perspective on racism essay

Ayn Rand’s Individualist Perspective on Racism

Rand’s essay “Racism” advocates reason, individualism and capitalism as antidotes to the evils of racism.

In August 1963, the spiritual leader of the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a now-famous speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., calling for an end to racism in America.

“I have a dream,” declared King, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In that same turbulent year, Ayn Rand published “ Racism ,” a remarkable essay that not only denounces racism but identifies its philosophic roots and psychological motivation.

Almost sixty years later, as the controversies over racism rage on, Rand’s essay is worth reading for its unconventional analysis of racism and its diagnosis of the many confusions surrounding this complex phenomenon. The buzzwords of today — “critical race theory,” “anti-racism,” “woke” culture — may be different, but the issues are timeless: “What is racism? What are its causes? How do we recognize it? What should we do about it?”

A lifelong champion of reason and individualism, Rand loathed racism, calling it “a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

As for racism’s psychological root, Rand located it in “the racist’s sense of his own inferiority,” which leads to a “quest for the unearned . . . above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).”

In light of today’s “anti-racist” policy proposals — which work to institutionalize race as a criterion in hiring, promotion, university admission, and other areas — Rand’s argument against advocates of racial quotas is particularly relevant.

Instead of fighting against racial discrimination, they are demanding that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. . . . Instead of fighting for “color-blindness” in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming that “color-blindness” is evil and that “color” should be made a primary consideration.

In stark contrast to mainstream thought today, Rand argues that the only antidote to racism is “the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.”

To explore Rand’s perspective on racism, you can read “Racism” in Rand’s collection of essays in The Virtue of Selfishness , or online here on the Ayn Rand Institute’s Campus website.

Image credit: itakdalee /Shutterstock.com.

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Aaron Smith , PhD in philosophy, is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute where he lectures and develops educational content for the Institute’s intellectual training and outreach programs. He is a member of the Ayn Rand University faculty.

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11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Describe how major sociological perspectives view race and ethnicity
• Identify examples of culture of prejudice

Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

We can examine race and ethnicity through three major sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. As you read through these theories, ask yourself which one makes the most sense and why.

Functionalism

Functionalism emphasizes that all the elements of society have functions that promote solidarity and maintain order and stability in society. Hence, we can observe people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds interacting harmoniously in a state of social balance. Problems arise when one or more racial or ethnic groups experience inequalities and discriminations. This creates tension and conflict resulting in temporary dysfunction of the social system. For example, the killing of a Black man George Floyd by a White police officer in 2020 stirred up protests demanding racial justice and changes in policing in the United States. To restore the society’s pre-disturbed state or to seek a new equilibrium, the police department and various parts of the system require changes and compensatory adjustments.

Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to race and ethnicity is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-group members through the ostracism of out-group members. Consider how a community might increase solidarity by refusing to allow outsiders access. On the other hand, Rose (1951) suggested that dysfunctions associated with racism include the failure to take advantage of talent in the subjugated group, and that society must divert from other purposes the time and effort needed to maintain artificially constructed racial boundaries. Consider how much money, time, and effort went toward maintaining separate and unequal educational systems prior to the civil rights movement.

In the view of functionalism, racial and ethnic inequalities must have served an important function in order to exist as long as they have. This concept, sometimes, can be problematic. How can racism and discrimination contribute positively to society? Nash (1964) focused his argument on the way racism is functional for the dominant group, for example, suggesting that racism morally justifies a racially unequal society. Consider the way slave owners justified slavery in the antebellum South, by suggesting Black people were fundamentally inferior to White and preferred slavery to freedom.

Interactionism

For symbolic interactionists, race and ethnicity provide strong symbols as sources of identity. In fact, some interactionists propose that the symbols of race, not race itself, are what lead to racism. Famed Interactionist Herbert Blumer (1958) suggested that racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group: Without these interactions, individuals in the dominant group would not hold racist views. These interactions contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group, and thus maintains the status quo. An example of this might be an individual whose beliefs about a particular group are based on images conveyed in popular media, and those are unquestionably believed because the individual has never personally met a member of that group.

Another way to apply the interactionist perspective is to look at how people define their races and the race of others. Some people who claim a White identity have a greater amount of skin pigmentation than some people who claim a Black identity; how did they come to define themselves as Black or White?

Conflict Theory

Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. A conflict theory perspective of U.S. history would examine the numerous past and current struggles between the White ruling class and racial and ethnic minorities, noting specific conflicts that have arisen when the dominant group perceived a threat from the minority group. In the late nineteenth century, the rising power of Black Americans after the Civil War resulted in draconian Jim Crow laws that severely limited Black political and social power. For example, Vivien Thomas (1910–1985), the Black surgical technician who helped develop the groundbreaking surgical technique that saves the lives of “blue babies” was classified as a janitor for many years, and paid as such, despite the fact that he was conducting complicated surgical experiments. The years since the Civil War have showed a pattern of attempted disenfranchisement, with gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts aimed at predominantly minority neighborhoods.

Intersection Theory

Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990) further developed intersection theory , originally articulated in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes (Figure 11.4). When we examine race and how it can bring us both advantages and disadvantages, it is important to acknowledge that the way we experience race is shaped, for example, by our gender and class. Multiple layers of disadvantage intersect to create the way we experience race. For example, if we want to understand prejudice, we must understand that the prejudice focused on a White woman because of her gender is very different from the layered prejudice focused on an Asian woman in poverty, who is affected by stereotypes related to being poor, being a woman, and her ethnic status.

Culture of Prejudice

Culture of prejudice refers to the theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture. We grow up surrounded by images of stereotypes and casual expressions of racism and prejudice. Consider the casually racist imagery on grocery store shelves or the stereotypes that fill popular movies and advertisements. It is easy to see how someone living in the Northeastern United States, who may know no Mexican Americans personally, might gain a stereotyped impression from such sources as Speedy Gonzalez or Taco Bell’s talking Chihuahua. Because we are all exposed to these images and thoughts, it is impossible to know to what extent they have influenced our thought processes.

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The Psychology of Racism

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of "Therapy in Focus: What to Expect from CBT for Social Anxiety Disorder" and "7 Weeks to Reduce Anxiety." She has a Master's degree in psychology.

Verywell / Joshua Seong

• Psychological History

Prejudice vs. Racism

Cultural tools that perpetuate racism.

• Explanations

Combating Racism and Promoting Anti-Racism

The psychological study of racism can be summed up in one word: evolving. How society thinks about race and racism has changed and with it, the psychological discourse has changed as well.

Many Americans, particularly White Americans, were complacent going into the year 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic started, the complacency started to wane and was replaced with fear and a sense of unrest. When George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25, 2020, a bright spotlight was redirected to an uncomfortable reality that most BIPOC Americans already knew: Racism is still alive and well in America.

At a Glance

With the added spotlight has come a renewed interest in understanding racism. In order to combat racism, it's vital to recognize its effects and take steps to understand the factors that contribute to it. Keep reading to learn more about the psychology of racism, including historical perspectives and more current views on the individual and systemic nature of racism. 

Psychological History of Racism

The psychological understanding of racism has historically been focused on individual psychology—how racism is driven by the beliefs and behaviors of individual people (the social-psychological approach ). But there are severe limitations to viewing racism solely through this lens.

Today, some researchers are using and advocating for a cultural-psychological approach , which views racism as ideas and practices embedded in culture, where individuals shape culture and culture shapes individuals.

Early Theories of Racism

Early psychological theories of racism justified the domination of one race over another because of Charles Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest . It was theorized that there was some survival advantage to being racist. However, modern hunter-gatherer tribes were not found to exclude out-groups (people not included in a particular group), and this problematic theory was rejected.

Then, race psychology theorized that there were brain differences between races and that intelligence tests and segregation were the answer. Later in 1954, American psychologist Gordon Allport argued in his book, "The Nature of Prejudice," that people use categories to understand their world better and that racism was simply an artifact of that process.

Whatever the history of the psychology of racism is in the United States, the actual history of racism is that White people have been and continue to be afforded benefits in society because of a system that was set up for their benefit. Racism is real regardless of whether White people recognize or accept it.

Early explanations of racism were often inherently racist. Modern views on racism don't simply focus on individual acts of racism but also look at how racism is perpetuated at a societal and cultural level.

Many people misunderstand and confuse the definitions of racism and prejudice. Though related, they are different.

Prejudice is a negative preconception or attitude toward members of a group based on shared characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, age, religion, language, class, or culture. Prejudice can be racial, but it can also be sexist, ageist, or classist, for example.

Prejudiced beliefs are usually learned early in life and can affect behavior in subtle and overt ways. For example, a teacher with prejudice might hold the belief that girls aren't good at math. That belief would then affect the teacher's behavior with their students, whether consciously or subconsciously.

In contrast, racism is directed at a particular racial group and is based on systems of power and oppression. Racism is often seen as being a problem with individual racial prejudice, but it is important to recognize that it is much more multifaceted and systemic.

People commonly think of racism in terms of overt individual actions and ideologies (the social-psychological understanding), but it also exists within systems, organizations, and cultures (the cultural-psychological understanding). In this way, racism is embedded in the reality of everyday life.

Since racism is part of daily life, cultural patterns, and historical narratives in the U.S., it is often difficult for people to see how familiar and normalized ideas promote racialized views and behaviors.

Racism isn't just about individuals demonstrating racial prejudice or engaging in direct acts of racial discrimination; it is often less immediately obvious and much more insidious, affecting institutions like the justice system, in which Black defendants regularly face harsher sentences than White defendants for the same crimes, for example.

Phia S. Salter, Glenn Adams, and Michael J. Perez in "Current Directions in Psychological Science"

Decreases in overt expressions of racial bias might suggest that racial prejudice (and therefore racism) is less extreme in modern America; however, many psychologists suggest that racial bias has gone underground, and they have mounted substantial evidence that it instead thrives in subtle forms.

While most blatant individual demonstrations of racism are no longer tolerated or viewed as acceptable in "mainstream" contemporary American society, our society's understanding of what is racist continues to evolve. In reality, our institutions are not so far removed from the years of colonialism, slavery, and segregation, and racism is still ignored, condoned, or even actively supported in many facets of American life.

In order to better understand how racism operates, it's important to look beyond individual psychology to the systemic and cultural practices that continue to uphold racism.

The dominant American culture's discomfort with race and racism continues to result in harmful beliefs and sentiments that promote ignorance about racism and uphold the racial status quo. Perhaps you've heard someone say that they are "color-blind," "don't see color," or that "race doesn't matter." Maybe you've even said something to that effect yourself.

Those ideas, though often promoted as inclusive , actually shut down important conversations about race and deny the fact that racism exists not only on an individual level but as a systemic problem. It's the same responding to " Black Lives Matter " with "All Lives Matter."

This denial of the significance of race is a tool that allows the dominant racial group to legitimize the effects of racism under the guise of individual merit. Through this lens, people in positions of power can credit their successes to their own hard work while positioning the disadvantages oppressed racial groups face to personal rather than systemic failures.

Continuing to support this individualistic American narrative results in blindness to the realities of America's racist systems. For example, research has shown in no uncertain terms that Black Americans experience disparities in income, employment, education, and health. But research shows that White Americans still tend to be less aware of these racial realities than people who are part of racial minority groups.

Ignoring racism doesn't make it go away. Rather, it perpetuates it, effectively shutting down the possibility of moving forward by not having important conversations about the problems and possible solutions.

Explanations for Racism

As more attention is being given to the racism ingrained in our society, many more people are seeking explanations for it. Is it survival of the fittest, or a psychological defense mechanism to help people identify with a primary group and feel more secure? Below is a list of possible psychological explanations for why racism exists.

Personal Insecurity

It's true that those who lack an identity and struggle with insecurity may seek group membership. Consequently, after finding a group, members of the group may start to alienate non-group members . Sometimes, hostility arises toward those people who have been alienated.

While in a clique, people tend to think and behave more like the people they surround themselves with. It becomes much easier to attack others when you're among people who share the same viewpoint.

Racism comes in when groups are formed based on characteristics like race, bolstered by beliefs of superiority, and supported by systems of oppression.

Lack of Compassion

Alienation of others eventually leads to less compassion for those who have been ostracized. People begin to only show compassion and empathy for those they regularly associate with.

Consider, for example, television segments asking viewers to donate to causes that support food security for families in Africa. These messages may be easier for a person to dismiss if they don't identify with the group or culture in need. This dismissal may or may not be overt racism, but it begins with a lack of empathy .

Projection of Flaws

When people feel bad about themselves or recognize their shortcomings, instead of dealing with them and trying to fix them, they may project their self-loathing onto others . Alienated groups can easily become scapegoats for those who ignore their own personal flaws.

Poor Mental Health

Is racism a sign of poor mental health? Not necessarily, but it can be. For example, paranoid personality disorder and narcissism are both mental health disorders that are characterized in part by feelings of insecurity, which may make a person more likely to hold racist beliefs or engage in racist behaviors.

But it's important to recognize that racist beliefs and actions are certainly not limited to people with mental health disorders.

Hatred and Fear

Extreme hatred is almost always based on fear. People may feel threatened by people they view as "different" or "foreign." They may fear losing power. To combat this fear, some people may seek social support from others with similar fears, perpetuating the cycle.

Racism is not a mental illness, but it is certainly related to psychological adaptation. Factors such as personal insecurity, lack of empathy, and projection may contribute to racism.

Factors That Contribute to Racism

In a 2020 paper published in the journal American Psychologist , Steven O. Roberts, a Stanford psychologist, and Michael T. Rizzo, a New York University postdoctoral fellow, discuss what leads to racism. With their paper, the authors aimed to provide an overview of several of the major factors theorized to contribute to racism in America. Those factors are the following.

Humans learn to group people into categories based on race from a young age. Roberts and Rizzo hold that racial categories are not inborn but become significant because "they are federally sanctioned (e.g., by the U.S. Census Bureau), easily employed by individuals, and because they directly tell people which racial categories to form."

Category labels can support a belief that category members have a shared identity, which promotes stereotypes. This categorical grouping and the concept of shared identity later lead to factions.

Categories lead to factions in which people are assigned to a racial group and begin to strongly identify with their racial ingroup. Positive perceptions of their assigned racial group and the desire to show cooperation, loyalty, and empathy to the group commonly lead to behavior that benefits the group, even to the detriment of another group.

Beyond loyalty to their own group, group members can also begin to show hostility toward other groups as a result of real or perceived competition or threats to their self-image, values, or resources.

Segregation

Being segregated from other racial groups greatly influences attitudes and feelings about race. Lack of contact with other racial groups tends to narrow and harden a person's beliefs and opinions about others and offers few chances for negative beliefs to be challenged.

That is why segregation by race early in life can influence the development of racist attitudes .

A hierarchical system assigns wealth, power, and influence unevenly across groups. Hierarchies are further reinforced by beliefs that attribute power and status to individual characteristics rather than systematic influences, ultimately resulting in the dominant group believing that they are, in fact, superior to non-dominant groups.

Power grants groups the ability to build a society that benefits them. It also allows them to create what are considered to be culturally acceptable standards. They control resources and are allowed to exploit others and assume dominance. When power is distributed along racial divides as it is in the U.S., so are advantages.

The media plays a role in sustaining racism. On one level there is simply representation (or lack thereof). When media consistently portrays a mostly White cast of actors in magazines, television shows, and movies, it makes the White culture the "dominant" or "normal" American culture.

On another level, there is how the media portrays racial groups. When media reinforces racial stereotypes in its representation of different racial groups, it also reinforces individual racial prejudice and the systems that perpetuate institutionalized racism.

The final factor Roberts and Rizzo describe is perhaps the most important. It is the passive racism that results from ignorance, apathy , or denial. When racism is systemic and ingrained in social structures, all that is required to sustain it is inaction.

