Racism is a type of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping that is classified as a form of a socio-psychological process that is experienced in the minds of individuals but only functional in the context of the race (Salter et al., 2018). The modern approach to racism identifies the driving forces to be the attitude, beliefs, and behaviors of unfair persons. Understanding racism beyond an individual level may be difficult in a conventional setting since the behavior cannot be dismissed as a practice of some few bad people or a problem transferred from the past. An assessment of the past practices suggests that racial biases have substantially dropped but still thrive in subtle forms (Liao et al., 2016). Examining racism from a personal perspective may ignore other forms of racism taking place in society. Thus, the contemporary form of racism is a set of ideas, practices, and materials rooted in daily activities (Liao et al., 2016). The paper entails the contemporary forms of racism in the United States and future implications.
Literature Review
Modern forms of racism center around explaining persistent racial inequalities and racial discrimination since there has been a sharp decline in open racist attitudes (Christian, 2019). Without the obvious racial actions in the society, it would be difficult to explain racial inequalities in criminal sentencing, healthcare delivery, discriminative policies and legislations, biases in hiring, and distribution of credit and housing facilities (Christian, 2019). Various theoretical models have been used to define these paradoxical accounts. Some researchers have allegedly associated cultural deficiencies among the people of color, concerning the inner-city blacks (Carney, 2016). These models that explain racism acknowledge the history of racism in shaping the contemporary culture of the inner-city blacks but argue that their inferior cultural behaviors play a vital role in the continued racial inequality. Other scholars have ignored the historical significance of racism and are of the view to illustrate racism from an individualistic perspective and to a larger extent, the institutionalized explicit attitudes and covert biases (Liao et al., 2016; Salter et al., 2018; Svetaz et al., 2018). While some researchers consider racism as serving a political agenda, other scholars believe that it offers empirical and social racial inequalities of the 21 st century.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Unlike contemporary racism, old fashioned forms of racism were expressed in direct and open ways. However, the sociopolitical dynamics and other occurrences presented people as non-prejudiced and socially acceptable beings since the end of the Second World War (Oxendine, 2015). Additionally, the majority of the countries all over the globe punish individuals if they exhibit direct forms of racism, hence, a reluctance by people to openly express prejudice (Grosfoguel, 2015; Svetaz et al., 2018). Though a majority of the scholars agree on the subtle nature of modern racism, they differ on the new formats they take for instance about symbolic, aversive, and contemporary racist behaviors (Clair & Denis, 2015; Liao et al., 2016; Svetaz et al., 2018). Since it is a continuity of racism, these new approaches of racism are considered as covert expressions of the old-fashioned ways of racism. Majority of the research works that have been undertaken focused on attitudes that white Americans held towards the African Americans but little has been documented about the contemporary forms of racism (Idson & Higgins, 2000). The above literature highlights the need to describe the new forms of racism in society other than the old-fashioned perspectives of racist behaviors.
Background
The historical climax of racism can be traced back to the twentieth century during the rise and fall of the openly racist regimes. The existence of segregation laws in the American South restricted Black Americans from voting and classified them as lower cadre citizens although some laws had been established to make them equal citizens under the constitutional amendments (Salter et al., 2018). At the height of racism in the United States, black African American males were considered as ravening beasts lusting for white women which justified the practice of lynching (Christian, 2019). These extrajudicial tendencies were only reserved for the African Americans who crossed the color line, a factor that contributed to their brutality and sadism over time. The majority of the victims were tortured to death rather than being killed. According to Clair and Denis (2015), one of the worst features of the racist regimes was the propagation of fear through sexual contamination through rape and intermarriages, an activity that led to efforts to prevent conjugal unions between the whites and any individuals of African ancestry.
The historical efforts to achieve race purity in the U.S culminated in aspects such as the Nazi persecution of Jews in the 1930s and implementation of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which illegalized sexual relations and intermarriages between the Jews and the Gentiles (Oxendine, 2015). Additionally, there was hostile propaganda on the legislation which emphasized the threat that the Jewish males endangered the German womanhood and the purity of the German blood (Salter et al., 2018). At this time history, the German Nazi took the racial ideology to the extreme than the American South. Black American people paid the ultimate price of racism to tore the color line since disobedience was met with hanging, burning, or lynching to death. The worst-case scenario was in Germany when Hitler attempted to wipe out an entire ethnic group based on racial ideology.
