the common belief that people who were not born white were biologically inferior.
People who thought they were superior from the others removed the lands of the Native Americans. Those people who were inferior finds it very hard to find job suited for them for they were being judged by their race. They were not being viewed and judged as how they work and as how far they could go through to help the society and the economy.
We fail to see the privileges that some are being granted with talents, skills and abilities but being blinded to see those because of their skin colors, their hair, and the race where they're from. We can see that "race" would cause such discrimination, fostered inequality, privileges and chances given. Some parts of the world today considered "race" as a chance for them to overpower others. Racism is a way to forget the reputation of every human being. They were being abused by the people who are above them.