People do not need to be actively racist in their beliefs and actions to support racist systems—they simply need to do nothing to change those systems.

Research suggests that many factors contribute to racism on both individual and systemic levels. These factors include categorization, factions that pit people against each other, social hierarchies, power, and media influences.

When faced with the sheer magnitude of racism in America, it can be easy to feel powerless. But there are things you can do on an individual level to influence both interpersonal racism and systemic racism. Below are some ways in which racism can be combated on an individual level:

• Build a system of equity in which all communities are equally engaged.
• Direct attention to the problem of racism instead of sweeping it under the rug or pretending that it does not exist.
• When you hear racist attitudes, challenge them ; ask people for the reason behind their thinking and encourage them to consider alternatives.
• Remember that change does not occur overnight and be patient when it seems like the progress being made is slow; even small changes can lead to big results when you are consistent in your actions.
• Teach children inclusion and empathy from a young age so that they grow up to be adults who can identify racism and challenge it.
• Conduct psychological research on how social norms change and how best to implement systems that result in the changing attitudes of people in the dominant group so that systems will also be affected.
• Design a curriculum that addresses the legacy of the United States' history of racism and teaches students how to be aware of their own inherent biases .
• Engage in contact in favorable conditions with other groups, and work toward shared goals with people from different races.
• Seek and foster friendships across racial lines so that you can start seeing people as individuals rather than as just part of a race.

The way children learn about American history can affect their understanding of racism. For example, one study looked at how Black History Month was taught in predominantly White and predominantly Black schools. The researchers found marked differences in how information was presented.

In mostly White schools, students were exposed to displays and discussions that were highly abstract and focused more on individual achievements rather than addressing racism. At mostly Black schools, however, information more directly addressed racism and the effects of racial barriers.

Combating racism is about more than being "not racist," which often equates to passive racism. Learning to be actively anti-racist is essential. For example, research has shown that taking a more direct, anti-racist approach to teaching children about history has a greater impact on their understanding of the real effects of racism.

Keep in Mind

For too long, racism has been relegated to the past or reduced to individual beliefs and actions. As a result, America's lingering systemic and institutionalized racism has been overlooked and allowed to persist and progress. But cultural-psychological approaches to understanding racism challenge these ideas. Racism is in more ways a cultural phenomenon than an individual psychological occurrence.

What this means is that you do not need to be racist to uphold racist systems. We each have a personal responsibility to challenge racism on an individual level, but we also must look toward the cultural structures that perpetuate individual bias and the injustice that racism causes.

Salter PS, Adams G, Perez MJ. Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A cultural-psychological perspective . Curr Dir Psychol Sci . 2018;27(3):150-155. doi:10.1177/0963721417724239

Carl N. The fallacy of equating the hereditarian hypothesis with racism . Psych . 2019;1(1):262-278. doi:10.3390/psych1010018

Rusch H. The evolutionary interplay of intergroup conflict and altruism in humans: A review of parochial altruism theory and prospects for its extension . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 2014;281(1794). doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.1539

Roberts S, Rizzo M. The psychology of American racism .  American Psychologist . 2020. doi:10.1037/amp0000642

Allport G. The Nature of Prejudice . Addison-Wesley; 1954.

Olson M, Zabel K. Measures of prejudice . In: Nelson D, ed. Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination . Psychology Press; 2016:175-211.

United States Sentencing Commission. Demographic Differences in Sentencing .

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health, United States, 2015 .

PEW Research Center. Sharp racial divisions in reactions to Brown, Garner decisions .

Salter PS, Adams G. On the intentionality of cultural products: Representations of black history as psychological affordances . Front Psychol . 2016;7. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01166

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of "Therapy in Focus: What to Expect from CBT for Social Anxiety Disorder" and "7 Weeks to Reduce Anxiety." She has a Master's degree in psychology.

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Regions & Countries

Black americans have a clear vision for reducing racism but little hope it will happen, many say key u.s. institutions should be rebuilt to ensure fair treatment.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand the nuances among Black people on issues of racial inequality and social change in the United States. This in-depth survey explores differences among Black Americans in their views on the social status of the Black population in the U.S.; their assessments of racial inequality; their visions for institutional and social change; and their outlook on the chances that these improvements will be made. The analysis is the latest in the Center’s series of in-depth surveys of public opinion among Black Americans (read the first, “ Faith Among Black Americans ” and “ Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other ”).

The online survey of 3,912 Black U.S. adults was conducted Oct. 4-17, 2021. Black U.S. adults include those who are single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans; multiracial non-Hispanic Black Americans; and adults who indicate they are Black and Hispanic. The survey includes 1,025 Black adults on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and 2,887 Black adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

Recruiting panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. Black adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling). Here are the questions used for the survey of Black adults, along with its responses and methodology .

The terms “Black Americans,” “Black people” and “Black adults” are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adults who self-identify as Black, either alone or in combination with other races or Hispanic identity.

Throughout this report, “Black, non-Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as single-race Black and say they have no Hispanic background. “Black Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as Black and say they have Hispanic background. We use the terms “Black Hispanic” and “Hispanic Black” interchangeably. “Multiracial” respondents are those who indicate two or more racial backgrounds (one of which is Black) and say they are not Hispanic.

Respondents were asked a question about how important being Black was to how they think about themselves. In this report, we use the term “being Black” when referencing responses to this question.

In this report, “immigrant” refers to people who were not U.S. citizens at birth – in other words, those born outside the U.S., Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories to parents who were not U.S. citizens. We use the terms “immigrant,” “born abroad” and “foreign-born” interchangeably.

Throughout this report, “Democrats and Democratic leaners” and just “Democrats” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or who are independent or some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party. “Republicans and Republican leaners” and just “Republicans” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Republican Party or are independent or some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

Respondents were asked a question about their voter registration status. In this report, respondents are considered registered to vote if they self-report being absolutely certain they are registered at their current address. Respondents are considered not registered to vote if they report not being registered or express uncertainty about their registration.

To create the upper-, middle- and lower-income tiers, respondents’ 2020 family incomes were adjusted for differences in purchasing power by geographic region and household size. Respondents were then placed into income tiers: “Middle income” is defined as two-thirds to double the median annual income for the entire survey sample. “Lower income” falls below that range, and “upper income” lies above it. For more information about how the income tiers were created, read the methodology .

More than a year after the murder of George Floyd and the national protests, debate and political promises that ensued, 65% of Black Americans say the increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives. 1 And 44% say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved, according to newly released findings from an October 2021 survey of Black Americans by Pew Research Center.

This is somewhat of a reversal in views from September 2020, when half of Black adults said the increased national focus on issues of race would lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality in the country and 56% expected changes that would make their lives better.

At the same time, many Black Americans are concerned about racial discrimination and its impact. Roughly eight-in-ten say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and most also say discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead (68%).  

Even so, Black Americans have a clear vision for how to achieve change when it comes to racial inequality. This includes support for significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment, particularly the criminal justice system; political engagement, primarily in the form of voting; support for Black businesses to advance Black communities; and reparations in the forms of educational, business and homeownership assistance. Yet alongside their assessments of inequality and ideas about progress exists pessimism about whether U.S. society and its institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

These findings emerge from an extensive Pew Research Center survey of 3,912 Black Americans conducted online Oct. 4-17, 2021. The survey explores how Black Americans assess their position in U.S. society and their ideas about social change. Overall, Black Americans are clear on what they think the problems are facing the country and how to remedy them. However, they are skeptical that meaningful changes will take place in their lifetime.

Black Americans see racism in our laws as a big problem and discrimination as a roadblock to progress

Black adults were asked in the survey to assess the current nature of racism in the United States and whether structural or individual sources of this racism are a bigger problem for Black people. About half of Black adults (52%) say racism in our laws is a bigger problem than racism by individual people, while four-in-ten (43%) say acts of racism committed by individual people is the bigger problem. Only 3% of Black adults say that Black people do not experience discrimination in the U.S. today.

In assessing the magnitude of problems that they face, the majority of Black Americans say racism (63%), police brutality (60%) and economic inequality (54%) are extremely or very big problems for Black people living in the U.S. Slightly smaller shares say the same about the affordability of health care (47%), limitations on voting (46%), and the quality of K-12 schools (40%).

Aside from their critiques of U.S. institutions, Black adults also feel the impact of racial inequality personally. Most Black adults say they occasionally or frequently experience unfair treatment because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and two-thirds (68%) cite racial discrimination as the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead today.

Black Americans’ views on reducing racial inequality

Black Americans are clear on the challenges they face because of racism. They are also clear on the solutions. These range from overhauls of policing practices and the criminal justice system to civic engagement and reparations to descendants of people enslaved in the United States.

Changing U.S. institutions such as policing, courts and prison systems

About nine-in-ten Black adults say multiple aspects of the criminal justice system need some kind of change (minor, major or a complete overhaul) to ensure fair treatment, with nearly all saying so about policing (95%), the courts and judicial process (95%), and the prison system (94%).

Roughly half of Black adults say policing (49%), the courts and judicial process (48%), and the prison system (54%) need to be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly. Smaller shares say the same about the political system (42%), the economic system (37%) and the health care system (34%), according to the October survey.

While Black Americans are in favor of significant changes to policing, most want spending on police departments in their communities to stay the same (39%) or increase (35%). A little more than one-in-five (23%) think spending on police departments in their area should be decreased.

Black adults who favor decreases in police spending are most likely to name medical, mental health and social services (40%) as the top priority for those reappropriated funds. Smaller shares say K-12 schools (25%), roads, water systems and other infrastructure (12%), and reducing taxes (13%) should be the top priority.

Voting and ‘buying Black’ viewed as important strategies for Black community advancement

Black Americans also have clear views on the types of political and civic engagement they believe will move Black communities forward. About six-in-ten Black adults say voting (63%) and supporting Black businesses or “buying Black” (58%) are extremely or very effective strategies for moving Black people toward equality in the U.S. Smaller though still significant shares say the same about volunteering with organizations dedicated to Black equality (48%), protesting (42%) and contacting elected officials (40%).

Black adults were also asked about the effectiveness of Black economic and political independence in moving them toward equality. About four-in-ten (39%) say Black ownership of all businesses in Black neighborhoods would be an extremely or very effective strategy for moving toward racial equality, while roughly three-in-ten (31%) say the same about establishing a national Black political party. And about a quarter of Black adults (27%) say having Black neighborhoods governed entirely by Black elected officials would be extremely or very effective in moving Black people toward equality.

Most Black Americans support repayment for slavery

Discussions about atonement for slavery predate the founding of the United States. As early as 1672 , Quaker abolitionists advocated for enslaved people to be paid for their labor once they were free. And in recent years, some U.S. cities and institutions have implemented reparations policies to do just that.

Most Black Americans say the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in the U.S. either a great deal (55%) or a fair amount (30%), according to the survey. And roughly three-quarters (77%) say descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way.

Black adults who say descendants of the enslaved should be repaid support doing so in different ways. About eight-in-ten say repayment in the forms of educational scholarships (80%), financial assistance for starting or improving a business (77%), and financial assistance for buying or remodeling a home (76%) would be extremely or very helpful. A slightly smaller share (69%) say cash payments would be extremely or very helpful forms of repayment for the descendants of enslaved people.

Where the responsibility for repayment lies is also clear for Black Americans. Among those who say the descendants of enslaved people should be repaid, 81% say the U.S. federal government should have all or most of the responsibility for repayment. About three-quarters (76%) say businesses and banks that profited from slavery should bear all or most of the responsibility for repayment. And roughly six-in-ten say the same about colleges and universities that benefited from slavery (63%) and descendants of families who engaged in the slave trade (60%).

Black Americans are skeptical change will happen

Even though Black Americans’ visions for social change are clear, very few expect them to be implemented. Overall, 44% of Black adults say equality for Black people in the U.S. is a little or not at all likely. A little over a third (38%) say it is somewhat likely and only 13% say it is extremely or very likely.

They also do not think specific institutions will change. Two-thirds of Black adults say changes to the prison system (67%) and the courts and judicial process (65%) that would ensure fair treatment for Black people are a little or not at all likely in their lifetime. About six-in-ten (58%) say the same about policing. Only about one-in-ten say changes to policing (13%), the courts and judicial process (12%), and the prison system (11%) are extremely or very likely.

This pessimism is not only about the criminal justice system. The majority of Black adults say the political (63%), economic (62%) and health care (51%) systems are also unlikely to change in their lifetime.

Black Americans’ vision for social change includes reparations. However, much like their pessimism about institutional change, very few think they will see reparations in their lifetime. Among Black adults who say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid, 82% say reparations for slavery are unlikely to occur in their lifetime. About one-in-ten (11%) say repayment is somewhat likely, while only 7% say repayment is extremely or very likely to happen in their lifetime.

Black Democrats, Republicans differ on assessments of inequality and visions for social change

Party affiliation is one key point of difference among Black Americans in their assessments of racial inequality and their visions for social change. Black Republicans and Republican leaners are more likely than Black Democrats and Democratic leaners to focus on the acts of individuals. For example, when summarizing the nature of racism against Black people in the U.S., the majority of Black Republicans (59%) say racist acts committed by individual people is a bigger problem for Black people than racism in our laws. Black Democrats (41%) are less likely to hold this view.

Black Republicans (45%) are also more likely than Black Democrats (21%) to say that Black people who cannot get ahead in the U.S. are mostly responsible for their own condition. And while similar shares of Black Republicans (79%) and Democrats (80%) say they experience racial discrimination on a regular basis, Republicans (64%) are more likely than Democrats (36%) to say that most Black people who want to get ahead can make it if they are willing to work hard.

On the other hand, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to focus on the impact that racial inequality has on Black Americans. Seven-in-ten Black Democrats (73%) say racial discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead in the U.S, while about four-in-ten Black Republicans (44%) say the same. And Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say racism (67% vs. 46%) and police brutality (65% vs. 44%) are extremely big problems for Black people today.

Black Democrats are also more critical of U.S. institutions than Black Republicans are. For example, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say the prison system (57% vs. 35%), policing (52% vs. 29%) and the courts and judicial process (50% vs. 35%) should be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly.

While the share of Black Democrats who want to see large-scale changes to the criminal justice system exceeds that of Black Republicans, they share similar views on police funding. Four-in-ten each of Black Democrats and Black Republicans say funding for police departments in their communities should remain the same, while around a third of each partisan coalition (36% and 37%, respectively) says funding should increase. Only about one-in-four Black Democrats (24%) and one-in-five Black Republicans (21%) say funding for police departments in their communities should decrease.

Among the survey’s other findings:

Black adults differ by age in their views on political strategies. Black adults ages 65 and older (77%) are most likely to say voting is an extremely or very effective strategy for moving Black people toward equality. They are significantly more likely than Black adults ages 18 to 29 (48%) and 30 to 49 (60%) to say this. Black adults 65 and older (48%) are also more likely than those ages 30 to 49 (38%) and 50 to 64 (42%) to say protesting is an extremely or very effective strategy. Roughly four-in-ten Black adults ages 18 to 29 say this (44%).

Gender plays a role in how Black adults view policing. Though majorities of Black women (65%) and men (56%) say police brutality is an extremely big problem for Black people living in the U.S. today, Black women are more likely than Black men to hold this view. When it comes to criminal justice, Black women (56%) and men (51%) are about equally likely to share the view that the prison system should be completely rebuilt to ensure fair treatment of Black people. However, Black women (52%) are slightly more likely than Black men (45%) to say this about policing. On the matter of police funding, Black women (39%) are slightly more likely than Black men (31%) to say police funding in their communities should be increased. On the other hand, Black men are more likely than Black women to prefer that funding stay the same (44% vs. 36%). Smaller shares of both Black men (23%) and women (22%) would like to see police funding decreased.

