Racism Anti-Semitism free essay sample

Racism is also a matter of group identity, with feelings of superiority, distinctiveness, entitlement to power and fear and suspicion of subordinate groups that vary in intensity among individuals. Modern concepts of race and racism originated during the era of slavery and colonialism beginning in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Early social sciences like anthropology and sociology operated on expressly racist assumptions about the superiority of whites or ‘Nordics’ and ‘Aryans’ which were not really challenged until after the Second World War with the rise of civil rights and anticolonial movements. These issues of segregation, caste systems and discrimination have by no means disappeared today, although they are far less potent at provoking mass social protest movements than they were forty or fifty years ago because of the ameliorative social reforms that have been put in place since that time. Part Two: Argument For most of American history dating back to the 17th Century, racism was simply a given both structurally and culturally, especially against blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. We will write a custom essay sample on Racism Anti-Semitism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 â€Å"an enormous challenge was raised to established systems of rule by racially defined social movements around the world† (Winant, 2000, p. 182). By the 1960s and 1970s these had demolished most of the old European empires as well as the racial caste system in the American South. Certainly this did not lead to the abolition of personal prejudice or feelings of superiority, since these were historically rooted and had always existed as a means of protecting â€Å"the integrity and the position of the dominant group†Ã¢â‚¬â€violently so in the American South (Blumer, 1999, p. 02). Massive institutional racism and structural inequalities still exist in the United States especially in housing, public education and the criminal justice system. In every urban area, the quality of education available to poor and minority students is demonstrably worse by any measure than that of their white peers in the suburbs. This type of institut ional discrimination is not caused by genetic or cultural deprivation but by the fact that the U. S. has always been and remains a highly segregated and unequal society based on race and social class. Of course, this violates the liberal, egalitarian and meritocratic ideals on which the nation was (supposedly), but after all, the U. S. managed to survive with slavery for almost a hundred years after its founding, and with legal segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks for a hundred years after that. Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, Camden, New Jersey all have crumbling public school systems serving mostly black and Hispanic students funded at levels far below those of white suburban districts. Ghetto neighborhoods also lack banks, supermarkets, parks and other public services, and have high levels of crime, gang activity, unemployment and drug dealing. Racial profiling against blacks, immigrants and minorities has always existed in the American criminal justice system, as has the belief that minorities in general and blacks in particular are always more likely to commit crimes. American society and its legal system were founded on white supremacy going back to the colonial period, and critical race criminology would always consider these historical factors as well as the legal means to counter them. From the 17th Century onward, Black Codes and slave patrols were used to control the black population, and keep them confined to farms and plantations. Blacks did not have the right to trial by jury or to testify against whites, and the law punished them with greater severity, particularly if they committed crimes against whites. This has not changed up to the present (Glover, 2009, p. 12). Even after the end of slavery, segregation and denial of black voting rights were considered ‘legal’ by state and local governments and upheld by Supreme Court decisions like Plessey v. Ferguson (1896). For the United States, â€Å"separate but equal† was the law of the land in many parts of the country until 1964, and while the separation by race was real equality certainly never existed (Glover, p. 14). Racial profiling is a new name for a very old practice in the United States, even though mainstream criminology rarely recognizes this fact. Racism has always been related to other social and economic problems, especially poverty, police brutality, social class and lack of economic and educational opportunities. From the early-1970s, poverty and inequality in wealth and incomes have also increased, and this affected blacks more than any other group. By 2000, 1% of the population had almost half of the wealth in the United States. Police abuse and violence in the segregated ghettos increased and was â€Å"disproportionately used against poor communities of color† (West, 1993, p. viii). Nearly 10% of young black men were in prison and 40% of black children lived in poverty, but this was hardly part of the national political agenda (West, p. 4). Blacks consumed about 12% of the drugs in the U. S. but were 70% of those convicted on drug charges (West, p. ii). They were also imprisoned all out of proportion to their actual numbers in the population. In the United States over 75% of blacks still live in segregated neighborhoods that are often crowded, dangerous, lacking in social services, employment and educational opportunities. In fact, these segregated areas are racially profiled and re dlined, not only by law enforcement but by banks, insurance companies and other businesses and government agencies. Police do not enforce civil rights and open housing laws in this country, nor do they protect blacks from violence and discrimination if they attempt to move into white areas. Segregation in residential and economic life â€Å"makes it difficult to solve other problems connected to poor communities, such as crime, violence, poor health, high mortality, and abandonment of houses†, all of which have worsen greatly in the current recession (Ihewulezi, 2008, p. 47). Blacks are 12% of the general population but over 40% of the prison population because of biased enforcement of the drug laws and the fact that they are at least 40 times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites. Black children are over nine times more likely to have a parent in prison than whites, and three times more likely to live in single-parent families, and the high number of these is one of the major reasons about half of them live in poverty (Ihewulezi, p. 43). Of the minority women in prison, over 80% are mothers, and their children often end up in foster care. Less than half of black single mothers receive child support â€Å"due to unemployment or the incarceration of the father of their children†, and this also means that a shortage of marriageable black males exists (Ihewulezi, p. 4). All of these factors together lead to higher levels of poverty among blacks, and a higher likelihood of being racially profiled by to police, and thus the cycle of poverty and crime continues. Part Three: Counter-Argument In the year of 1964, the Civil Rights Act became a marker of the legislation in the United States that suppressed the various forms of discrimination not only against Afric an Americans and women but the public schools in the Southern states and the abolishment of the Jim Crow segregation in hospitals, transportations and public facilities. Shortly thereafter the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to allow African Americans to register to vote, to include women, handicapped, Hispanics, Native Americans and members of other minority groups that had to grasp hold on the majority of their gains in spite of the conservative backlash of the last three decades. Although these acts were implemented, along with the First Reconstruction of 1867-77, they still did not cease the violence that the civil rights workers had to endure by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), especially in the most southern states of Alabama and Mississippi. During the reconstruction era many black leaders gained their freedom before the Civil War and soon began to challenge their white employers, this too caused the KKK and other white supremacist organizations to target blacks; during this period 35 black officials were murdered. In the South blacks were kept as second-class citizens at the end of the First Reconstruction in 1877; the Second was never completely repealed by the reactionary and racist forces in the U. S.