Racsim. Can't We All Just Get Along?

Racism. What exactly is racism? Well, racism is “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” says dictionary.com. Now I don’t know about you, but that’s just not ok. Like it says in our United States Constitution, “ALL men are created EQUAL!” Yes, you did read that correctly, all men (and women) are created equally. Now I don’t want to get all religious, at least not for now, but I want to talk about the 3 articles that my teacher had us read about racism. We had recently watched a movie that was about racism, and how you don’t necessarily realize that racism is happening unless that you or another party step into another person’s shoes and take the criticism from the group or individual that is trying to force superiority upon your ethnic race.

The first article talks about how racism was a man made thought or an idea. It also says about how that in early western civilization, people then started to try and make themselves feel better and more superior than anyone else, first in the case of the pilgrims, then in slavery. In the beginning with the pilgrims, they had used their technological advancement of warfare to force the Native Americans out. They thought that since the Native Americans were a different skin color and did things differently than they did, that they were less of people. Same goes to when they started importing slaves. They were different colored, and had different customs than what the “Americans” had. So, what did they do? They enslaved them. Made them lesser than the white race. And when they started slavery, that’s when racism exploded. Racism then started to spread to all the corners of the world. The author of the article also stated that he believed that religion has a big part in racism too. And I also think it does. Everyone is religious, whether you are an atheist or Lutheran, catholic, Methodist, whatever you may be, you are religious. Because being religious means that you believe in a set of values/ beliefs or a god or gods. This is kind of weird, but today in church, my minister talked about racism in the world. She also related it back to biblical times to when Jesus’s followers were get persecuted for believing in him. They were treated horribly and some cases even killed. Why, you may ask? It was because they believed in something different. There’s that word again, different.  They didn’t do what society as a whole told them to do.

The second talks about racism in America. He talks about how the American society is kind of made up people who are racist. We as a society aren’t just racist towards African Americans, but to all minority groups. As an example, we stereotype African Americans to be bad people because of what a small percent of them do. Yes I understand that you have your bad people, but every racial group is going to have bad people. We stereotype people with Middle Eastern background. Ever since all the problems in the world with terrorists from that part of the world, everyone just associates everyone with the same ethnic background to be those bad terrorists. I was watching television today, and a show called “The George Lopez Show” talked about racism. He had a man working for his company (they build plane parts) who was from the Egypt, but, here’s the catch; he had taken flight lessons and knew how to fly a plane. Everyone that worked at that plant, freaked out because they stereotyped him to be racist, when in reality he was just a great guy. His bosses told him to fire this man, but he said that he wasn’t going to do it because this is America, and if he has to fire someone for stereotypical ideas of other people, he said he didn’t want to live in this country anymore because he was raised that no matter the color of your skin, the religion you were a part of, it doesn’t make you any less of a person. That hit me hard, because, I know that happens in the U.S. Good people get treated badly because they have the same color skin as a group of people who have done bad.

The third article talked about how the media affects the negative stereotypes in the world against different ethnic groups. He talks about how the progression of technology in media has had a major impact in the rising of racism in America and the world. It all started out in the papers, and then it went to the big screen. From there, it was movies, then it was TV, then it was cartoons, and now it’s on almost any channel there is, whether you realize it or not, it’s out there, right in front of your face. A few shows that I would like to use as an example of this; The Jetsons, have you ever realized that there are no minorities up in the clouds with all the white people? Go take a closer look next time! The next one id like to talk about is one of my child hood favorites, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”.  Now, the Yellow Ranger, she was Asian, the brains of the group, the Blue and Red Power Rangers were your average everyday white males. The Black Ranger, who was the lone ranger who always happened to be involved in trouble, or was getting in trouble. Then you have the Pink Ranger, she was the cute little perfect, white girl. Finally, the White Ranger, he was the one with all the skills, and he was the best of the best. Coincidence? I think not.

Now, I think the one word that works perfectly with racism, is “Different”. People are afraid of change, and when things change or aren’t what you are used to, those things, (people) are different being different from someone is not a bad thing! In fact, I encourage being different, being unique. People are saying that they want to put an end to racism. But do they really? On the inside we are all the same, so why judge someone by how they look? Like the saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover”. I believe that racism will never end. Too many people are bull headed and stubborn to accept the fact that the one guy who is black, and the other guy who is Middle Eastern, may end up being your lifelong friends. It’s all about giving people a chance, a fair and equal chance. Finally, to wrap things up, I would like to quote one of my favorite movies. The quote comes from the movie "The Longest Yard" and the man who stated the quote was Mr. Caretaker (Chris Rock), "Stop it! Stop the violence! Can't we all just get along?!"