Racism in America

Racism came to be by the ideas of race that originated during the European era of exploration. Any types of people who looked, talked, and acted different from European view were considered inferior. As a present existing example of the world today, it is very common for people to think of themselves as superior when confronted by people who speak a different language then them. They believe that their language is superior out of ignorance, when really the other person talking the other language could quite possibly be smart as or maybe even smarter than them. Why do people make this assumption when confronted by this? It goes back to the origin of racism where people perceived people in a certain way that they were most familiar with and anything out of the norm causes them to react in a negative manner out of fear of the unknown.

During the time of the exploration of Christopher Columbus, the Europeans found civilization in Africa. The African people became inferior when they couldn’t comprehend the Europeans. The Europeans began to take them in as slaves. The slaves weren’t treated as humans, more like beasts or pests. Slavery, of course, is the most evident form of racism. It was very apparent that slavery was a major problem in the country. Slavery was eventually abolished due to the splitting of the country, the Civil War. People were fighting to treat blacks horribly, keeping them as slaves, beating them, and not providing them with proper nutrition, education or shelter. Once laws were passed to make slavery illegal, the violence worsened. This was the time Jim Crow Laws were enacted.

Jim Crow Laws began in the late 1880’s, in the “Reconstruction” after the case of Plessy V. Ferguson. The period after the Civil War was ...

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... hatred and stereotyping. When children are separated from other ethnic groups, they do not learn that those groups are not different than they, except in color and culture. Neighborhoods like this contribute to racism. Another large part of what contributes to racism is the feeling of being superior to another race. This mainly shows between whites and African Americans. A 2012 statistic said that the African Americans had a poverty level of 35% where as Whites only had a poverty level 13%. The fact that one statistic shows whites generally have more money makes one feel “above” African Americans. The levels of poverty have risen over time. In 2004, African Americans poverty level was 24.4%, as Whites where only at 12%. This shows that African Americans feel more intimidated by the Whites because the poverty level is growing more drastically compared to the Whites.