...Steven Rousse English Composition Professor David Mook September 15, 2014 Is Law Enforcement Racist? Racism, stereotypes, racial profiling, discrimination, no matter what you call it it’s all the same thing, and it has been around for years. Lately racial discrimination has been greatly decreased, yet not completely eradicated. One would think that the last place there wouldn’t be a single shred of any discrimination in law enforcement, however, there is and the fact that there is racial discrimination makes for some very controversial cases; such as the case of the shooting of Michael Brown, the brutal beating of Rodney King, and the wrongful beating of Abner Louima. All of these incidents happened because of an unfair percentage that police are to show more brutality to a minority group than to whites and there are plenty of facts that support this such as the amount of white officers over colored ones, and the biases and stereotypes that are to blame for “racism” in law enforcement. The case of Michael Brown in Fergusson, Missouri a predominantly black society, with a predominantly white police force, there are multiple stories that both tell stories of what people saw. One account states that the teenager Michael Brown had his hands in the air and was surrendering whilst unarmed; the officer opened fire and killed him. However, what the authorities say is the exact opposite in which Michael Brown actually attempted to attack the officer in his car and tried to...
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...Social Issues Position Paper Racial and Ethnic Inequality Amongst Blacks : A Economic Problem of Society Tameekah Myers SOC 1000-Comtemporary Social Issues Thesis Statement In this essay one will come to a better understanding of racial and ethnic inequality and why it exists. It is evident that Inequality amongst certain races is evident however it also linked to a variety of perspectives that account for the continuation of racial, ethnic discrimination and inequality. Inequality amongst Races and Ethnicity ▪ What is race and ethnicity? ▪ Should race exist ▪ Inequality among races Racism against African Americans ▪ Slavery ▪ Racial Profiling ▪ Stereotypes ▪ Causes and Effects of Racism Social status and race inequality ▪ Social/Racial classification ▪ Education inequality ▪ Labor/income Inequality Laws and Policies ▪ Affirmative action policies ▪ Equal Opportunity Policy ▪ Civil Right Act The social stance of American Minorities Now ▪ African Americans Conclusion In this essay one will come to a better understanding of racial and ethnic inequality and why it exists. It is evident that inequality amongst certain races is evident; however, it also linked to a variety of perspectives that account for the continuation of racial, ethnic discrimination and inequality. The story of race is intricate and may challenge how we think about human differences and race as...
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...The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Essay Mark Twain, well acclaimed author, writes the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the attempt to satirize society's negligence towards race during the 1800’s. The plot follows a teenage boy, Huck Finn, along with an escaped slave, Jim, whom Huck helps in freeing. Throughout the novel Huck faces an inner conflict that objectifies the moral conditioning of society, while his father, Pap antagonizes the government for it’s unjustful decree to race. Twain satirizes the moral conditioning of society through a tongue and cheek approach where the use of satirical devices such as stereotypes and irony are employed. Huck, a white American being brought up through a time of racial impoverishment,...
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...the pivotal power of Lord Farquaad and takes it upon himself to regain his swamp land back. In the scene, Shrek is set up to battle each of Farquaad’s bravest knights, he takes them all down and then demands to have his word with Lord Farquaad. Through the use of Cohen and Omi’s argumentative essays, a complex relationship takes...
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...The last federal law passed on racial discrimination was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Bennett). Fifty-three years later a person could figure that racial problems would be solved or at least extremely minimal, especially in the younger generations. This is sadly not the case; in the essays “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” by Beverly Daniel Tatum and Jonathan Kozol, respectively, the authors show how the United States educational system is still flawed when it comes to racial equity. After many years of laws against discrimination, it is still present in schools and everyday life with no signs of stopping. Beverly Tatum showed an abundance of examples of why discrimination is still present in the US school systems. Tatum also gave reasons for those discriminatory encounters. The essay starts off describing an image of a typical high school cafeteria with all the kids of different races sitting together at different tables. But, the only thing people really notice is “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” The...
