Susan B Konig They Ve Got To Be Carefully Taught Summary

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In Susan B. Konig’s essay “They’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” she uses her personal experiences to explain how we are taught at a very young age to focus on the differences between us instead of on what we have in common. Konig explains how her daughters teacher was teaching her class how each race and ethnicity is different and ignoring the fact that their connection to their ethnicity can only be found in how they look. This taught the children to look no further than the outward appearance of the people around them, building a foundation for possible future racism. Although today's society supposedly discourages racism, it encourages racial diversity, creating defined lines separating people based solely on their appearance and heritage, …show more content…

In today's society, racism, at times, has created major problems. Whether those problems are similar to the race riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in August of 2014, or the recent police shootings, racism has stained America’s culture with the blood of those who are different. The Ferguson riots is an example of what happens when people are taught to look no further than the surface. The spark that engulfed the city of Ferguson into a raging race riot was the shooting of a black (Michael Brown) by a white (police officer, Darren Wilson). Those who participated in the riots often resorted to violence in belief that it would help. They vandalized, looted, arsoned, and destroyed the streets and shops of the city. The only result they …show more content…

People willing believe that racism is something that people pick up along the way as they grow up. No one will ever admit that the problem of racism is rooted in how we teach our children how to see the people around them, nor will anyone confess that what makes us different is was makes us American. When we teach our children about what makes them different from their friends, we are teaching them to see people with differing ethnicities/races from their own as a culture/race instead of as a person. When we, as a culture and society, focus on what makes us different based on how we looked we fail to take into account that people are more than what we see on the outside. The only way to end racism is to change how we see the people around

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