Persuasive Essay On Racism

Cognitive Dissonance ft. Racism Simply put, change is difficult. It is especially difficult when trying to break free from a mentality that has dictated the lives of people in an entire country from hundreds of years ago. But James Baldwin has hope for the future— he believes that with love, introspection, and compassion, we have the power to “make America what America must become.” (10) The Fire Next Time reminds us of the timeless values we as Americans need to constantly work on to save our country. Sadly, racism won’t disappear overnight. It won’t disappear without the privileged people in power taking action, and Baldwin provides readers with insight on his experiences, perspectives, and steps to making necessary changes in our world.

Much of the time, people try to deny racism’s existence because of the progress we’ve made. President Barack Obama recently stated, “The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives — that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it — racism, we are not cured of it. It’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 2-300 years prior.”

Racism isn’t only “being mean to someone because of their race”. It is institutions and legal systems that put one race below another, and typically create a negative bias to that group. A friend of mine once said “Racism is not only in black people dying, it is in people looking for a reason to justify their deaths.” Stereotypes, microaggressions, culture appropriation, police brutality, and racial profiling are only a few examples of the endless discrimination seen in our culture