At every public location, there used to be two water coolers; one for the “whites” and one for the colored. This was because of segregation laws that were enforced by government dating back to the 1940s. These segregation laws asked that there be separate water cooler terminals for the “whites” and for those of darker colored skin. Segregation laws also made it so that, while all citizens were provided the same public services (e.g. schools, hospitals, etc), those of African American descent were to be separated from the “whites”, and were often given lesser public services than the “whites”. This form of institutionalized racial discrimination no longer exists; however, racism does continue to plague our society to this day. (Columbia University)
In 2009, over 40 000 race related crimes occurred in the United Kingdom alone. (Johnson) Also, in the United States of America, it has been recorded that, in the past year, about 50% of all hate crimes were racially motivated. (U.S. Department of Justice) Poverty gives way to social tensions because of the economic stress everyone is experiences, and can result in anger at each other in the form of racism. At this point, we rely on education to kick in; education teaches us what is right and wrong, but with poverty usually comes a low level of education. If only we were to direct our efforts to eradicating poverty and increasing education in our society, maybe we can also remove racism from our society. Although Some may argue that trends show levels of racism in America have been considerably diminished over the past few hundred years; factors like, poverty and lack of education, stand in the way of stopping racism once and for all. In not addressing this predicament promptly, racism r...
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...tention it once had, we jeopardize the progress society has made towards a world of equal opportunity. Through better access to better education, we can increase awareness of the mistakes we’ve made in history, and avoid them. In this way, we can start to make advancements to stop crimes of discrimination, and maybe we can move society towards a world in which we can truthfully say “racism does not exist”.
Works Cited
Columbia University. Jim Crow. 2009. 23 January 2011 .
Johnson, Wesley. Figures Show Large Rise in Number of Hate Crimes. 30 November 2010. 23 January 2011 .
U.S. Department of Justice. Uniform Crime Reports. 2011. 23 January 2011 .
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