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...STEREOTYPES 1. Introduction People are living within societies in which having different cultural background. Cross-cultural literacy is difficult to undertake due to the stumbling block such as generalization that people make and stereotypes that people have. Stereotyping is the way to use the fixed images of people belonging to a group, which have a tendency to categorize people based on a group they belong to rather than processing the information individually. Generalization usually comes before stereotyping, in order to generalize certain group of people. For example, all Italian loves spaghetti, and Maria is Italian, hence in conclusion Maria loves spaghetti. In that case, people are stereotyping Maria, which in fact Maria might or might not love spaghetti as she comes from North Eastern part of Italy whose has Germanic Austrian background. In fact, stereotyping leads to arrange some conception map in a way of thinking in which aimed to facilitate the progress of information. Stereotyping can be considered normal when faced with a new situation. Stereotyping triggers the mindset that has been collectively programming to set up that each group has the same pattern, which in fact it may be different with the perception to certain things. In the worst case, stereotyping may lead to possibility of racism, exclusion and personal discrimination towards ethnic identity, culture, occupation, age, sex, education grounds and some more. However, this essay later will just...
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...When the word racism comes about, many people don’t really stop and think where or even when racism began. They just think that since our history books tell us about the segregation that had occurred that it’s just a natural thing that happened in the past and still goes on today. The invention of racism was socially constructed and as a society, we developed the concept of racial segregation, racial discrimination, racial stereotyping and negative prejudice. Some believe that there is no real original concepts of how racism began, but how would we wrap ourselves around the concept of racism being uniquely developed so that one race was meant to be inferior to all the rest? There are many ideas about how racism came about. Some say that it’s because that’s how nature took its course. It was just made to have one race has to be above all the others, a superior race, and the inferior races, which are looked at as being intolerable. Seeing one race less important than another is dehumanizing but it is within the definition of racism, inferiority and superiority are stated. According to the Oxford dictionary, racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. This mentality of having superior and inferior races began in the 1600s where slave trade was considered to be normal. Slavery was not based on racial discrimination against one...
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...How Stereotypes Affect Us In this video Claude Steele tells about his research on stereotype threat and the way it affects us. Each of us has social identities such as gender, age, race, sexuality etc. Stereotype threat is an experience of being in situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one of your identities is relevant. African American can be seen as a violent person in a neighborhood with predominantly white people or white student can be perceived as a racist in class that is predominantly nonwhite, that are some of examples of stereotype threat. Dealing with things, because of particular identity in particular place that what makes the identity real. We often have fear to be judged in terms of negative stereotype. That can make us sad and confused, but also it can affect our behavior and performance! One of experiments was related to stereotype that women are not as good in math as men. Both women and men were taking math exam sitting in one room. Women showed worse results than men. That happened, because women were worried about this stereotype (often unconsciously), so they have to put double efforts to perform under this pressure. But when before test participants were told that in this particular test everyone (men and women) do equally all the time, women get same good results as men! Same situation was with IQ test for white and black participants. Black got lower results when were told that this is a test to measure intelligence...
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...“Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power To Alter Public Space” Stereotypes affect different individuals regardless race, religion, sex, and creed. In “Just Walk On By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space,” Brent Staples demonstrates how a stereotype on race and sex can intervene with one another. Each point, whether a narrative or remark, can have positive and negative outcomes on the audience Staples is trying to enlighten. His thesis, the ability to alter public space through racial stereotypes, affected him as well as many other persons of his stature and skin color. It not only influenced lives of people like Staples, but infringed onto the “victims” of Staples and others like him. Staples explains his thesis throughout the essay through narratives of incidents in his life. He explains one encounter with a young white women, “on a deserted street, in an impoverished section of Chicago” (556). She glances back at him and disappears off into the dark. In paragraph two, Staples understands her thoughts of him being a mugger, a rapist, or even a murderer; but “her flight” made him feel “like an accomplice tyranny” (556). It also made him feel like he was “indistinguishable from the muggers,” and laid on him and “unnerving gulf between nighttime pedestrians—particularly women” and himself (556). This confrontation not only shows how a stereotype affected the thoughts of a female walking at night, but how it negatively touched a black male...
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...UGS Essay #1 9/21/2015 “Whoever You Want to Be” “You are Asian, so go study,” “You are black, try that sport,” “Hey White, don’t be racist just go to parties,” “Hey Mexican, can you get some drugs for me?” This is the reality of society. We say racism is gone, but this is how we view each race and define each race. In fact, this is the reality of how each race of child is influenced and raised. Racism still exists not because we haven’t talked enough about it, but because we never try to change it. Likewise, born in a foreign country, I faced this unchangeable problem as an international student with different views. Also through these diverse experiences I came to frame my identity racially and personally throughout my life. “Hey, is racism harsh in America?” “How fast are black people? Do they actually carry guns?” These are questions that I was asked when I went back to Korea this summer. Unfortunately, Internet is a huge network nowadays and it affects everyone in the world. Those questions were not randomly asked, but because that is what people see in movies and news reports. Most racial stereotypes are framed according to what is in the media, the reason they are constructed. For example, recently there was a huge issue in Texas about a 14 year old Muslim genius boy who was arrested because his invention, a homemade clock, was assumed to be a bomb by the teacher. He was arrested and handcuffed because he was a Muslim. I doubt this would have happened if it were another...