Hitler gave racism a new meaning, a bad name. People all over the globe were protesting against the actions of the Nazis and their reinforced scientific studies that suggested that racism emanated from the genetic composition, a factor that derailed the gains that had already been achieved in Europe and the U.S. in the period after the Second World War (Grosfoguel, 2015). Open forms of racism came under direct attack resulting in the decolonization of African and Asian countries. The civil rights group movement of the U.S was the biggest beneficiary of the revolution against the Holocaust since they were able to mobilize the outlawing of racial segregation and discrimination in the 1960s (Svetaz et al., 2018). The extreme forms of racism perpetrated by the Nazis encouraged unified support for a growing sense of national interest and discouraged any forms of abuse against the black community. The Soviet Union also entered the race to win the hearts and minds of independent Africans, an element that played a critical role in the abolishment of discriminatory practices in the U.S.
Global Perspective of Racism
The global perspective of racism encompasses the world system positions which define countries according to an uneven global field of former territories or colonies with their subordinate state actors (Liao et al., 2016). The current racial and discriminatory practices emanated from the past historical foundations aforementioned above which have transitioned from overtly racist practices. Racism as currently practiced prevails from three social perspectives that have shaped the practices. First are the global processes that involve the racialization of neo-liberal economic policies which have been propagated by worldwide circulation and transmission of racial ideologies including associations with terror networks (Christian, 2019). The significance of the end of colonialism and import substitution together with the opening of the Chinese and Soviet Union economic doors marked the start of the new economic order. Initially, less developed countries were coerced by the World Trade Organization and other Western countries to open their economies, implement external debt control measures, and allow foreign direct investment (Christian, 2019). These ideological underpinnings were a manifestation of racist superpositions which defined certain groups, countries, and regions as being wasteful, and culturally backward and continues to be practiced to date.
Secondly, countries around the world are classified into universal economic systems that are confined to their global historical racialization and appeal to their national forms (Christian, 2019). Trans-nationalization on this perspective is a hierarchical ideological process that culminated in the interaction of national and local racial undertakings on how these groups perform their activities, hence, producing a discriminatory consideration of whiteness, blackness, and other categories of people (Christian, 2019). For instance, Canada glorifies itself as a country of decent people since they did not practice discrimination compared to their neighbors, the United States, but forgetting their role in the removal of the Indigenous population. Thirdly, the war against terror presents another form of global racism since it has been militarized to target a certain segment of the population (Clair & Denis, 2015). Among the notable aggressions include the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the U.S and the European allies which have culminated in the rise of the Islamic State and global fear of terrorist attack and racist Islamophobia.
The current state systems are a product of the evolving nature of racism which defines the current perspective of global racism. Modern establishments of states comprise empirical states, post-colonial countries, non-colonized states, and homogenous states (Liao et al., 2016). Some of the racial states have defined their groupings in law on national platforms such as immigration, census, and citizenship, which aid them in the administration of white and non-white groupings. According to Oxendine (2015), governments align their racial identities in a manner the depicts their racial homogeneity to justify different forms of political alignments and historical significance. An example is the countries in the post-colonial Latin America that have pursued whitening policies in favor of the European immigration policies while practicing discrimination on the indigenous populations. These segregations in Latin America happen against the unpopular racist activities sanctioned by the European countries and independent scholars.
In Africa, the post-colonial laws were established later after independence; racism was condemned but unequal economic activities and political affiliations seem to promote contemporary forms of racism by the developed nations (Liao et al., 2016). Countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa attempted to eliminate the privileges using land expatriation policies were met with harsh economic sanctions and neither of the strategies shifted the white global economic order. According to Carney (2016), racism across the globe continues to be practiced based on the dominance of the white population and undertaken in two ways. First, through their westernized economic and politically controlled systems with a majority presence in their colonial presence. Secondly, the white majority practices have been implemented through practices that maneuver along racial hierarchy lines that define nations.