Income impacts Black adults’ views on reparations. Roughly eight-in-ten Black adults with lower (78%), middle (77%) and upper incomes (79%) say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should receive reparations. Among those who support reparations, Black adults with upper and middle incomes (both 84%) are more likely than those with lower incomes (75%) to say educational scholarships would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment. However, of those who support reparations, Black adults with lower (72%) and middle incomes (68%) are more likely than those with higher incomes (57%) to say cash payments would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment for slavery.

• Black adults in the September 2020 survey only include those who say their race is Black alone and are non-Hispanic. The same is true only for the questions of improvements to Black people’s lives and equality in the United States in the October 2021 survey. Throughout the rest of this report, Black adults include those who say their race is Black alone and non-Hispanic; those who say their race is Black and at least one other race and non-Hispanic; or Black and Hispanic, unless otherwise noted. ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

The Neuroscience of Racism

Can brain science help to understand one of society’s most complex problems.

Posted June 2, 2020 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Racism is a major societal problem in the U.S. and many other countries around the world. Outrage over the death of George Floyd, who died after being pinned down by a former police officer, has spread throughout the country.

Many people might be asking themselves why some people would perpetrate crimes against other human beings just because they belong to a different ethnic group. Can brain science help provide an answer? Here are the main insights from a review article ( Molenberghs, 2013 ) that tackled exactly this question.

1. How we categorize others

From a theoretical perspective, racism is one aspect of a larger psychological phenomenon called in-group bias. Our brains have developed to adapt to complex social situations. Discriminating whether someone belongs to the same or a different group could be vital in order to behave correctly in some situations, such as during battle.

The same psychological mechanism can, however, lead to highly problematic behaviors. Everyone belongs to many different groups in their life: In-group bias can be observed between fans of sports teams, supporters of political parties, or students from competing universities. In-group bias is highly dependent on context. Someone can show a bias against another person in one situation (e.g., during a football game when the two people support opposing teams), but categorize them as belonging to the same group in another context (e.g., when engaged in a political discussion and realizing that their views align). This demonstrates how arbitrary and meaningless these categorizations often are.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown that the medial prefrontal cortex is particularly involved in social categorization. This brain area has also been found to be activated in studies in which participants were asked to think about their own personal attributes. This indicates that there is a relatively close association between thinking about ourselves and thinking about the social group(s) we belong to. This makes a lot of sense, as people also identify as members of the groups they belong to (e.g., “I am a Baltimore Ravens supporter.”).

2. How we perceive the actions of others

One important insight from psychological research is that people can perceive the same action very differently if it is conducted by a member of the same group or a member of a different group. In one empirical study by the author of the review article, participants were arbitrarily divided into two teams ( Molenberghs et al., 2013 ) and watched videos of individuals from their own team and the competing team performing hand actions. Participants had to judge the speed of these hand movements and on average rated their own teams to be faster, even though the hand movements in the videos were performed at exactly the same speed.

In an additional functional magnetic resonance imaging study with the same task, the scientists found that participants who indicated a strong difference between the two groups showed an increase of activity in the inferior parietal lobule—a brain area that coordinates perception and action—when watching the videos, but not in subsequent decision making when rating the clips. These findings suggest that in-group bias already occurs very early in perception, not only when making a conscious decision about how to act.

3. How we feel empathy towards somebody else

One of the neuroscientific key findings about racism is that on average people express less empathy towards other people who do not belong to their own group. Empathy describes the ability to understand what somebody else might think or feel and to act in an appropriate manner. For example, one study found that ethnic group membership can modulate the neural responses associated with empathy ( Xu et al., 2009 ). Here, the authors used functional magnetic imaging to record brain activation in white and Chinese participants while they were watching video clips of white and Chinese faces being either touched with a Q-tip (non-painful) or poked by a syringe (painful).

The scientists showed that both white and Chinese participants showed increased activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and the inferior frontal cortex when watching a video clip in which a person of their own ethnic group was experiencing pain. These brain areas have previously been shown to be activated when someone experiences pain themselves. Thus, the same brain areas that mediate the first person pain experience are also involved in feeling empathy towards somebody else experiencing pain.

Importantly, the scientists found that this empathic brain response was significantly decreased when the participants viewed faces of individuals from other ethnic groups experiencing pain. Thus, in-group bias affects how much someone feels the pain of somebody else, which might contribute to why racist individuals would have less of a problem hurting somebody belonging to a different ethnic group than somebody who belongs to their own ethnic group.

4. How we perceive faces

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies on the perception of faces with different ethnic backgrounds imply that both subconscious and conscious processes are involved in perceiving faces of people with different ethnic backgrounds differently than faces of people with the same ethnic background. For example, one study ( Cunningham et al., 2004 ) presented pictures of African American and white faces to white participants while their brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging. When the faces were presented so briefly that they could not be processed consciously, the participants showed greater activation in the amygdala for African American compared to white faces. The amygdala is a brain region that plays a key role in emotion processing, including fear , anxiety , and aggression .

However, when the faces were presented much longer so that the participants could actually perceive them consciously, these differences disappeared. Instead, several brain regions in the frontal cortex that are involved in cognitive control and emotion regulation showed more activation when the white participants viewed African American faces. These findings suggest that there are at least two neural pathways when it comes to processing faces of individuals from a different ethnic group. On the one hand, there are quick and subconscious processes that engage brain areas involved in processing emotions. This early pathway is modulated by a later, conscious pathway that represents top-down regulation of feelings based on what is acceptable in society and what the individual has learned previously.

The findings in the review article by Molenberghs (2013) make one thing clear: Racism is a highly complex problem, not only on the societal level but also in the brain. There is no single brain area involved in racism. Instead, a complex network of brain regions involved in social categorization, self-perception, empathy, pain, and face perception is involved in racism and other forms of in-group bias and out-group discrimination .

The existence of this network and its sometimes automatic and subconscious activation is probably rooted in our ancient past when fast and correct identification of in-group and out-group members could be a matter of survival (e.g., in conflicts between different groups of prehistoric humans). Like many phenomena in evolutionary psychology , however, these processes lead to problems in today’s society because conditions today are very different from the prehistoric conditions that shaped our brain structure.

One important message from the study by Cunningham et al., (2004) is that the fast and subconscious processes that lead to a potentially negative emotional reaction to faces of people belonging to a different ethnic group can be regulated by later conscious control processes. This implies that it is of prime importance to educate individuals that racism is not acceptable, in order to strengthen the cognitive control of potential racist thoughts and to prevent racist behavior, in addition to policy and societal changes.

Cunningham WA, Johnson MK, Raye CL, Chris Gatenby J, Gore JC, Banaji MR. (2004). Separable neural components in the processing of black and white faces. Psychol Sci. 15, 806‐813.

Molenberghs P. (2013). The neuroscience of in-group bias. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 37, 1530‐1536.

Molenberghs P, Halász V, Mattingley JB, Vanman EJ, Cunnington R. (2012). Seeing is believing: neural mechanisms of action-perception are biased by team membership. Hum Brain Mapp., 34, 2055‐2068.

Xu X, Zuo X, Wang X, Han S. Do you feel my pain? (2009). Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. J Neurosci, 29, 8525‐8529.

Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D., is a professor for research methods in psychology at the Department of Psychology at MSH Medical School Hamburg, Germany. His research focuses on left-handedness and brain asymmetries.

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Sociological Perspectives on Racism

Functionalist perspective of racism.

The functionalist perspective perceives society as a composite system whose parts labor together to uphold harmony and steadiness. According to functionalism, racism and discrimination have had a significant role to play in altering humanity. The approach, however, is problematic since the vices mentioned above cannot have a beneficial influence on the broader public. On the other hand, the functionalist position believes that racism can only improve society through enhancing bonds among in-group members. The reinforcement can be done through the shunning of out-group associates (Bowden 88). The communities’ solidarity will not grow if they deny others the chance to access it. Another dysfunction that comes with racism is that no advantage is taken on the abilities of the subjugated group. For example, more money, effort, and time are taken to maintain a separate and unequal education system due to racism.

Functionalists claim that manifest roles are the envisioned function of a phenomenon in a social structure. Latent functions are the intended purposes, and the consequences are unintended. They also suggest that racism helps the smaller group stay together, through which they can find solutions to the problems affecting them. Separation makes the inferior group recognize their abilities and the means to survive without depending on others (Griffiths et al. 506). Discerning inner strength and solidifying the bonds among the weak society is the manifest purpose of racism (Bowden 90). Latent functions appear when the dominating group goes as far as trying to eradicate the smaller community (Griffiths et al. 508). Separate education systems, different levels of education qualities, or unequal job opportunities are some of the latent functions of racism.

Sociological Perspectives

The sociological perspective allows people to trace the association between the patterns and the events of their own and those of the community in general. There are three ways of approaching sociological perspectives which include, structural-functional, interaction and the conflict approach. According to the functionalist perspective, aspects of humanity depend on each other, contributing to society’s overall functioning (Bowden 92). Interaction perspective considers symbols and details of daily life. People attribute meanings to signs, and then they act according to the particular understanding of the signs. For example, in the American institution of marriage, white dresses, rings, vows, ceremonies, and flowers all symbolize marriage. Individuals also have their meaning to these signs; for instance, exchanging rings means eternal love.

Nonetheless, the conflict approach focuses on the negative side of the ever-changing society. Conflict theorists believe that the rich people in the community force social direction on the poor. This method examines the differences of unequal groups based on gender, values, religion, and agendas, causing them to be in constant conflict (Bowden 94). The completion between these unequal groups is what forms the basis of the changing nature of society. Thus, a new immigrant in the American interaction approach will help understand why the American people prefer some things over others. The conflict approach will help one know which society they belong to and what grounds their group is different from the others (Bowden 97). The functionalist perspective will help one see the type of rules the American people work with, the laws that govern them, and what keeps them together. Hence, the functionalist perspective is the most suitable because it allows people to learn the positive side of the Americans. Consequently, functionalism brings out what the American population wants to achieve and what would be best for them collectively.

Works Cited

Bowden, Matt. “Community Safety, Social Cohesion and Embedded Autonomy: A case from South-West Dublin”. Crime Prevention and Community Safety , vol 19, no. 2, 2017, pp. 87-102. Springer Science and Business Media LLC , Web.

Griffiths, H., Keirns, N., Strayer, E., Cody-Rydzewski, S., Scaramuzzo, G., Sadler, T., Vyain, S., Bry, J. and Jones, F. Introduction to Sociology 2E (Fall 2019 Corrected Edition) . Openstax, 2017, pp. 501 – 509.

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How Racist Is America?

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

One question lingers amid all the debates about critical race theory: How racist is this land? Anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows about the oppression of the Native Americans, about slavery and Jim Crow. But does that mean that America is even now a white supremacist nation, that whiteness is a cancer that leads to oppression for other groups? Or is racism mostly a part of America’s past, something we’ve largely overcome?

There are many ways to answer these questions. The most important is by having honest conversations with the people directly affected. But another is by asking: How high are the barriers to opportunity for different groups? Do different groups have a fair shot at the American dream? This approach isn’t perfect, but at least it points us to empirical data rather than just theory and supposition.

When we apply this lens to the African American experience we see that barriers to opportunity are still very high. The income gap separating white and Black families was basically as big in 2016 as it was in 1968 . The wealth gap separating white and Black households grew even bigger between those years. Black adults are over 16 times more likely to be in families with three generations of poverty than white adults.

Research shows the role racism plays in perpetuating these disparities. When, in 2004, researchers sent equally qualified white and Black applicants to job interviews in New York City, dressed them similarly and gave them similar things to say, Black applicants got half as many callbacks or job offers as whites.

When you look at the data about African Americans, the legacies of slavery and segregation and the effects of racism are everywhere. The phrase “systemic racism” aptly fits the reality you see — a set of structures, like redlining, that have a devastating effect on Black wealth and opportunities. Racism is not something we are gently moving past; it’s pervasive. It seems obvious that this reality should be taught in every school.

Does this mean that America is white supremacist, a shameful nation, that the American dream is just white privilege? Well, let’s take a look at the data for different immigrant groups. When you turn your gaze here, the barriers don’t seem as high. For example, as Bloomberg’s Noah Smith pointed out recently on his Substack page, Hispanic American incomes rose faster in recent years than those of any other major group in America. Forty-five percent of Hispanics who grew up in poverty made it to the middle class or higher , comparable to the mobility rate for whites.

Hispanics have lately made astounding gains in education. In 2000, more than 30 percent of Hispanics dropped out of high school. By 2016, only 10 percent did. In 1999, a third of Hispanics age 18 to 24 were in college; now, nearly half are. Hispanic college enrollment rates surpassed white enrollment rates in 2012.

The Hispanic experience in America is beginning to look similar to the experience of Irish Americans or Italian Americans or other past immigrant groups — a period of struggle followed by integration into the middle class.

A study by scholars from Princeton, Stanford and the University of California at Davis found that today’s children of immigrants are no slower to move up to the middle class than the children of immigrants 100 years ago. It almost doesn’t matter whether their parents came from countries from which immigrants are mainly fleeing misery and poverty, or from countries from which immigrants often arrive with marketable skills, children of poor immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than the children of the native-born.

This economic success obviously does not mean immigrant groups do not face hardship, bias and exploitation. Almost every immigrant group in American history has faced that. It just means that education and mobility can help overcome some of the effects of this bias. According to that same study, immigrant groups are largely doing well because they come to places where opportunity is plentiful. They are not so much earning more than those around them, but earning more along with those around them.

Economic progress is one thing. What about cultural integration?

A landmark 2015 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found that the lives of immigrants and their children are converging with those of their native-born neighbors, in good ways and bad. This pattern applies to how well educated they are, where they live, what language they speak, how their health is and how they organize their families. A study by a Brown University sociologist, for example, found that Mexican immigrants are learning English at increasingly higher rates and growing less isolated from non-Mexican Americans.

Rising intermarriage rates are one product of this integration. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center report , about 29 percent of Asian American newlyweds are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, along with 27 percent of Hispanic newlyweds. The intermarriage rates for white and Black people have roughly tripled since 1980. More than 35 percent of Americans say that one of their “close” kin is of a different race.

Blending identities is another sign of this integration. There was an idea going around a few years ago that America was about to become a majority-minority country. This would be true only if you rigidly divided Americans into white and (with one drop of nonwhite blood) nonwhite categories.

But real humans are very quick to adopt multiple and shifting racial identities. The researchers Richard Alba, Morris Levy and Dowell Myers suggest 52 percent of the people who self-categorize as nonwhite in the Census Bureau’s projections for America’s 2060 racial makeup will also think of themselves as white. Forty percent of those who self-categorized as white will also claim minority racial identity.

In an essay for The Atlantic, they conclude: “Speculating about whether America will have a white majority by the mid-21st century makes little sense, because the social meanings of white and nonwhite are rapidly shifting. The sharp distinction between these categories will apply to many fewer Americans.”

When you look at the data across groups, a few points stand out.

First, you can see why some people have issues with the phrase “people of color.” How could a category that covers a vast majority of all human beings have much meaning? The groups that the phrase attempts to bring together have different experiences and even face different kinds of bias. Perhaps this phrase covers over real identities instead of illuminating them.

Writing in GQ, Damon Young argues that the term “people of color” has become a linguistic gesture, “shorthand for white people uncomfortable with just saying ‘Black.’” In The New Yorker, E. Tammy Kim argues , “‘People of color,’ by grouping all nonwhites in the United States, if not the world, fails to capture the disproportionate per-capita harm to Blacks at the hands of the state.”

