Prejudice & Racism

Racism is a certain kind of prejudice, based on faulty reasoning and inflexible generalizations toward a specific group. The word prejudice comes from the Latin noun praejudicium, which means a judgment based on previous decisions formed before the facts were known. If a person allows their prejudiced beliefs to block the progress of another, it is discrimination. Those who exclude all members of a race from certain types of employment, housing, political rights, educational opportunities, or a social interactions are guilty of racial discrimination.



Racism is an unmerited fear or dislike of a people because of their ethnic heritage. When colour is not a reason, other reasons such as language, religion, nationality, education, sex, orage become the reason of prejudice.

Sociologists, believe that racial discrimination happens more often and most harshly when two groups with different skin colours and unique physical features come into contact with each other and the two compete for the same thing. A insult directed at a particular ethnic group is likely to get these results in a confrontation: pain, anger, shame, hostility, guilt and embarrassment. Students admitted that they had used racial slurs when angered.



Race hatred often leads to violence. People whom form groups to defend America from a minority takeover fall into the category of extremists. For Example, Mooz-lum is a 2010 American independent film written and directed by Qasim "Q" Basir and starring Danny Glover. Mooz-lum (i.e. "Muslim") tells the story of an African American Muslim family whose lives are changed by the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. The plot is about Amid a strict Muslim rearing and a social life he has never had, Tariq Mahdi (Evan Ross) enters college confused. New peers, family and mentors help him find his place, but the 9/11 attacks force him to face his past and make the biggest decisions of his life.

System of Untouchability

More than 160 million people in India are considered Untouchable – people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure and less than human.

Indian caste system is a system of social stratification in which communities are defined by thousands of endogamous hereditary groups called jatis. The values and ethics are strongly held by the people belonging to the castes. Their life chances, context, choices and social status in the society largely depended on their caste. There are 5 different levels of the Indian caste system followed over years:-

The untouchables or dalit faced non prejudiced discrimination and were not considered as citizens. Historically, they were associated to odd jobs such as butchering, removal of waste and animal carcasses. They were called untouchable as they were not allowed to come in contact with the other castes. This system has worked in Indian history. But present-day India forbids discriminating and practicing untouchability. Along with this law the government allows positive discrimination of the depressed classes in India. But positive discrimination have created new problems in the Indian society.

The video below is a brief description on the prejudice and discrimination faced by the dalits. The video gives us examples of movements held to destroy the system of untouchability.



Indians have become more flexible in their caste customs. In urban India, the people are less strict about the caste system than the rural. The biggest challenge in India is to overcome the violent clashes connected to caste tensions in remote villages. This will be a big leap to a more developed India.

Diversity

We all share diverse cultures and traditions, come from a different race or ethnicity and communicate through assorted languages. Last Thursday, I went to the cultural village, Katara, with my friends Rana and Ola to see an African band from Nigeria perform. Although I didn’t know exactly where the band was from, I knew they were African because their physical features indicated their race. They were obviously distinct from everyone else because of the language they spoke, the way they dressed and the way they looked.





I didn't understand any of the words they were singing, but I was into it because I could sense their passion. Their music was lively and vibrant and captured a big audience. The band was playing with enthusiasm and they were breaking it down with their dance moves. The audience was a mixture of different races. I saw Qataris, Indians, Filipinos, Americans and other Arab nationalities. It was easy to distinguish the ethnicity of all these people because of their social factors such as language, dress and physical appearances. The majority of the people were appreciative of the art they were performing, however others were more critical and showed prejudice towards it. For instance, there was a group of rowdy Qatari teen boys that were flocking around the main vocalist and being rude to him and mocking him when he was introducing his band. They made racial comments and were making fun of their dancing, singing and clothing. This lack of respect is a result of ignorance regarding another person's culture and traditions.




After we enjoyed their music, we spoke to them they asked were we from and they guessed that Ola was Brazilian. Although both Ola and I are Sudanese, he thought she was Brazilian because she had a lighter skin tone than him and curly light hair. When he found out that we were both Sudanese, he said to us, "You are my sisters." Being Africans, he believed we had the same ethnicity, deeming that "share national origin; a common ancestry; a place of birth; distinctive concrete traits; or socially important physical characteristics." This really got me thinking of my own identity and what I view myself as. The physical and social characteristics that I inherit from my parents and family are by chance. I very much consider myself as African, but only in terms of context meaning the only thing that I believe makes me African is geography. I regard myself to be culturally and ethnically Arab; therefore I am Arab by choice , culture and ethnicity.

Studies about the Discrimination Against African Americans in the U.S.

In 1947, Kenneth and Mamie Clark did a classic experiment to test prejudice and self-esteem. They offered young girls a choice between taking a white doll or a black doll to play with it. The majority, including African American girls, chose the white doll and rejected the black doll because they though that the white doll was prettier and superior. These researchers demonstrated that young African American girls were thinking at this very young age that it is not desirable to be black, which highly affects their self-esteem.





In 1954, Thurgood Marshall succeeded before the U.S. Supreme Court in ending legalized segregation in public schools, and he used the previous experiment by Clark to back up his argument. However, even after the ending of legal segregation, many people argue that prejudice and stereotypes against African Americans still exists in the United States.

In 2002, Correll and others did a study to test stereotypes about race and weapons. They used a video game that showed different people, half black and half white, in different places like parks, train stations, and city sidewalks. Half of the men in each group, white or black, carried a gun and the other half carried the non-threatening objects like a cell phone, a camera, or a wallet. The participants were asked to play the role of the police officer and press a button “shoot” if the character in the video game was holding a gun, and press the button saying, “don’t shoot” if the character in the game was not holding a gun. In addition, to make their role very similar to the role of the police officer, they were given very little time to decide to press “shoot” or “don’t shoot”, which was a bit over half a second.






The results from this experiment showed how participants were most likely to press “shoot” when the man in the picture was black, whether he was holding a gun or not. When the characters were white, the participants made about the same number of errors when they were armed or not. They did the least errors when the characters were black and armed, and did the most errors when the characters were black and unarmed.





This study shows that discrimination against African American still exists in the United States, even if its not legalized. And it also shows that status value is assigned to each race, black being dangerous, and white being not dangerous.


Reference: Aronson, Wilson, Akert. (2010). Social Psychology.