Racism In America :: essays research papers

There is surely no nation in the human beings that holds " racial discrimination" in greater horror than does the United States. Compargond to other kinds of offenses, it is ruling to be somehow more reprehensible. The press and public construct amaze so used to tales of murder, rape, robbery, and arson, that any but the most spectacular crimes argon shrugged off as part of the inevitable texture of American life. " racial discrimination" is never shrugged off. For example, when a White Georgetown Law School student report earlier this year that glum students atomic number 18 not as capable as White students, it set off a booming, national brawl about "racism." If the student had and murdered someone he would deliver attracted far less attention and criticism.Racism is, indeed, the national obsession. Universities atomic number 18 on full alert for it, newspapers and politicians denounce it, churches preach against it, America is said to be racked with it, but just what is racism?Dictionaries are not much avail in understanding what is meant by the word. They usually define it as the vox populi that ones own ethnic stock is superior to others, or as the whimsey that culture and behavior are rooted in race. When Americans speak of racism they mean a great deal more than this. Nevertheless, the dictionary commentary of racism is a clue to understanding what Americans do mean. A funnily American meaning derives from the current dogma that all ethnic stocks are equal. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, all races have been declared to be equally talented and hard- working, and anyone who questions the dogma is thought to be not merely wrong but evil.The dogma has logical consequences that are profoundly important. If blacks, for example, are equal to Whites in every way, what accounts for their poverty, criminality, and dissipation? Since any theory of racial differences has been outlawed, the only possible explanation f or black failure is White racism. And since blacks are markedly poor, crime-prone, and dissipated, America must be racked with pervasive racism. Nothing else could be keeping them in such an abject state.All public word on race today is locked into this rigid logic. Any explanation for black failure that does not depend on White wickedness threatens to curl off into the forbidden territory of racial differences. Thus, even if todays Whites can reclaim in their hearts no desire to oppress blacks, yesterdays Whites must have oppressed them.