Second, it’s certainly time to dump the replacement theory that has been so popular with Tucker Carlson and the far right — the idea that all these foreigners are coming to take over the country. This is an idea that panics a lot of whites and helped elect Donald Trump, but it’s not true. In truth, immigrants blend with the current inhabitants, keeping parts of their earlier identities and adopting parts of their new identities. This has been happening for hundreds of years, and it is still happening. This kind of intermingling of groups is not replacing America; it is America.

Finally, it may not be accurate to say that America can be neatly divided into rival ethnic camps, locked in zero-sum conflict with each other. The real story is more about blending and fluidity. I’m just one guy with one (white) point of view. But my reading of the historical record suggests groups do well by mingling with everybody else while keeping some of their own distinct identities and cultures. “Integration without assimilation” is how Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks put it.

The interwoven reality of America defies simple binaries of white versus nonwhite. Over the last several years Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights have done much of the most celebrated work on income mobility. They find that, indeed, Black Americans and Native Americans have much lower rates of mobility because of historic discrimination.

But Chetty’s team emphasizes that these gaps are not immutable. If, for example, you use housing vouchers and other grants to help people move to high-opportunity neighborhoods with low poverty rates, low racial bias and more fathers in the neighborhoods, then you can help people of all races lead lives with higher incomes and lower rates of incarceration as adults.

The reality of America encompasses both the truth about structural racism and the truth that America is a land of opportunity for an astounding diversity of groups from around the world. There’s no way to simplify that complexity.

Last week I saw a young Black woman wearing a T-shirt that read, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” I took her message as a statement of defiance, pride, determination and hope. If you can keep discordant emotions like that in your head, you can get a feel for this discordant land.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to Character” and, most recently, “The Second Mountain.” @ nytdavidbrooks

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Psychological perspectives on racism in america.

The murder of George Floyd — and the widespread emotional reaction to his death — has forced us all to reflect on the direct and indirect violence that Black Americans continue to experience on a daily basis. As much as it opens fresh wounds, it also opens up a much-needed dialogue on just how far we still need to go to achieve true racial equality in America.

While we typically apply LRW’s behavioral science expertise toward helping brands understand consumer motivations, we can also apply it toward helping more people understand the complexities of racist attitudes and behavior. In this post, our Pragmatic Brain Science® team shares some psychological concepts and suggested readings that can help us make sense of these recent events. As behavioral scientists, when people act in ways that are hard to comprehend, we look to understand what might motivate their behavior in an effort to arm ourselves with the knowledge to bring about change.

What is Racism?  

Racism is complex. It is an interplay between prejudice  (negative feelings towards an individual based on group membership),  stereotypes  (beliefs about the characteristics members of a group possess) and discrimination  (negative actions towards members of the group). An instance of racism may involve one, two, or all three components.

Explicit Racism vs. Implicit Racism

In our current moment, there are plenty of examples of  explicit racism,  wherein the individual is aware of his or her prejudice and stereotypes and discriminates accordingly. No less problematic are the many instances of implicit racism, where people hold negative feelings or beliefs of which they may not be consciously aware, and thus may be unaware of how such feelings and beliefs influence their behavior. As a function of being part of a society in which racism is deeply entrenched, we all likely hold some implicit racial biases.

More on racial attitudes in America:

• Implicit and explicit attitudes toward African Americans and Barack Obama during Obama’s presidency

More on implicit racism and implicit bias:

• Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People
• Biased: Uncovering The Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

Policing and bias:

• Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing
• Can Cops Unlearn Their Unconscious Biases?

Changing implicit biases:

• A Habit Based Approach to Racial Bias
• Is This How Discrimination Ends?

The Silent Effects of Racism

Racism literally costs Black Americans their lives, as is evident in the cases of Mr. Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery , and countless others. Racism also affects the lives of Black Americans in ways that are less obvious and direct, but can similarly inflict pain in their own ways.

Microaggressions , for example, are brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental slights, insults, and indignities that individuals face because of their group membership. For instance, a white woman grabbing her purse when a black man enters an elevator is a commonly cited microaggression. Experiencing microaggressions can correlate to poorer physical and mental health. Even without experiencing a negative interaction, simply knowing that there are negative stereotypes about one’s group can be threatening.

Stereotype threat is fear of reinforcing a stereotype and being made aware of your belonging to a stereotyped group may impact performance. The mere mention of being a member of a stereotyped group — African Americans or women, for example — can negatively impact standardized test or other academic performance.

On the toll of microaggressions:

• I Have Not Missed the Amy Coopers of the World
• These Black Nature Lovers Are Busting Stereotypes, One Cool Bird at a Time

On stereotype threat:

• Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do
• Stereotype Threat Widens Achievement Gap

Effects of stereotype threat, stress, and more on minorities:

• Internal and External Challenges Faced By Women and Ethnic Minorities That Make Them More Vulnerable At Work

Impacts on health:

• How racism and microaggressions lead to worse health

Emotional Exhaustion and Burnout

Experiencing high levels of persistent stress has widespread impacts on health. It can lead to burnout , which results in feelings of hopelessness and despair. Stress causes physical and cognitive impairments and increases susceptibility to chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure.

Every day, Black Americans experience higher levels of stress than their white counterparts, stress that has been exacerbated by a pandemic that disproportionately impacts people of color, and the recent spate of racist violence and behavior across the US. Many people of color may be facing emotional exhaustion , manifest in physical and mental fatigue, and need time and space for emotional and physical healing.

Research shows that in times of crisis, consuming high amounts of media have been linked to increased anxiety and depression . Also in times of crisis, the emotional lift you feel after receiving help is nearly equal to the emotional lift felt when helping others. It’s important to allow yourself time off and to lean on others when you need a break. When you are emotionally recharged, support those around you who need a break.

Self-care during these painful weeks:

• Self-Care Tips for Black People Who Are Struggling With This Very Painful Week

Disproportionate effects of stress and disease on black communities:

• Stress was already killing black Americans. Covid-19 is making it worse.

How social unrest affects mental health:

• Mental health during and after protests, riots and revolutions: A systematic review

Understanding Influence and Norms

Your behavior is both influenced by and influences those around you through norms , shared standards for behavior and conduct. Norms are upheld by members of society, but those with high social status have the ability to normalize new behaviors. Social status is often ascribed to those with dominance (e.g. money and power), but people also gain status through being respected, and the social closeness of the influencer has an impact on how eagerly their behaviors are adopted.

Social media mavens, community leaders, managers, and businesses have the opportunity to normalize conversations about bias and privilege, amplify the voices of people of color, and set new standards for acceptable behavior.

How technology can influence norms:

• This researcher programmed bots to fight racism on Twitter. It worked.

How norms can rapidly change:

• Supreme Court Ruling on Gay Marriage Changed Perception of Norms, Despite Stable Personal Beliefs

Changing behaviors, norms, and habits is challenging work, and we hope we’ve offered a few thought starters, as well as some personal invitations to heal during an incredibly challenging time.

Have thoughts to share about these concepts? Want to share reading recommendations of your own? Please leave a comment, or contact us .

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Ending Racism: How to Change the World in One Generation

An essay by garrison institute fellow justin michael williams.

Almost every piece of work or literature that I’ve read on racism is built on one assumption:  that it cannot end.

Or at best, that it will be a “lifelong fight.” That ending racism will be something that “will probably never happen in our generation.”

Most of the quotes you hear about the fight against racism sound something like this: “We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term.  Ours is the struggle of a lifetime , or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”  ~ John Lewis, late civil rights leader and former U.S. Representative

But, if we all continue to say, “racism is something that can never end in our generation.” Then  who the hell ever gets to take responsibility for ending it?

Enter:  us.

We still have a dream. But we are the vessel for the dreams our ancestors were unable to dream.  

The current work and research on anti-racism is phenomenal, and so is the tireless work that has been done by our ancestors for generations. But much of this work has one fatal flaw—it’s created from the automatic assumption (whether subconscious or conscious) that racism is  unlikely to ever end . And if  that’s  our starting point, —if that’s the plateau from which we’re writing our books, creating our podcasts, and doing our activism and anti-racism work—then we’re missing a big opportunity here .

I’m not saying becoming an anti-racist or dismantling white supremacy isn’t important work. The current anti-racist and equality work has  real impact— it’s  saving live s. It’s creating systemic change. It’s bringing us together.  And that matters— tremendously. I’m also not minimizing the centuries of incredible work done by civil rights leaders like John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Patrisse Cullors, and the countless names we’ll never know. Without them, we would never have the opportunity to even  consider  ending racism.

What I am saying is this: Imagine how much  more  important our work becomes if it were done in a different context. If it were done not just as some sort of bootcamp “to be in a lifelong fight,” but with a common, united goal of actually  ending racism in this generation .

Here’s what fighting against something looks like:

Here’s what moving toward something looks like:

Congressman John Lewis was right. Our generation  does  have the opportunity to do something incredible. We have the opportunity to  end racism.  And to do it  within this generation.   

Notice what comes up for you when I say, “end racism.”

Notice what you feel when we put a  timeline  on it. Hopeful? Skeptical? Cynical?

Are you thinking to yourself, “Who does this guy think he is?” Are you wishing I would define race and racism? Hoping for a plan?

Good. That’s all part of our pathway forward.

But before we can begin to look at how to  end racism —both systemic and internalized—I think it’s important that we understand what makes racism  persist . Because once you’ve been stuck in a condition—once you’ve been working on the same recurring problem over and over to no end—it becomes important to shift the question from, “What is the problem?” to, “Why does the problem continue to persist in the first place?”

And in part, racism persists because of these five shared, yet individual assumptions:

• Racism is unavoidable.
• Race matters.
• “Those people” will never change.
• Real change takes a long time.
• We don’t know how to end it.

What do I mean by “shared, yet individual assumptions?

Before we can even get into breaking down any concepts about ending racism, we have to first explore what I mean by “shared, yet individual assumptions.” We must own and acknowledge that we, as individuals and as a collective, see things through a certain lens, or perspective. And if enough people agree on a certain perspective, then that perspective becomes our collective reality and belief. And I’m not talking about the woo-woo “law of attraction” stuff here (even though I love that stuff), I’m talking about  perception  and  belief  in the most tangible way.

For example, throughout much of ancient history, it was widely believed that the Earth was flat. People literally thought if they travelled far enough, they might fall off the edge of the Earth into an abyss of nothingness. Ancient civilizations from Greece and Egypt to Asia all believed this to be true, so they created a reality based upon that belief. We see it depicted in art, stories, religion, and ultimately, their shared beliefs about the world.

Now, I know you might be thinking, “We’ve evolved beyond that sort of foolery,” but let’s look at another untrue, yet harmless shared perspective that we all maintain today: our belief that the sun “sets.”

There’s a shared  perspective  that the sun sets, but the sun doesn’t  really  set. Think about it. Would the sun appear to  set  from the perspective of an astronaut who is far away from the Earth’s orbit? No. The Earth would be turning on its axis as it circles around the sun.

But from our  shared perspective  here on the planet, there’s an agreed-upon belief that the sun sets. On the foundation of this belief we’ve created our reality, the structure of our lives, and our world.

This leads me to an important point: Our world is created upon shared beliefs, even if those beliefs aren’t necessarily true.

So, to  end racism , we must first own and acknowledge that we, as individuals and as a collective, see things through a sometimes-faulty lens. And if enough people  choose  to see through the same faulty lens (for example: Black people should be slaves, women are inferior), then that chosen perspective becomes the context through which we live our lives. In essence, if enough people share the same socially perceived illusions, those illusions cause a certain “way of life” to persist.  

Now, with that in mind, let’s dismantle the five faulty perspectives that might be causing racism to persist.

#1: RACISM IS UNAVOIDABLE

Here’s the thing: It’s  been proven  by neuroscientists and psychologists that racism is  learned —it’s not some automatic human condition that we’re born with. It’s not something that “just happens” as a result of putting a bunch of diverse people on a planet together. And I’m not sharing this with you as an idea or opinion. It is widely respected and proven by science that racism itself is  not  “a given.” It’s not unavoidable.

What  is  likely unavoidable, however, is the fact that we create what’s called “in-groups” and “out-groups” to keep ourselves safe. And  terror management studies  show that we have a tendency to treat people in our “in-group” more kindly and people in our “out group” more harshly. Yet, even with this scientific knowledge, the idea of using  race  as a way of defining our “in-group” and “out-group” is something we can eliminate—if we try.  

But  we the people  are funny creatures. When we can’t figure out a quick solution to something, most of us label it as “unavoidable.” Inevitable. Unfortunate, but unlikely to change.

Yet, the idea that racism is “unavoidable” would be like saying the Holocaust was “unavoidable” or that American slavery was “unavoidable” or that refusing the LGBTQIA+ community the right to marry was “unavoidable.”

There’s a real danger in saying something is unavoidable, because we immediately absolve ourselves of taking  responsibility  to change it. We throw our hands up in the air and say, “Welp, can’t do anything about that.”

Can’t do anything about slavery… Can’t do anything about gay marriage… Can’t do anything about the spread of HIV… Can’t do anything about women’s rights…

Can’t do anything about racism…

Until somebody does. 

#2: RACE MATTERS

I’m going to say something that’s sometimes hard for people to face, especially for my fellow people of color:  Race  is a complete fabrication of the human mind that’s used for power and control. It’s a social construct. A delusion. An imaginary truth (or alternative fact, if you will) that we’ve  all  continued to build our lives and civilizations upon.

“There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race—scientifically, anthropologically.” ~ Toni Morrison, novelist and professor

Now, I want to be very clear here: I don’t want for you to think for one second that I’m saying the  effects  of racism aren’t real. The trauma, the deaths, the lives lost, and the impact of racism—and the persistent  collective belief  in the idea of “race”—has had  very real consequence s. It has created wars, dismantled countries, pitted religions against one another, and taken innocent Black and Brown lives for generations. Racism has caused incredible harm and trauma, which cannot be minimized.

I’m also not suggesting we put our cultures, values, and traditions into a Vitamix to make some vegan “we are all one” race-less smoothie. We don’t need to give up our culture, values, and traditions or become one big “melting pot” in order to end racism.

What we have the opportunity to do is far greater than that.

So, while this can be triggering or hard to stomach:  The concept of race is literally IMAGINARY . Someone created it to gain and maintain power and control. And now we use it to control ourselves.

Race is not real.

Heritage is real. Culture is real. Tradition is real. Appropriation is real. Skin color is real. Trauma is real.

But race—not real.

Or…  it’s as real as we make it.

For comparison, and to understand this more clearly, let’s consider the concept of gender. While sex is a biological  fact  of nature (we are born with different anatomy), gender is a cultural/historical  interpretation . Gender is not a fact.

Skin color is a biological fact. Race is a cultural/historical interpretation.

Race is not a fact.

The thing is, I don’t think most of us  actually  care  that much  about race. Sure, we care about our traditions, cultures, ancestors, customs, languages, and especially our foods and religious landmarks—but  race? REALLY?

Take a moment to think about it. If you could keep all of your traditions, customs, and practices, and the beauty of who we all are as differentiated unique humans with our own rituals and historical contexts; if you could continue assembling with like-minded individuals and celebrating your values and diversity; if you could keep  all that  and be treated equally with the humanity and dignity that is your birthright… how important would the individual concept of “race” be? What’s it for? What’s its function?

I gotta give it to the person who came up with the concept of “race” as a means to enforce power and control, because if their mission was to separate us—well,  it worked. 

Racism created race, not the other way around.

We were taught to care about race, so we did. Now, here we are, holding onto this “ thing ” that we don’t even  really  care about, but that’s causing us harm and pain and war and genocide and trauma over and over and over, and then saying…

“Even though we don’t care about this… Even though it’s not real… Even though it’s causing us harm… It’s unlikely to ever end.”

#3: “THOSE PEOPLE” WILL NEVER CHANGE

There is a commonly held belief that “those people” will never change, yet all throughout life, we can point to and tell stories of people who have changed. And not just “people out there,” but people in your life and family line.