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...Student Name Student ID XXXXXX Date History “Emergence of Racial Equality in America” In his short essay, “The Preconditions for Racial Change,” author Harvard Sitkoff argues that economic, political and ideological considerations played a major role in bringing about racial equality for African-Americans in the United States during the middle of the 20th century. Sitkoff maintains that the introduction of televisions into American homes, a booming postwar economy, the decolonization of many African nations from white rule and the emergence of the United States as the leader of the Free World were the driving forces behind bringing racial equality to the forefront for many Americans, both black and white. The arguments offered by Sitkoff regarding this awakening in many Americans are both compelling and convincing. While his viewpoints are based on nothing more than perception and opinion, his logic is sound and his line of reasoning is very persuasive. Sitkoff begins his essay by discussing the opportunities afforded to blacks as a direct result of positive changes in the American economy. With the explosive growth of our Gross National Product (GNP) after the 1940’s, many blacks saw a sharp increase in their income, the availability of jobs in industries that had previously been off-limits to them and advancement opportunities that ranked them alongside their white counterparts. In the past, the fear...
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...the organizational effectiveness. It is a critical for an organization to enable their employees express rather than suppress their identities and roles they have outside of work. Save Race-Related Jokes for Later If the joke you want to tell at work includes a rabbi, a priest or a black guy, save it for home. Many jokes about race, religion and culture involve stereotypes. Accordingly, the work place isn’t the best place to share them. Even racial banter between colleagues from the same background can be off putting to others. Some people disapprove of racial humor, no matter the source of it. So, consider telling race-based jokes to be inappropriate behavior at work. Keep Stereotypes to Yourself Stereotypes about racial groups abound. While working, it’s necessary to check your race-based assumptions at the door. Say you think all Latinos are good at a certain activity, but the one Latino in your office isn’t. How do you respond? The correct response is no response. Sharing racial generalizations with those targeted by them will only cause emotional damage. Rather than telling your coworker that he defied your expectations, consider reflecting on how you developed the stereotype in question and how to let go of it. Study Cultural Holidays and...
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...The Help Essay Racial stereotypes surrounded people in the mid twentieth century. Children acquired these ideas from their parents, therefore bringing these concepts into the next generation. People were defined by race, rather than by their personalities. The majority of white people conformed to racist ideals because they did not know better, however those who stood apart made a difference. The novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett exhibits not all people act in the same manner, just as not all people are treated equally. The Help skillfully expresses how black maids in the 1960s could not create justice for themselves; but with the help of a white woman who was brave enough to go against the status quo, they are able to attempt to stop...
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...the racism and stereotypes of all colors. It spreads the fictions of whiteness around the world. Therefore, these movies: Tarzan, The Ape Man; Leave it to Beaver; Bringing Down the House and White chicks will bring a closer view about the difference between “white” and “un-white” character be described. Also, the introduction and chapter one of “Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media” has provide a broad, critical overview of film primarily from and about the “Third World”. In chapter one “From Eurocentrism to Polycentrism”, they reviewed standard criticism of view in literary in cinematic work. This essay is aims defined the stereotypical images and roles of African Americans in films. First of all, the movie “Tarzan, The Ape Man” is the fairly easy target for people interested in the perpetuation of anti-black stereotypes. Tarzan is presented as a naked savage who doesn’t learn to wear clothes. It’s racist when in the movie, when Tarzan warning Jane and her father that Tarzan, the owner of the jungles has killed beasts and many black men. He pelts animals with thrown objects to torment them. He kills animals for pleasure. To Tarzan all blacks are lower. Besides, in the movie, the Africans of the Mbongan tribe are cannibalism, superstitious, contemptible and debased. Here it come the love of Tarzan, Jane a “white” woman is defined as beautiful, and apparently resourceful and intelligent. However, Esmeralda is presented as a black nanny stereotype. Her character...
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...distorted reality. Even though the news is supposed to remain objective, it seems as if racial biases have somehow made their way to the headlines. Can the consistent racial preference in the news enforce prejudice ideology through the public? The goal of this essay is to discuss the reason why behind misrepresentation of minorities in the news medium, and how the misrepresentation affects society. Even with minorities making up roughly one...
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