Is Racism still a problem in the 21st Century?

Authors Avatar

Non-fiction coursework

Discursive Essay

Is Racism still a problem in the 21st Century?

Racism has been a problem since the very first day that two men of different Races met. Racism is defined as the belief in the superiority of one Race over all others. Often racism is a belief that one type of person has got better physical attributes, or is more intelligent. This belief can have an enormous affect over the way that one group of people treats another. In retrospect all racism entails is the idea that because of someone's skin colour or religion they are an in-superior race.

Racism is a blatant form of prejudice. People who are prejudice are people who have strong feelings against certain types of people before they have even met them. Prejudice means 'pre-judgement' and society proves that people will judge somebody sooner than they would get to know them.

Regularly individual people are very friendly, but because of there actions throughout history or their rivalling religious beliefs people often see them as being a possible threat and treat every person of that race as if they were the same. This is called stereotyping. Stereotyping is when all people of a certain type are thought to share the same characteristics. Often stereotypes are used as forms of racial abuse and horrible jokes. For example:

"Why did the Romans build straight roads? So the Paki's couldn't build corner shops".

The first black people to be brought to Britain where slaves. The so-called 'Slave race' were taken from their home countries and taken to Britain and America. Although Slave trading was mostly common in America British people were just as responsible. The African slaves were often prisoners in their village and tribe leaders would trade them for material goods, such as pots and pans or clothes. Then the slaves would be promised the chance of a new life and promised that they would become 'good people' and Christians.

Many people who are against 'African-Americans' claim that by coming to this country they were offered the chance to be reformed and made into respectable members of society. Unfortunately this never happened, throughout their horrendous journey across the Pacific Ocean, many potential slaves died due to the awful living conditions. They African slaves were chained down onto the cargo decks of ships and forced to toilet in the same place and sit, or lye in a very small shape or they would be sitting on top of another potential slave. Often throughout the journey slaves would get sick and die of terrible illnesses, or sometimes they wouldn't be fed for days and many died of starvation. For the ones who did survive the journey and made it to be sold on the slave market, rather than being made into American people they were treated like animals. They had to do every task that slave owners were too proud to do themselves, often they would have very little clothes and not many places to bathe. Slaves were made to sleep in barns among the animals they were made to clean up after and would be laughed at and constantly miss-treated by their buyer.

Join now!

People in Britain often get angry about the amount of immigrants that flee to our country. Whites who are against the immigrants usually claim that they are taking jobs from them. These people are the ones who either does not know why Britain has so many immigrants or they just simply failed History. After World War 2 when Britain had the dreadful task of trying to rebuild what had been lost in the consequential devastation they started to run public transport again. However the Britons who had fought in the war didn't want low paying jobs like running a bus ...

This is a preview of the whole essay