I think about my buddy Greg, a white guy who grew up in Tennessee with a bunch of racist friends and family members who believed “Black people were stupid and lazy.” He said, “I used to believe that if Black people were making 20% less than whites, it’s because Black people must be working 20% less hard or weren’t as smart or capable… that something must be wrong with them genetically. Especially because I had always thought everyone had the same equal access to opportunity.”

Greg went on to say, “If I hadn’t dramatically fucked up my life… if I would’ve still been working in finance, with a house on a lake and a bunch of ‘toys’ like many of the people I grew up with, I would probably still be a white supremacist with a Confederate flag hanging from my truck.”

But that’s not the Greg I know. The Greg I know went through a massive change 15 years ago. And the reason we met was because I gave a talk at his company about ending racism and he came up to me afterward asking for resources to help his 5-year-old son grow up on the right side of history. Greg is committed to making sure his young white son doesn’t grow up racist—and even though Greg is doing his own anti-racist work, he was afraid he wasn’t equipped to teach his son properly. (I referred him to Layla Saad’s upcoming youth book and  A Kids Book about Racism  by Jelani Memory.)   Greg, a man who used to be a racist white supremacist, is now someone who cares deeply about social justice. And the change didn’t happen when he was 12. It happened when he was 35.

We all know a Greg. They’re not rare. Point to your once-racist family members, your formerly tone-deaf coworkers, your used-to-be homophobic relatives, and the ways in which you’ve personally grown over the years.

People change all the time.

Racists are not exempt.  

So, to me, the question becomes:  What causes people to change?

Is it always for selfish reasons? For financial gain? Does it take a personal relationship? A direct experience? Do they need to “fuck up their life” like Greg did?

Fine. Instead of arguing over what are the “right” and “wrong” reasons for change, let’s use them to our advantage and create a model for racial healing where those conditions can be met, and met quickly.

#4: REAL CHANGE TAKES A LONG TIME

Okay, so let’s assume we’re in agreement here. But even if we all agree racism is avoidable, that we don’t really care about the concept of race, and that people  can  change, ending racism in our generation is still unrealistic, because  real  change takes a long time. Right?

You already know what’s coming…

But before I say it, let’s look at some of the most massive changes in recent human history. The “start” and “end” dates below represent unmistakable widespread shifts. Keep in mind, a generation is typically considered to be 20-25 years.

• (1973) The first phone call made on a handheld cellular phone ⭢ (1995) Widespread global use of mobile phones =  22 years
• (1991) Creation of the World Wide Web ⭢ (2001) Total widespread use of the internet =  10 years
• (1981) First documented case of HIV in the U.S. ⭢ (1995) Ability to detect, treat, and live with HIV =  14 years
• (2004) First U.S. state legalizes same-sex marriage ⭢ (2015) National legalization of same-sex marriage =  11 years
• (1831) First knowledge of slaves escaping through the Underground Railroad and the start of abolitionism ⭢ (1865) End of the Civil War =  34 years
• (1903) Wright brothers take first flight ⭢ (1920) Widespread commercial airline travel begins =  17 years
• (1929) Start of the Great Depression ⭢ (1945) End of the Great Depression =  16 years
• (1933) Hitler’s first position of leadership and the formation of the Nazi Party ⭢ (1945) End of the Holocaust =  12 years
• (1957) First satellite launched into space ⭢ (1969) Man lands on the moon =  12 years

So, I ask the question again: Does real change take a “long time”?

In almost all of these cases, it took less than one generation (20-25 years) to make widespread global change.

Does  every  change in human history fall into this timeline? Of course not. Were there years of unrewarded labor that came before the cited “start” dates. Absolutely. My intention is not to minimize the generations of work that have come before us, but to help you notice that once the ground has been prepared—which it is now—real change  can  happen. And it can happen  fast .

So, let’s clean that smudge off of our dirty lens of perception and move on to the final point.

#5: WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO END IT

If we knew how to end racism, we would’ve already ended it… right?

(… do I even need to say it?)

The assumption that we “don’t know” how to end racism assumes there are no solutions. But that’s not true.

There are  plenty  of not just  good , but  excellent  solutions for ending racism that were created by researchers, anti-racist scholars, universities, and entire college campuses dedicated to the cause. For generations, people have created models, systems, structures, and written  The New York Times  bestselling books— any  of which could easily solve this problem. And not just hypothetically—there’s proof: We’ve seen the problem solved in micro but significant ways all throughout time—in our organizations, communities, and families.  

We aren’t waiting for “better solutions”—just like we weren’t waiting for “better solutions” to end slavery and we didn’t need “better solutions” to end the Holocaust.

As a society, as individuals, and as a collective—we needed to be  willing  and  ready .

And the same thing stands today.

We need to be  willing  and  ready  for our solutions to work.

“Are we so bound to our pain that we are not ready for liberation?” ~ Nico Cary, writer and mindfulness teacher

ENDING RACISM

So… if none of these things are causing racism to persist:

• If “Racism is unavoidable” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “Race matters” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “’Those people’ will never change” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “Real change takes a long time” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “We don’t know how to end it” is an inaccurate perspective…  

… then what do we need to do to get racism to end? 

Well,  the same thing you do to get racism to persist— you change the shared perspective.

The purpose of this article was not to give you better solutions to end racism or a step-by-step plan on how to do it, it was to get you to consider that  ending racism in this generation  may not just be possible, but realistic— if   we’re  willing   and   ready .  

One of my dear mentors, Jim Selman, always says, “There are lots of conversations ‘about’ change, but that’s different than conversations that actually change something.”

The key to any major shift in the world has always been the same: getting enough people to not just believe a cause “matters,” but to believe that change is  possible . Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of London discovered in a  2018 study  that it takes the support of just 25% of people to make a major social shift in the world.

You might be thinking, “Well, aren’t there  already  25% of people who believe racism can end in this generation?”

I don’t think so.

I think more than 25% of people  want  racism to end. I think more than 25% of people believe racism is  wrong . I think more than 25% of people think the fight against racism  matters .

But I don’t think 25% of people have actually  considered  that they could be personally responsible for  ending racism in this generation.  I don’t think 25% of people think it can start with us. And it’s time to change that.

Our call now is simple—it’s to get people to believe.

We can’t fight to “end police brutality” just for the sake of “ending police brutality,” we need to fight against police brutality for the sake of  ending racism.  We shouldn’t be “dismantling white supremacy” just for the sake of “creating more diversity in the workplace” or “becoming nice white people,” we need to dismantle white supremacy with the intention of  ending racism .

We cannot continue to fight for the liberation of our people just to have them encaged again; we must continue to fight for the liberation of our people  to end racism in this generation .

If we want to have a breakthrough in ending racism, then we need to realize that it’s not going to happen unless we agree on a timeline for ending it. Saying it’s going to end “someday” is not a commitment. But if we put a stake in the ground and say we are going to end it in our generation, possibilities open up. A new reality emerges.

Racism  can end —and it can end in this generation—if we  believe  it can. Because if we believe it can, we shift the context of the world.

WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?

The goal now is to get as many people as possible to consider that racism  can and should   end   in this generation .

And like any meaningful change, we start by doing the work both internally  and  with our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. And ultimately, on a global scale—each of us spreading seeds of possibility to the corners of the earth that only we can reach.

You see, this is not about stopping the work that we’re already doing,  this is about doing it with a new purpose, a new intention, a new meaning, and a realizable goal.  This is about using every means available to us now and every means that becomes available to us in the future to move beyond resignation and fulfill our new, shared yet individual perspective that racism can—and will— end  in this generation.

Here are five ways that you can help right now:

• Sign the pledge.  We’ve created a  Pledge to End Racism  with a goal of getting 25% of the population to sign it. If we get 1.9 billion people to sign the pledge, we have enough power to end racism not just in the U.S., but throughout the world.
• Donate.  We launched the  Ending Racism Grant & Scholarship  Fund to support vetted individuals and grassroots organizations who have taken the Pledge to End Racism. Donate or apply  here .
• Stream  this song  as much as you can. All proceeds go straight to our mission to end racism. 
• Show your support.  After you sign the  Pledge to End Racism , display the graphic on your website, social media, or on the bumper of your car. Remember, this is about spreading an idea.
• Share.  This article is a free resource. Copy it, paste it, post it, debate it, and share it in your newsletters. Do whatever you want with it—but do it with the goal of ending racism.

And when an opportunity arises for you to end racism, you will. I can’t tell you exactly what you will do, because I don’t know exactly what opportunity will arise for you next, but when it comes—you will know. And you’ll have a choice to either end racism, or not. And you  will .

I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS

My sister Shelly Tygielski, founder of  Pandemic of Love , once said something so dear to me that I want to pass it along to you. She said, “There are two types of people in this world. The  what if’s  and the  why not’s … don’t be a  what if . They are paralyzed in their analysis. Be a  why not . Why not me? Why not now? Why not us? Why not believe… and then see what happens next?”

So, the next time someone says racism can’t end, lovingly reply with: Why not? Then, send them this article.

We the people… we still have a dream. It’s a new dream.

We are the vessel for the dreams our ancestors were unable to dream.

We are exactly who was meant to be alive at this time.

We are enough.

And we rise—together.

Justin’s program The Liberation Experience brings people together across divides –  learn more and get on the waitlist here . If you want to contact Justin directly, you can do so by  clicking here .

Freedom Flag image illustrated by  Victoria Cassinova Justin Michael Williams photo by Jamaal

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Fellowship forum: cultivating r.e.s.t.: the ground of liberation with rashid hughes, fellowship forum: dr. dan siegel on the reality of intraconnection, fellowship forum: dr. michael eric dyson on critical thought & contemplative wisdom for our times, one comment on “ending racism: how to change the world in one generation”.

Wow! I have goosebumps. I am passionate about wellness, the healing of black people and the eradication of racism, particularly anti-black racism. The idea of ending racism in one generation has given me tremendous inspiration and energy. Let’s do this!

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Essay #8. Anti-Racism May Be An Answer

There’s one thing about writing about racism today. There will never be a shortage of material. It seems there will always be someone, somewhere, who will eventually say something racist. Everyday people say racist things. Famous people say racist things. The difference is, the famous have more to lose than the rest of us–or do they? Because their racist rants oftentimes find their way into mainstream and social media, we find out about it sooner or later. The rest of us can say our racist comments in the privacy of our homes and among our friends. Remember when Hulk Hogan became the newest celebrity to add his name to the racist rant hall of fame? I liked the character Hulk Hogan. So, it saddened me to learn about his racist rant. If you remember, Hulk Hogan apparently got upset with his daughter after finding out she was dating a Black man. He then went on an “N” word rant, which was taped. The taping was 8 years prior but brought back to life and made public. From the news account, I remember listening to it and from a reporter who grew up loving Hulk Hogan, it was bad. The WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) cut all ties with Hulk Hogan. I mean the WWE excommunicated him to the land of nonexistence. To his credit Hulk Hogan apologized profusely. But what else was he going to do?

Is the WWE’s punishment going to undo, un-hurt or fix any problems in the Black community? Is the WWE’s punishment going to help teach society not to say or do such racist things? The answer is no. Like I’ve said to you several times before, racism is an on-purpose act that must be undone, on-purpose. I think the WWE should have given Hulk Hogan a chance to undo his racist rant, by sending him to (in this case) a Black school or youth center and let him tell the kids and their parents why he’s sorry for what he said. I think WWE and Hulk Hogan should have gone into their pockets and fix a problem in a poor Black school district. I think the WWE and Hulk Hogan should have started an after-school tutoring program to help Black kids do better in their school. This would have been an anti-racist act. This would have started the process of un-doing racism. If Hulk Hogan had made racist comments about Mexican people, Asian people, Native Indian people, or women, then what I’m talking about would apply to those communities. The same goes for any other race or group of people that have been offended by racist and hateful acts or comments perpetrated by wealthy people or organizations.

My point is, apologies aren’t enough. With all the racist rants and acts that are going on in this country, nothing is being done to undo racism. Firing people who make racist, sexist or any other hateful comments, doesn’t do anything for those communities or people hurt by the comments. An anti-racism approach needs to be taken. These communities need to demand more than apologies. Firing people who make racist comments does not educate or re-educate anyone. If society stays uneducated, racism will continue; Headline: “Racist person fired! End of Racism!”–probably not.

From Racist to Non-Racist to Anti-Racist: Becoming a Part of the Solution Copyright © 2001, 2020 by Keith L. Anderson, PhD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Hear Something, Say Something: Navigating The World Of Racial Awkwardness

Listen to this week's episode.

We've all been there — having fun relaxing with friends and family, when someone says something a little racially off. Sometimes it's subtle, like the friend who calls Thai food "exotic." Other times it's more overt, like that in-law who's always going on about "the illegals."

In any case, it can be hard to know how to respond. Even the most level-headed among us have faltered trying to navigate the fraught world of racial awkwardness.

So what exactly do you do? We delve into the issue on this week's episode of the Code Switch podcast, featuring writer Nicole Chung and Code Switch's Shereen Marisol Meraji, Gene Demby and Karen Grigsby Bates.

We also asked some folks to write about what runs through their minds during these tense moments, and how they've responded (or not). Their reactions ran the gamut from righteous indignation to total passivity, but in the wake of these uncomfortable comments, everyone seemed to walk away wishing they'd done something else.

Aaron E. Sanchez

It was the first time my dad visited me at college, and he had just dropped me off at my dorm. My suitemate walked in and sneered.

"Was that your dad?" he asked. "He looks sooo Mexican."

Aaron E. Sanchez is a Texas-based writer who focuses on issues of race, politics and popular culture from a Latino perspective. Courtesy of Aaron Sanchez hide caption

He kept laughing about it as he left my room.

I was caught off-guard. Instantly, I grew self-conscious, not because I was ashamed of my father, but because my respectability politics ran deep. My appearance was supposed to be impeccable and my manners unimpeachable to protect against stereotypes and slights. I felt exposed.

To be sure, when my dad walked into restaurants and stores, people almost always spoke to him in Spanish. He didn't mind. The fluidity of his bilingualism rarely failed him. He was unassuming. He wore his working-class past on his frame and in his actions. He enjoyed hard work and appreciated it in others. Yet others mistook him for something altogether different.

People regularly confused his humility for servility. He was mistaken for a landscape worker, a janitor, and once he sat next to a gentleman on a plane who kept referring to him as a "wetback." He was a poor Mexican-American kid who grew up in the Segundo Barrio of El Paso, Texas, for certain. But he was also an Air Force veteran who had served for 20 years. He was an electrical engineer, a proud father, an admirable storyteller, and a pretty decent fisherman.

I didn't respond to my suitemate. To him, my father was a funny caricature, a curio he could pick up, purchase and discard. And as much as it was hidden beneath my elite, liberal arts education, I was a novelty to him too, an even rarer one at that. Instead of a serape, I came wrapped in the trappings of middle-classness, a costume I was trying desperately to wear convincingly.

That night, I realized that no clothing or ill-fitting costume could cover us. Our bodies were incongruous to our surroundings. No matter how comfortable we were in our skins, our presence would make others uncomfortable.

Karen Good Marable

When the Q train pulled into the Cortelyou Road station, it was dark and I was tired. Another nine hours in New York City, working in the madness that is Midtown as a fact-checker at a fashion magazine. All day long, I researched and confirmed information relating to beauty, fashion and celebrity, and, at least once a day, suffered an editor who was openly annoyed that I'd discovered an error. Then, the crush of the rush-hour subway, and a dinner obligation I had to fulfill before heading home to my cat.

