Different Types of Racial Discrimination

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What is racism and does it still exist? According to Merriam Dictionary, racism is “a belief that is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Every day, many people experience the harsh act of racism in different forms such as: racial slurs, harassment, or through more obvious acts which are the effects of institutional racist practices. However, something really easy to pin point is that these acts divide into two forms, direct or indirect racist behavior. Direct racial discrimination, is the type of discrimination in which the person who is committing the act has no fear of the public knowing about it and those acts are usually more extreme and make big scenes in the media and the community. For example, the hate crimes and racist behavior of the organizations such as the KKK, the Muslim brotherhood, and the black panthers which are the examples of hate crime of one race against the other. Also, as an easier example we can refer to an owner of the restaurant who does not hire black employees because he is against colored people to work for him, or in more direct, racist name calling. On the other hand, there is the indirect act of racial discrimination which occurs when something secret and more subtle happens. It is much hidden and lies within each persons’ beliefs, so this makes it hard to identify those people because sometimes this form of racism can happen without any intentions to offend. For example, a practice of banning students to wear anything on theirs can result in indirect act of discrimination towards students whom their culture or religion requires them of wearing headwear such as Jews. So, it is very noticeable that...

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...lessons. For example, I as a Persian or an Iranian love to laugh about what other cultures think of us even though it is racist, but when it is done by a comedian and he/she makes fun of every race then we see that so many people from different races are sitting together and enjoying the time and learning. That is what I mean by accepting some aspects of racism and put it behind and move to the bigger problems.

Works Cited

[1]. Institute for Research on Poverty, Univercity of Wisconsin, Vol. 24, page 2, pp.2.

[2] institute of Medicine, Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Health Care, Brian D.Smedley,Y. Stith, and Alan R. Nelson, Editors, Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Health Care, October 12, 2013.

[3] Douglas, How Institutes Think, Page 125-26, 1986.

[4] Merriam Webster dictionary

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