Future Implications of Racism
Human beings have proven to cluster themselves into different categories and hierarchies in terms of gender, class, wealth, and race. Some hardlines positions of racism ended during slavery and the revolutionary period. Racism has transitioned from the old-fashioned open manner to the contemporary subtle, which may be difficult to observe (Liao et al., 2016). Modern forms of racism cannot be ignored since there have been serious justifications to oppose various means of discrimination. The recent occurrences that led to the establishment of the movement, “Black Lives Matter" in protest of racism and police brutality against selected individuals in the society. The movement started courtesy of the power of social media which trended on the hashtag following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer in 2013 (Carney, 2016). The Blacks Lives Matter movement surpassed the expectations of many scholars since the events and protests across the U.S created a lot of awareness prompting unearthing of other multiple incidences of racism and police brutalities. Social media has created a new platform through which people can easily communicate and rally each other. Though there shall still be subtle forms of racism, social media shall play a vital role in surprising the practice since perpetrators shall fear to be exposed.
Currently, the debate is whether racism will end in the future. In the U.K alone, the mixed-race population has the fastest growth rate at 2.2% per annum while the U.S is also experiencing a rise at slightly higher rates (Christian, 2019). International immigration has been growing at between 1% and 3% annually and it is estimated that over 240 million people live in countries other than theirs (Christian, 2019). Going by the current increases in ethnic minorities, the U.K population of ethnic minorities will be approximately 30% of the population while the white population in the U.S will be a minority by 2045 (Christian, 2019). Additionally, there has been increased global travel facilitated by modern means of transport thereby encouraging interracial and heterosexual marriages. Owing to an increase in these variables implies that racism shall minimally exist in the future.
To understand whether racism shall still be existing in the future, we need to analyze its origin which is rooted in colonialism, in the 15 th century (Clair & Denis, 2015). Then, people believed that one’s blood had an ancestry. As early as the fourteenth century, the Jewish people occupying Europe were discriminated against legally. Racism was aggravated by the slave trade, displacement of the indigenous people, and genocide of the aboriginal populations. Now that all these practices were eliminated but still racism took new and subtle forms makes it difficult to predict whether it would be eradicated in the future since it continues shifting. At some point in history, the Irish and Italians were not classified as white people but as they dissociated themselves from the black people, they were accepted as whites. In the United States, the perception of the white majority subsequently led to an increase in hate crimes.
Conclusion
Currently, racism may be a dirty word yet people still experience racial inequalities, economic segregation, and other discrimination tendencies based on race. Studying contemporary racism has been complicated by the many forms that it has taken. Other than the overt and hostile approach in the conventional age, racism can now be understood from institutionalized practices, implicit mechanisms, and subtle frameworks that may remain hidden. Scholars must take a more proactive approach in the future to find and prevent ways of institutionalized racist activities.
References
Carney, N. (2016). All lives matter, but so does Race. Humanity & Society , 40 (2), 180–199.
Christian, M. (2019). A global critical race and racism framework: Racial entanglements and deep and malleable whiteness. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity , 5 (2), 169–185.
Clair, M., & Denis, J. S. (2015). Racism, sociology of. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences , 19 (1), 857–863.
Grosfoguel, R. (2015). The origins of Turkey’s “heterodox” transition to neoliberalism. Journal of World-Systems Research , 23 (2), 540–564.
Idson, L. C., & Higgins, E. T. (2000). Classical and modern racial prejudice: A study of attitudes toward immigrants in Sweden. European Journal of Social Psychology , 30 (July), 533–550.
Liao, H. Y., Hong, Y. Y., & Rounds, J. (2016). Perception of subtle racism: The role of group status and legitimizing ideologies. Counseling Psychologist , 44 (2), 237–266.
Oxendine, D. B. (2015). The relationship between political orientation and race on modern Racism. Journal of Social Science Studies , 3 (1), 67.
Salter, P. S., Adams, G., & Perez, M. J. (2018). Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A cultural-psychological perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 27 (3), 150–155.
Svetaz, M. V., Chulani, V., West, K. J., Voss, R., Kelley, M. A., Raymond-Flesch, M., Thruston, W., Coyne-Beasley, T., Kang, M., Leung, E., & Barkley, L. (2018). Racism and its harmful effects on nondominant racial–ethnic youth and youth-serving providers: A call to action for organizational change. Journal of Adolescent Health , 63 (2), 257–261.