Karen Good Marable is a writer living in New York City. Her work has been featured in publications like The Undefeated and The New Yorker. Courtesy of Karen Good Marable hide caption

The train doors opened and I turned the corner to walk up the stairs. Coming down were two girls — free, white and in their 20s . They were dancing as they descended, complete with necks rolling, mouths pursed — a poor affectation of black girls — and rapping as they passed me:

Now I ain't sayin she a golddigger/But she ain't messin' with no broke niggas!

That last part — broke niggas — was actually less rap, more squeals that dissolved into giggles. These white girls were thrilled to say the word publicly — joyously, even — with the permission of Kanye West.

I stopped, turned around and stared at them. I envisioned kicking them both squarely in their backs. God didn't give me telekinetic powers for just this reason. I willed them to turn around and face me, but they did not dare. They bopped on down the stairs and onto the platform, not evening knowing the rest of the rhyme.

Listen: I'm a black woman from the South. I was born in the '70s and raised by parents — both educators — who marched for their civil rights. I never could get used to nigga being bandied about — not by the black kids and certainly not by white folks. I blamed the girls' parents for not taking over where common sense had clearly failed. Hell, even radio didn't play the nigga part.

I especially blamed Kanye West for not only making the damn song, but for having the nerve to make nigga a part of the damn hook.

Life in NYC is full of moments like this, where something happens and you wonder if you should speak up or stay silent (which can also feel like complicity). I am the type who will speak up . Boys (or men) cussing incessantly in my presence? Girls on the train cussing around my 70-year-old mama? C'mon, y'all. Do you see me? Do you hear yourselves? Please. Stop.

But on this day, I just didn't feel like running down the stairs to tap those girls on the shoulder and school them on what they damn well already knew. On this day, I just sighed a great sigh, walked up the stairs, past the turnstiles and into the night.

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

When I was 5 or 6, my mother asked me a question: "Does anyone ever make fun of you for the color of your skin?"

This surprised me. I was born to a Mexican woman who had married an Anglo man, and I was fairly light-skinned compared to the earth-brown hue of my mother. When she asked me that question, I began to understand that I was different.

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is a visiting assistant professor of ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. Courtesy of Robyn Henderson-Espinoza hide caption

Following my parents' divorce in the early 1980s, I spent a considerable amount of time with my father and my paternal grandparents. One day in May of 1989, I was sitting at my grandparents' dinner table in West Texas. I was 12. The adults were talking about the need for more laborers on my grandfather's farm, and my dad said this:

"Mexicans are lazy."

He called the undocumented workers he employed on his 40 acres "wetbacks." Again and again, I heard from him that Mexicans always had to be told what to do. He and friends would say this when I was within earshot. I felt uncomfortable. Why would my father say these things about people like me?

But I remained silent.

It haunts me that I didn't speak up. Not then. Not ever. I still hear his words, 10 years since he passed away, and wonder whether he thought I was a lazy Mexican, too. I wish I could have found the courage to tell him that Mexicans are some of the hardest-working people I know; that those brown bodies who worked on his property made his lifestyle possible.

As I grew in experience and understanding, I was able to find language that described what he was doing: stereotyping, undermining, demonizing. I found my voice in the academy and in the movement for black and brown lives.

Still, the silence haunts me.

Channing Kennedy

My 20s were defined in no small part by a friendship with a guy I never met. For years, over email and chat, we shared everything with each other, and we made great jokes. Those jokes — made for each other only — were a foundational part of our relationship and our identities. No matter what happened, we could make each other laugh.

Channing Kennedy is an Oakland-based writer, performer, media producer and racial equity trainer. Courtesy of Channing Kennedy hide caption

It helped, also, that we were slackers with spare time, but eventually we both found callings. I started working in the social justice sector, and he gained recognition in the field of indie comics. I was proud of my new job and approached it seriously, if not gracefully. Before I took the job, I was the type of white dude who'd make casually racist comments in front of people I considered friends. Now, I had laid a new foundation for myself and was ready to undo the harm I'd done pre-wokeness.

And I was proud of him, too, if cautious. The indie comics scene is full of bravely offensive work: the power fantasies of straight white men with grievances against their nonexistent censors, put on defiant display. But he was my friend, and he wouldn't fall for that.

One day he emailed me a rough script to get my feedback. At my desk, on a break from deleting racist, threatening Facebook comments directed at my co-workers, I opened it up for a change of pace.

I got none. His script was a top-tier, irredeemable power fantasy — sex trafficking, disability jokes, gendered violence, every scene's background packed with commentary-devoid, racist caricatures. It also had a pop culture gag on top, to guarantee clicks.

I asked him why he'd written it. He said it felt "important." I suggested he shelve it. He suggested that that would be a form of censorship. And I realized this: My dear friend had created a racist power fantasy about dismembering women, and he considered it bravely offensive.

I could have said that there was nothing brave about catering to the established tastes of other straight white comics dudes. I could have dropped any number of half-understood factoids about structural racism, the finishing move of the recently woke. I could have just said the jokes were weak.

Instead, I became cruel to him, with a dedication I'd previously reserved for myself.

Over months, I redirected every bit of our old creativity. I goaded him into arguments I knew would leave him shaken and unable to work. I positioned myself as a surrogate parent (so I could tell myself I was still a concerned ally) then laughed at him. I got him to escalate. And, privately, I told myself it was me who was under attack, the one with the grievance, and I cried about how my friend was betraying me.

I wanted to erase him (I realized years later) not because his script offended me, but because it made me laugh. It was full of the sense of humor we'd spent years on — not the jokes verbatim, but the pacing, structure, reveals, go-to gags. It had my DNA and it was funny. I thought I had become a monster-slayer, but this comic was a monster with my hands and mouth.

After years as the best of friends and as the bitterest of exes, we finally had a chance to meet in person. We were little more than acquaintances with sunk costs at that point, but we met anyway. Maybe we both wanted forgiveness, or an apology, or to see if we still had some jokes. Instead, I lectured him about electoral politics and race in a bar and never smiled.

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Lead Essay—Institutional Racism, Whiteness, and the Role of Critical Bioethics

Christopher mayes.

Alfred Deakin Institute, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC Australia

Yin Paradies

Amanuel elias.

Institutional racism can be defined as differential access to power, resources, and opportunities by race that further entrenches privilege and oppression (Paradies 2016 ). Along with similar concepts such as systemic, structural, cultural, and societal racism, this form of racism profoundly shapes almost all aspects of our lives, including health and healthcare (Williams, Lawrence, and Davis 2019 ). Yet, racism more broadly and institutional racism in particular has been a neglected subject in bioethical discourse and scholarship (Danis, Wilson, and White 2016 ).

Bioethics has the potential to make important contributions to anti-racist programmes and strategies addressing institutional racism, yet as scholars have argued, the “whiteness” of bioethics undermines its capacity to attend to institutionalized forms of racism (Mayes 2020 ; Russell 2016 ; Danis, Wilson, and White 2016 ). Catherine Myser argues that bioethics depends on social and ethical theories that normalize whiteness and that “we risk repeatedly re-inscribing white privilege—white supremacy even—into the very theoretical structures and methods we create as tools to identify and manage ethical issues in biomedicine” (Myser 2003 , 2). As such, whiteness not only contributes to bioethical problems such as discriminatory patient care, but it shapes the reality of what is considered an ethical problem and the way bioethicists think ethically about such problems.

To address institutional racism, and the compounding problem of whiteness, we need a bioethics that is reflexive and critical of whiteness and its relationship with institutional racism. This symposium brings together scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines to examine how racism has been institutionalized in healthcare, how whiteness manifests in healthcare, and what bioethics can contribute towards anti-racism.

In October 2019, we invited researchers to consider the following questions:

• What are the historical and material processes that contributed to the institutionalization of racism in medicine and healthcare settings?
• What role can Indigenous knowledges play in de-centering whiteness and addressing racism?
• Does bioethics have a role in addressing racism or is it too entangled with histories of racism and whiteness?

The articles in this issue respond to these questions and articulate the affective dimension of race in clinical spaces, the economic and social costs of racialized health inequalities, the continuing effects of colonialism and complicity of bioethics in institutional racism.

The context in which this issue came together should also be noted. By early 2020, COVID-19 was quickly emerging as a global pandemic. In May 2020, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers re-ignited Black Lives Matter protests globally. Racism associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted minority groups worldwide, exacerbating pre-existing social, economic, and health vulnerabilities within an environment of populism, rampant neo-liberal capitalism, resurgent exclusionary ethno-nationalism, and retreating internationalism (Elias et al. 2020 ). These events prompted medical journals to publish editorials addressing the medical consequences of racism and highlighted the entanglement of medical institutions with racism (Hardeman, Medina, and Boyd 2020 ; Bond et al. 2020 ). Bioethicists also began to reflect on whether bioethics was complicit with institutional racism and racialized health disparities, in addition to questioning the silence of bioethics on issues of racial justice and re-thinking the role of bioethics in society (Mithani, Cooper, and Boyd 2020 ).

Many of the authors in this symposium were actively involved in organizing and responding to the racialized impacts of COVID-19. Some were also actively engaged in Black Lives Matter protests and events. We commend the authors for researching and writing under these conditions and extend our gratitude to the anonymous peer reviewers and editorial team at the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry who worked under these conditions.

Overview of the Issue

This symposium opens with an article from Yolonda Wilson arguing for the need to broaden the role and scope of bioethics to address contemptuous racism, which she defines as “disdain for the contemned patient that cannot be overcome” (Wilson 2021 , ¶6). Part of this broadening involves taking the social determinants of health seriously and recognizing the role racism plays in determining health outcomes. Wilson also argues that bioethics needs to be based on a commitment to justice that centres anti-racism.

Like Wilson’s attention to contempt, Belinda Borell critically examines the role of emotion in hospital spaces and the value placed on stoic ideals of individualism and controlled emotion. Borell argues the stoic ideal can make “hospitals emotionally unsafe spaces for Māori and other groups who place high importance in the collective sharing of emotion” (Borell 2021 , “Abstract”). Borell contends that bioethicists need to contribute to anti-racist interventions that “reclaim emotion as a measure of health” (Borell 2021 , “Conclusion”).

Bryan Mukandi’s paper draws on literature, art, and philosophy to reveal the function and effects of the racialized gaze in the clinical context. Mukandi outlines “a Canaanite reading” “to draw some of the lines that mark the Black person’s experience of the medical system” (Mukandi 2021 , ¶5). The lines that Mukandi tangles and disentangles serve to challenge bioethical thinking and writing, as well as critically analyses medical power and the way it denotes who is seen and who can speak in clinical spaces.

A series of articles expand the focus from the clinical to the institutional, constitutional, and legislative contexts. Amanuel Elias and Yin Paradies ( 2021 ) use a multidisciplinary approach to highlight the variety of costs associated with racism at the institutional level. They demonstrate that institutional racism imposes both social and economic costs that have significant ethical implications, such as avoidable disparities in healthcare, which to-date have beeng neglected by bioethicists.

Heather Came, Maria Baker, and Tim McCreanor ( 2021 ) provide a conceptual article that explores the Matike Mai Aotearoa report on constitutional transformation in New Zealand as a novel means to address structural racism within the health system. They argue that “constitutional transformation and decolonization are potentially powerful ethical sources of disruption to whiteness and structural racism,” which can help “to eliminate entrenched health disparities” (Came, Baker, and McCreanor 2021 , “Abstract”).

Thailia Anthony and Harry Blagg draw on Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical theory to argue that settler-colonial legal and medical institutions rendered First Nations peoples as “bare life”; that is, lives “unworthy of the standard of care we owe to human beings” (Anthony and Blagg 2021 , “Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: Settler Colonial Thanatopower”). These institutions operate with and produce a “regime of truth” that denigrate Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and their bodies. Anthony and Blagg argue for a decolonizing bioethics that rethinks the colonial truths about Indigenous people, which results in the health system’s discriminatory disregard for their lives.

Chelsea Bond, David Singh, and Claudette Tyson offer a powerful article that centre stories as told by Black people that “bring Black bodies into full focus and serve as testaments to the racial violence that is meted out in the absence of care” (Bond, Singh, and Tyson 2021 , “Introduction” ¶5). They highlight the failure of bioethics and the assumed beneficence of Indigenous health research agendas to take Indigenous sovereignty and the experiences of black bodies more seriously. They argue that “the extent to which a radical bioethics can be put to service in the name of more just outcomes is dependent upon bringing Black bodies and lives into full view” (Bond, Singh, and Tyson 2021 , “Background” ¶5).

Warwick Anderson offers an insightful set of reflections on his career as a medical anthropologist and historian. Anderson notes the way ethical regimes that govern research have shifted over time and have been shaped by a (white) bioethical judgement that has an imperative for “white universal” or global application of ethical protocols. Anderson contends that we need a more flexible understanding of ethics and argues “we should recognize others as ethical agents and authorities, not just as moral subjects. We need wide-ranging bioethical reasoning, but must it be a white mythology?” (Anderson 2021 , ¶10).

In his review essay of Catherine Mills’s Biopolitics ( 2016 ) and Camisha Russell’s Assisted Reproduction of Race ( 2016 ) Christopher Mayes shows how biopolitical theory and critical philosophy of race can be useful in looking at bioethical problems from a new perspective that opens up different kinds of analyses, particularly around historically embedded problems like institutional racism and the legacies of colonialism in healthcare (Mayes 2021 ).

The symposium concludes with a provocation by Camisha Russell ( 2021 ) that bioethicists need to help scientists think about race. We sought responses from Mandy Truong and Mienah Sharif ( 2021 ) who argued that bioethics and public health can collectively advance scientific efforts towards addressing racism; and from Tessa Moll ( 2021 ) who recounted issues of medical mistrust and enduring racism in South Africa.

In 2016, John Hoberman argued that “[b]ioethicists have not embraced the opportunity to create a sociologically and historically informed bioethics that might be applied to the lives of [racial minorities] and their unending health crisis” (Hoberman 2016 , 13). Indeed, the issue of institutional racism represents a long overdue topic of interest that requires attention within the discipline. We hope that this symposium may provide some impetus to explore the possibilities for bioethics to address institutional racism more broadly and to be more aware of, and attenuate, its influence within bioethical thinking and research. More profoundly, there is a need to engage with decolonial ways of thinking, doing, and being that de-centre and rupture the largely unexamined foundations of whiteness within bioethics.

Chris Mayes receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE170100550).

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Christopher Mayes, Email: [email protected] .

Yin Paradies, Email: [email protected] .

Amanuel Elias, Email: [email protected] .

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Popular on BASW

Professional Social Work Magazine (PSW)

‘it became clear that i have experienced racism’.

Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 4 October, 2023

A new writing competition run by BASW’s Black Person’s Symposium sought submissions from social workers on issues of race and colour. Winner of the inaugural competition was Tosin Sofowora, a MA social work student at the University of East Anglia. Her essay is reproduced in full and unedited below.

Reflective Essay on ‘Anti-racism in Social Work’ presentation by Pam Shodeinde 2021 

Written by Tosin Sofowora (MA Social Work student)

• Introduction

This essay is a reflection on the ‘Anti-racism in Social Work’ presentation by Pam Shodeinde. The presentation resonates with me both personally and in my practice as a social work student.  As an international student with a background in law, I have, in my practice of law, advocated for social justice and the promotion of the rights of people. However, issues surrounding racism became very apparent to me when I moved to England. In this reflective essay, I will write about how the presentation resonates with me and how it has informed my social work practice during my first-level placement.

My Experience  

Being the only international student in my class made me very conscious of my difference in so many ways. It also made me aware of the intersections existing even within black ethnic groups. For instance, although there were other black social work students in my class, my difference was exhibited in my accent (which is not ‘British’), my cultural background, my experience, beliefs and world view which have shaped my background. I never imagined that I would experience racism neither did I think I had experienced racism because I thought racism had to be some overt act of discrimination based on one’s difference. However, reflecting on the meaning of racism given in the presentation - “ beliefs, attitudes and behaviours, institutional and systemic approaches that belittle and devalues a group based on the colour of their skin ” makes it clear to me that I have (in fact) experienced racism. These racist acts are usually in the form of racial microaggressions, unconscious biases and stereotyping even if they come from a place of ignorance. For instance, a classmate, in a bid to sound or be empathetic, once expressed how difficult it must be for me to write in English since ‘ English is not my first Language’ . The misconceptions and unconscious biases I have experienced and witnessed have made me speak up to educate people about my culture.  I have had to enlighten my white colleagues and correct certain notions and stereotypes they had. However, just as the presenter noted, the responsibility of educating should not be on the Person of Colour (PoC). When considering the four dimensions of racism from my experience, interpersonal racism applies the most. 

My Social Work Placement Practice

My first-level placement was in a secondary school situated in an urban town. The school had about 950 students aged 11 years to 16 years who are predominately White-British with only about 5% of the students and staff from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups. The approximately 200 staff of the school were also predominantly White-British with only about 0.5% of them from BME groups. The underrepresentation of BME staff in the school was very concerning to me because there was a massive opening up of the town to people and professionals of colour. I identified that within the school there were various support groups for students of minority groups like young carers, LGBTQ+ etc but no support group for BME group students. Meanwhile, I interacted with some black students particularly those who had just migrated to England, and they shared their struggles with me. Interestingly, I could relate to some of the struggles they shared with me. I identified the need for a support group for the BME group student and with the approval of the school authority, I created a BME group where I facilitated sessions with the BME students.  The sessions aimed to acknowledge diversity and promote equality and inclusion within the school. It was also to create a safe place where the BME students could offload and get their wishes and feelings about their experiences in the school. During the session, we discussed issues around racism, bullying, prejudices, and biases against them and at the end of my placement, I presented a report to the school’s vice-principal and designated safeguarding officer where I summarised the voices of the BME students and made recommendations based on their wishes and feelings. The school promised to share my recommendations with the student council and consider the recommendations proffered.

The fact that the school lacked an awareness of the needs of the BME students or had no support group for BME students like other minority groups buttresses the school’s lack of awareness of cultural diversity and multicultural education. I also noticed that just like many social work organisations, there was no active stance on anti-racism. At best, the school operated a ‘non-racist’ posture without taking any practical steps to promote equality and inclusion.  The school’s level of commitment to anti-racism is evidenced only through an equality statement published on its website. While this is a step in the right direction, the aim of the school, as demonstrated in the presentation should be to publish an anti-racism action plan that should be binding on all students and staff of the school.

Finally, my experience during my first level placement reinforces the presenter’s research on the underrepresentation of PoC in the use of early help or Family support services and the overrepresentation of PoC in social services involvement or Tier Four services without family support. I observed that BME students in school hardly made use of the pastoral support nor were they known to the safeguarding officers. In other words, BME students were underrepresented in accessing support within the school. No doubt, this could be because of some reasons: (i) the low number of BME students in the school; (ii) fear of reporting safeguarding concerns; (iii) lack of awareness of the support available; and (iv) no need for support. 

This essay reflects on Pamela Shodeinde’s presentation titled ‘Anti-racism in Social Work’. The writer resonates with the topic in a personal and professional capacity and has shared how she has dealt with racism in her personal life and her social work practice as a student on placement. 

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398 Racism Essay Titles & Writing Examples

• 🔖 Secrets of Powerful Racism Essay

🏆 Best Racism Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

🥇 most interesting racism topics to write about, 🎓 simple & easy racism essay titles, ⚡ shocking essay topics on racism, 👍 good essay topics on racism, 💡 interesting essay titles about racism, ❓ racism questions for essay.

Looking for powerful racism essay topics? You will find them here! This list contains a great variety of titles for racism-themed papers. We’ve also included useful tips and plenty of racism essay examples to help you write an outstanding paper.

🔖 Secrets of a Powerful Racism Essay

Writing an essay on racism may seem easy at first. However, because racism is such a popular subject in social sciences, politics, and history, your piece needs to be truly powerful to receive a high mark. Here are the best tips to help make your racism essay stand out:

• Consider the historical causes of racism. Papers on racism often focus on discrimination and equality in modern society. Digging a bit deeper and highlighting the origins of racism will make your essay more impressive. Check academic resources on the subject to see how racism was connected to the slave trade, politics, and social development in Europe. Explore these ideas in your paper to make it more compelling!
• Show critical thinking. Racism essay titles often focus on the effects of racism on the population. To make your essay more powerful, you will need to discuss the things that are often left out. Think about why racial discrimination is still prevalent in modern society and who benefits from racist policies. This will show your tutor that you understand the topic in great depth.
• Look for examples of racism in art. One of the reasons as to why racism spread so quickly is because artists and authors supported the narratives of race. If you explore paintings by European artists created in 17-18 centuries, you will find that they often highlighted the differences between black and white people to make the former seem less human. In various literary works, such as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Shakespeare’s Othello, racism plays a vital role. In contrast, more recent works of art consider racism from a critical viewpoint. Examining how racism is reflected in the art will help you to earn an excellent mark for your analysis of the subject.
• Discuss the influences of racism. Of course, one of the key racism essay topics is the impact of racism on black populations in various countries. It is true that discrimination plays an essential role in the lives of black people, and reflecting this in your paper will help you to make it influential. You can discuss various themes here, from police brutality to healthcare access. Support your claims with high-quality data from official sources. If appropriate, you can also show how racism affected your life or the lives of your friends and loved ones.
• Show the correlation between racism and other social issues. Racism is connected to many different types of discrimination, including sexism and homophobia. This allows you to expand your paper by showing these links and explaining them. For instance, you could write an essay on racism and xenophobia, or find other topics that interest you.

Finally, structure your essay well. Write an outline first to determine the sequence of key points. You can check out a racism essay example on this website to see how other people structure their work.

Racism Thesis Statement, Main Body, & Conclusion

A typical essay should have an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion. Each paragraph of the main body should start with a topic sentence. Here’s what a topic sentence for racism-themed essay can look like:

Racism continues to be a pervasive issue in society, with deep-rooted prejudices and discrimination that impact individuals and communities across the globe.

Don’t forget to include a racism essay thesis statement at the end of your introduction to identify the focus of the paper! Check out these racism thesis statements for inspiration:

Racism is pervasive social problem that manifests in various forms, perpetuating systemic inequalities and marginalizing minority groups. Through an examination of racism’s history and its psychological impact on individuals, it becomes evident that this pressing issue demands collective action for meaningful change.

In your essay’s conclusion, you can simply paraphrase the thesis and add a couple of additional remarks.

These guidelines will help you to ensure that your work is truly outstanding and deserving of a great mark! Be sure to visit our website for more racism example essays, topics, and other useful materials.

These points will help you to ensure that your work on racism is truly influential and receives a great mark! Be sure to visit our website for example papers, essay titles, and other useful materials.

• The Challenges of Racism Influential for the Life of Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama However, Douglass became an influential anti-slavery and human rights activist because in the early childhood he learnt the power of education to fight inequality with the help of his literary and public speaking skills to […]
• Racism in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain The character of Pap is used to advance the theme of racism in the book. In the closing chapters of the book, Huck and Tom come to the realization that Jim is not property but […]
• Racism in the “Dutchman” by Amiri Baraka Generally, one is to keep in mind that Baraka is recognized to be one of the most important representatives of the black community, and the theme of racism in The Dutchman has, therefore, some historical […]
• Racism in Music: “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” The extreme popularity of the song among the black population can be explained with references to the fact that Armstrong changed the original lyrics to accentuate the social meaning of the composition and elaborated the […]
• Maya Angelou: Racism and Segregation in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” An example is that, as she fails to recite her poem in church, she notes that her dress is probably a handout from a white woman.
• Racial Discrimination in “A Raisin in the Sun” Racial discrimination is the main theme of the book, strongly reflecting the situation that prevailed during the 1950s in the United States, a time when the story’s Younger family lived in Chicago’s South Side ghetto.
• Racism and Motherhood Themes in Grimke’s “Rachel” In addition, her mother kept the cause of the deaths of Rachel’s father and brother secret. In essence, the play Rachel is educative and addresses some of the challenges people face in society.
• Racism in “The Black Table Is Still There” by Graham The black table, as he calls it, is a table, that was and still is, present in his school’s cafeteria, that accommodated the black students only depicting no more than racism in schools.
• The Anatomy of Scientific Racism: Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement Miller is of the view that it is the white scholars that are responsible for impeding the success of black athletes and performers.
• Imperialism and Racism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness He lauds “the book’s anti-imperialist theme…a stinging indictment of the callous and genocidal treatment of the Africans, and other nationals, at the hands of the British and the European imperial powers,” and also details the […]
• Racism and Discrimination as Social Constructs This is because the concept of race has a negative connotation in the society. For example in some societies, especially the western society; the concept of race implies un-fair treatment and discrimination of a particular […]
• Racial Discrimination Effects in Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody The vivid description of events from the beginning gives the reader a clear picture of a girl who was born in problems and in spite of her intelligence she always became a victim of circumstances.
• Contrast Between Tituba and John Indian and Countering Racism The declaration suggests that Conde believed the story of Tituba’s maltreatment needed to be told to expose the truth she had been denied due to her skin color and gender.
• Sexism, Racism, Ableism, Ageism, Classism The absurdity and blatant sexism of this issue made me angry at how the United States is unable to resolve and overcome the lack of gender equality.
• Cause and Effect of Racial Discrimination Irrespective of massive efforts to emphasize the role of diversity and equality in society, it is still impossible to state that the United States is free from racial discrimination.
• Racism and Gender in Beyoncé’s Lemonade The album Lemonade by an American singer Beyonce is one of the brightest examples when an artist portrays the elements of her culture in her music. Along with music videos, the album features a number […]
• Racism in Play “Othello” by William Shakespeare Since Othello is dark-skinned, the society is against his marriage to the daughter of the senator of Venice. In summary, the play Othello is captivating and presents racism as it was.
• Colonialism and Racism in Foe by J. M. Coetzee and Small Island by Andrea Levy This paper will try to expound on the relevance of real-life politics, of colonialism and racism, with regards to two popular works of fiction that used as themes or backdrop colonialism and racism.
• Racism in Shakespeare’s “Othello” and Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” The formalist analysis of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep repeats the same mistake, as it focuses on the plot devices and tropes presented in the story.
• Root Causes and Solutions to Racism Media is meant to eradicate racism and maintain unity among people but the case is different in some situations. Also, it is vital to make children understand nothing is amusing in the use of stereotypes […]
• The Problem of Racism in Brazilian Football Skidmore describes it as the relationships that could result into conflict and consciousness and determination of the people’s status in a community or a particular group. In football, racism damages pride of the players and […]
• Black or White Racism When one listens to the “Black or White” song, it is clear that Michael Jackson is not expecting his audience to be either white or black people to listen and learn the message he is […]
• Racial Discrimination Through the Cosmetics Industry The variety of preconceptions such as the hypersexuality of black women and the perception of their beauty as an unideal version of whites’ one also indicates racism.
• How Racism Makes Us Sick: Public Talk That Matters As a developing learner, I find this speech as a good example of how to raise such provocative themes as racism in the United States and not to be obsessed with prejudice.
• Does Racism and Discrimination Still Exist Today? This fact explains why racism and discrimination are inseparable in many parts of the globe. Sex discrimination continues to affect the goals and expectations of many women in our society.
• Racism and Intolerance: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: Crafting a Legacy by Messer elaborates on the legacy of the event and its repercussions and offers a profound analysis of the issue, which strengthened my focus of the research.
• The Roma Problems and the Causes of Racism 3 Is it any wonder that the insular, superstitious, monolithically Catholic or Orthodox communities of Europe and Eastern Europe, eager to recapture the civil order and peace of the golden age of the Roman Empire […]
• Racism: US v. The Amistad and Dred Scott v. Sandford In legal terms, the key difference between the two was that the Africans from Amistad were freeborn and enslaved in violation of the international agreements, while Dred Scott, despite his sojourn in Illinois, was born […]
• Racism Effects on the Premier League Players This work aims to provide a full picture of the real issue, and it is fundamental to understand the essence of the problem through the investigation of the players’ personal opinions and their experiences.
• Islam and Racism: Malcolm X’s Letter From Mecca Malcolm’s experience of the pilgrimage has made him believe that real unity and understanding actually can exist between people regardless of their country of birth, the color of skin, or the language they speak.
• Racism: De Brahm’s Map and the Casta Paintings However, De Brahm’s map is one of the most striking pieces of evidence of the conquest of space and the entrenchment of the idea of land and people as titular property.
• Racism and Inequality in Society The idea of race as a social construct is examined in the first episode of the documentary series “The Power of an Illusion”.
• Anti-Racism: Marginalization and Exclusion in Healthcare This essay examines the course’s impact and the concepts of marginalization and exclusion in healthcare. Marginalization is a concept that has profoundly influenced the understanding of race and racism in healthcare.
• The Issue of Racism in the United States The entire history of the United States is permeated with the evolution of the ideas of racism. Turning to history, we can see that the U.S.moved from slavery to using the Black population to solve […]
• History of Racial Discrimination in Haiti and America The choice of topic, racial discrimination in Haiti and America, was influenced by beliefs, values, and assumptions emphasizing the importance of equality and justice for all races.
• Racism and History of Discrimination As a result, advocacy should be aimed at creating new models in criminal justice that will ensure the protection of all minority groups and due process.
• Racial Discrimination and Color Blindness Of the three ideologies, racial harmony is considered the most appropriate for coping with problems of racism and racial injustice due to various reasons.
• Race, Racism, and Dangers of Race Thinking While it is true that some forms of race thinking can be used to justify and perpetuate racism, it is not necessarily the case that all forms of race thinking are inherently racist. Race thinking […]
• Racial Discrimination in American Literature In this way, the author denies the difference between people of color and whites and, therefore, the concept of racism in general.
• Racism in the US: Settler Imperialism They prove that colonial imperialism is a structure, not a contextual phenomenon and that, as such, it propagates the marginalization of native people.
• Why Empathy in Racism Should Be Avoided Empathy is the capacity to comprehend and experience the emotions and ideas of others. Moreover, empathic emotions are essential to social and interpersonal life since they allow individuals to adapt their cognitive processes to their […]
• Racial Discrimination in High Education This peer-reviewed scholar article was found in the JSTOR database through entering key words “race affirmative action” and marking the publication period between 2017 and 2022.
• Social Sciences: Racism Through Different Lenses A thorough analysis of diversity adds value to social interactions by informing human behavior through a deeper understanding of racism and its impacts on society. Using the humanities lens leads to a better understanding of […]
• Racial Discrimination in Dormitory Discrimination is considered to be behavior that restricts the rights and freedoms of the individual. Therefore, it is essential to investigate discrimination in dormitories and propose solutions to this problem, such as disseminating knowledge about […]
• Racism and Its Impact on Populations and Society The ignorance of many individuals about other people’s cultures and ethnicities is one of the causes of racism. One can examine the various components of society and how they relate to the issue of racism […]
• Institutionalized Racism and Individualistic Racism Excellent examples of individualistic racism include the belief in white supremacy, racial jokes, employment discrimination, and personal prejudices against black people. Overall, institutionalized and individualistic racism is a perversive issue that affects racial relations in […]
• Community Engagement with Racism To enhance the population’s degree of involvement in racism, the study calls for collaboration; this can be seen as a community effort to foster a sense of teamwork.
• Racism Detection with Implicit Association Test Racial bias is deeply rooted in human society and propelled by norms and stereotypic ideologies that lead to implicit bias and the unfair treatment of minority groups.
• Identity and Belonging: Racism and Ethnicity In the documentary Afro Germany – Being Black and German, several individuals share their stories of feeling mistreated and excluded because of their skin color.
• Policies to Eliminate Racial Disparities and Discrimination The solution to exclusion is to build social inclusion in the classroom and within the school by encouraging peer acceptance, cross-group friendships, and built-in prevention.
• Causes, Facilitators, and Solutions to Racism These theories suggest that racism serves a particular function in society, occurs due to the interactions of individuals from dominant groups, and results from a human culture of prejudice and discrimination.
• Racial Discrimination and Justice in Education An example is the complaint of the parents of one of the black students that, during the passage of civilizations, the Greeks, Romans, and Incas were discussed in the lessons, but nothing was said about […]
• Empathy and Racism in Stockett’s The Help and Li’s To Kill a Mockingbird To start with, the first approach to racism and promoting empathy is to confront prevalent discrimination and racism, which was often shown in The Help. Another solution to racism and the possibility of promoting empathy […]
• Is Troy Maxson (Wilson’s Fences) a Victim of Racism? As a black American, Troy’s childhood experiences have been passed on to his children, making him a victim of an oppressive culture. Therefore, this makes Troy a victim of racism and culture, contributing to his […]
• Racism in the Healthcare Sector In 2020, the cases and instances of racism in healthcare rose by 16% from 2018; there were notable instances of racism in various spheres of health. 9% of blacks have been protected from discrimination and […]
• Racism in Healthcare and Education The mission should emphasize that it promotes diversity and equality of all students and seeks to eliminate racial bias. It is necessary to modify the mission to include the concept of inclusiveness and equality.
• Institutional Racism in the Workplace Despite countless efforts to offer African-Americans the same rights and opportunities as Whites, the situation cannot be resolved due to the emergence of new factors and challenges.
• Racism in Education in the United States Such racial disparities in the educational workforce confirm the problem of structural racism and barrier to implementing diversity in higher medical education. Structural racism has a long history and continues to affect the growth of […]
• Rhetoric in Obama’s 2008 Speech on Racism When the audience became excited, it was Obama’s responsibility to convey his message in a more accessible form. To conclude, Obama’s speech in 2008 facilitated his election as the first African American President in history.
• How to Talk to Children About Racism The text begins by referring to recent events that were related to race-based discrimination and hatred, such as the murder of George Floyd and the protests dedicated to the matter.
• Care for Real: Racism and Food Insecurity Care for Real relies on the generosity of residents, donation campaigns, and business owners to collect and deliver these supplies. The research article discusses some of the factors that contribute to the creation of racism […]
• Racism Towards Just and Holistic Health Therefore, the critical content of the event was to determine the steps covered so far in the fight for racial equality in the provision of care and what can be done to improve the status […]
• Racism and Related Issues in Canadian Society The first issue is that it does not review the systemic and structural aspects of racism and how it affects various institutions and society as a whole.
• Systemic Racism and Discrimination Thus, exploring the concept of race from a sociological perspective emphasizes the initial aspect of inequality in the foundation of the concept and provides valuable insight into the reasons of racial discrimination in modern society.
• The Racism Problem and Its Relevance The images demonstrate how deeply racism is rooted in our society and the role the media plays in spreading and combating racism.
• Aspects of Socio-Economic Sides of Racism And the answer is given in Dorothy Brown’s article for CNN “Whites who escape the attention of the police benefit because of slavery’s long reach”.. This shows that the problem of racism is actual in […]
• Tackling Racism in the Workplace It means that reporting racism to HR does not have the expected positive effect on workplace relations, and employees may not feel secure to notify HR about the incidences of racism.
• Issue of Racism Around the World One of the instances of racism around the world is the manifestations of violence against indigenous women, which threatens the safety of this vulnerable group and should be mitigated.
• The Racism Problem and How to Fight It Racism is one of the common problems of the modern world which might not allow several individuals to feel a valuable part of society due to their skin color, gender, or social status.
• Environmental Racism: The Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan The situation is a manifestation of environmental racism and classism since most of the city’s population is people of color and poor. Thus, the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is a manifestation of environmental racism […]
• The “Racism and Discrimination” Documentary The documentary “Racism and Discrimination” is about an anti-racist teacher Jane Elliot who attempts to show the white people the feeling of discrimination. The central argument of the documentary is diversity training to seize the […]
• Abortion-Related Racial Discrimination in the US In spite of being a numerical minority, Black women in the U.S.resort to abortion services rather often compared to the White population.
• Social Problems Surrounding Racism, Prejudice and Discrimination This kind of discrimination makes the students lose their self-esteem and the traumas experienced affects the mental health of these students in the long term.
• The Unethical Practice of Racism in a Doctor’s Case The involvement of Barrett in the protest is both unethical for the university’s image and immoral for the community. However, the school would likely face tougher court fines and a direct order to reinstate Barrett’s […]
• The Problem of Racism in America One explanation of racism by feminist thinkers is that racism is a manifestation of the agency and power of people of a particular racial identity over others.
• Racism: “The Sum of Us” Article by McGhee The economic analysis and sociological findings in America have drawn a detailed picture of the cost of racism in America and how to overcome it together.
• Contemporary Sociological Theories and American Racism The central intention of this theory paper is to apply modern theoretical concepts from the humanities discipline of sociology to the topic of racism in the United States.
• A Cause-and-Effect Analysis of Racism and Discrimination As a result, it is vital to conduct a cause-and-effect analysis to determine the key immediate and hidden causes of racism to be able to address them in a proper manner.
• Institutional Racism Through the Lenses of Housing Policy While not being allowed to buy property because of the racial covenants, the discriminated people had to house in other areas.
• Role of Racism in Contemporary US Public Opinion This source is useful because it defines racism, describes its forms, and presents the survey results about the prevalence of five types of racial bias.
• The Mutation of Racism into New Subtle Forms The trend reflects the ability of racism to respond to the rising sensitivity of the people and the widespread rejection of prejudice.
• Racism: Healthcare Crisis and the Nurses Role The diminished admittance to mind is because of the impacts of fundamental bigotry, going from doubt of the medical care framework to coordinate racial segregation by medical care suppliers.
• Origins of Racial Discrimination Despite such limitations as statistical data being left out, I will use this article to support the historical evaluation of racism in the United States and add ineffective policing to the origins of racism.
• Beverly Greene Life and View of Racism The plot of the biography, identified and formed by the Ackerman Institute for the Family in the life of the heroine, consists of dynamics, personality development and its patterns.
• Historical Racism in South Africa and the US One of the major differences between the US and South Africa is the fact that in the case of the former, an African American minority was brought to the continent to serve the White majority.
• Capitalism and Racism in Past and Present Racism includes social and economic inequalities due to racial identity and is represented through dispossession, colonialism, and slavery in the past and lynching, criminalization, and incarceration in the present.
• Minstrels’ Influence on the Spread of Racism The negative caricatures and disturbing artifacts developed to portray Black people within the museum were crucial in raising awareness on the existence of racism.
• How Parents of Color Transcend Nightmare of Racism Even after President Abraham Lincoln outlawed enslavement and won the American Civil War in 1965, prejudice toward black people remained engrained in both the northern and southern cultural structures of the United States.
• A Problem of Racial Discrimination in the Modern World This minor case suggests the greater problem that is unjustly treating people in the context of the criminal justice system. In the book, Stevenson writes about groups of people who are vulnerable to being victimized […]
• Beverly Tatum’s Monolog About Injustice of Racism Furthermore, the author’s point is to define the state of discrimination in the country and the world nowadays and explore what steps need to be taken to develop identity.
• Issue of Institutional Racism Systemic and structural racisms are a form of prejudice that is prevalent and deeply ingrained in structures, legislation, documented or unpublished guidelines, and entrenched customs and rituals.
• Racism in America Today: Problems of Today Even though racism and practices of racial discrimination had been banned in the 1960s after the mass protests and the changes to the laws that banned racial discrimination institutionally.
• Evidence of Existence of Modern Racism It would be wrong to claim that currently, the prevalence and extent of manifestations of racism are at the same level as in the middle of the last century.
• Culture Play in Prejudices, Stereotyping, and Racism However, cognitive and social aspects are significant dimensions that determine in-group members and the constituents of a threat in a global religious view hence the relationship between religion and prejudices.
• Latin-African Philosophical Wars on Racism in US Hooker juxtaposition Vasconcelos’ ‘Cosmic Race’ theory to Douglass’s account of ethnicity-based segregation in the U.S.as a way of showing the similarities between the racial versions of the two Americas.
• Confronting Stereotypes, Racism and Microaggression Stereotypes are established thought forms rooted in the minds of particular groups of people, in the social environment, and in the perception of other nations.
• Racial Discrimination in Dallas-Fort Worth Region Thus, there is a historical imbalance in the political representation of racial minorities in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Nonetheless, the Black population is reported to thrive best in the suburban areas of DFW, where this […]
• Healthcare Call to Action: Racism in Medicine To start the fight, it is necessary to identify the main manifestations of discrimination in health care, the reasons for the emergence of the location of social superiority and discrimination, and the scale.
• White Counselors Broaching Race and Racism Study The essence of the verbal behavior of the consultants is the ways of their reaction in the process of interaction with the client – the basic skills of counseling, accessibly including race and racism topics.
• British Colonial Racism for Aboriginal Australians Precisely this colonial racism and genocide can be considered to be the cruelest in the history of the world and may have influenced the ideas and plans of Adolf Hitler, who got inspired by the […]
• American Culture and Its Racism Roots However, the discrimination seems not to be justified since many shreds of evidence show that many Americans are thought to be immigrants to the continent, with the first immigrants being the Spanish and the French.
• The Black People: Sexuality and Racial Discrimination Nevertheless, the author does not provide practical solutions to the issue of racism and discrimination of the LGBTQ community. The purpose of this interview is to demonstrate the author’s attitude to the sexuality of black […]
• Racism Evolution: Experience of African Diaspora As a result, distinct foundations fostered the necessity of inequality to establish effectiveness of inferiority and superiority complexes. To determine the effect of slavery and racism to modern society.
• The Problem of Explicit Racism The murder of George Floyd was one example of the police’s brutal racism, and there are many more cases of horrible discrimination that takes people’s lives.
• Racial Discrimination and Residential Segregation Despite the end of segregation policies and the passing of Fair Housing laws and numerous subsidy measures, people of color cannot access wealthy areas, facing unofficial exclusion into poorer parts of the city.
• Significance of Perceived Racism:Ethnic Group Disparities in Health Coates points out that a sign of the gulf between blacks and whites manifests in the context where there is expectation for him to enlighten his opinions while in mind the essential indication lies in […]
• Racism as Origin of Enslavement Some ideas are mentioned in the video, for example, the enslavement of Black people and their children. The most shocking fact mentioned by the speaker of the video is that children of enslaved people were […]
• Colorblind Racism and Its Minimization Colorblind racism is a practice that people use to defend themselves against accusations of racism and deny the significance of the problem.
• Legacy of Racism Against African American Women and Men This was a movie called The Birth of A Nation which supposedly tells ‘the American history.’ The white men who praised the Ku Klux Klan were shown as superior and intelligent.
• The Bill H.R.666 Anti-Racism in Public Health Act of 2021 That is why the given paper will identify a current and health-related bill and comment on it. This information demonstrates that it is not reasonable to oppose passing the bill under consideration.
• Summary of the Issue About Racism In schools in the United States, with the advent of the new president, a critical racial theory began to be taught.
• How the Prison Industrial Complex Perpetuate Racism In the United States, the system is a normalization of various dynamics, such as historical, cultural, and interpersonal, that routinely benefit the whites while causing negative impacts for the people of color.
• Battling Racism in the Modern World Racism and racial discrimination undermine the foundations of the dignity of an individual, as they aim to divide the human family, to which all peoples and people belong, into different categories, marking some of them […]
• Indian Youth Against Racism: Photo Analysis The main cause of racism within American societies is the high superiority complex possessed by the white individuals living with the Asian American in the society.
• Racism: Do We Need More Stringent Laws? The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice is worried that national origin discrimination in the U.S.may go undetected because victims of prejudice are unaware of their legal rights or are hesitant to complain […]
• Problem of Racism in Schools Overview Racism should be discouraged by all means and the government should do its best to educate citizens on the importance of unity and the disadvantages of racism.
• US Immigration Policy and Its Correlation to Structural Racism That may create breaches in the immigration policy and cause social instability that could endanger the status of immigrants and even negatively affect the lives of the nationals.
• America: Racism, Terrorism, and Ethno-Culturalism The myth of the frontier is one of the strongest and long-lived myths of America that animates the imagination of the Americans even to this day.
• Racism in Healthcare and Its Implications Generally, the presence of racism in the medical sphere affects not only the relationship between the a professional and their patient, but also the quality of care people receive and the severity of their outcomes.
• Issue of Racism in Healthcare The theory would question whether racism in healthcare is ethical and whether it facilitates the provision of care in a manner that is centered on values such as compassion, fairness, and integrity.
• Racism and Statistical & Pure Discrimination For employers, the residents of the inner city are likely to be associated with criminal activity, as well as a lack of education and skills.
• Solving Racial Discrimination in the US: The Best Strategies The Hollywood representation of a black woman is often a magical hero who “is a virtuous black character who serves to better the lives of white people…and asks nothing for herself”.
• Popular Music at the Times of Racism and Segregation The following work will compare and contrast the compositions of Louis Armstrong and Scott Joplin and examine the impact of racism on popular music.
• Temporary Aid Program: Racism in Child Welfare The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in the context of child welfare disparities.
• The Problem of Racism in the Police Force Atiba argues that the problem of racism, especially in the police force, is solvable. In most of the cases, it is often interpreted as lack of love and compassion towards people of the other race.
• Western Scientific Approach as a Cause of Racism This paper will highlight the main methods of refuting the works of racist anthropologists and how they influenced the emergence of stereotypes about people of color.
• How Does Racism Affect Health? Many people of color experience internalized racism, which can lead to anxiety and depression that can be the cause of physical issues.
• Citizen: An American Lyric and Systemic Racism In essence, the primary objective of the author is to trigger the readers’ thoughts towards the devastating racism situation in America and the world in general.
• The Reflection of Twain’s Views on Racism in Huck Finn One of the most problematic aspects in the novel that potentially can make readers think that Twain’s attitude toward slavery and racism is not laudable is the excessive usage of the n-word by all sorts […]
• Black as a Label: Racial Discrimination People are so used to identifying African Americans as black that they refuse to accept the possibility of the artificiality of labeling.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Racial Discrimination The author argues that despite increasing the overall prosperity of the local communities, the policies and projects of the Tennessee Valley Authority did not address the well-being of the white population and Afro-American citizens equally.
• Flint Water Crisis: Environmental Racism and Racial Capitalism The Flint crisis is a result of the neoliberal approach of the local state as opposed to the typical factors of environmental injustice; a polluter or a reckless emitter cutting costs. The two main factors […]
• Cancer Alley and Environmental Racism One of the sources under study is valuable, as it examines the current situation of the coronavirus and the impact of pollution on human health.
• Cancer Alley and Environmental Racism in the US Bentlyewski and Juhn argue that the environmental racism in the country has been the result of aligning the public environmental policy and industrial activity to benefit the white majority and, at the same time, shifting […]
• American Healthcare in the Context of Racism According to the researchers, the fundamental issue of racism in health care is the practitioners and public health representatives’ lack of desire to recognize the health specifics of racial and ethnic minorities, which results in […]
• Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
• Contribution of Racism to Economic Recession Due to COVID-19 The historical injustice accounts for unequal employment opportunities and the economic profile of the minority groups. Therefore, economic recovery for the older Latinos and Blacks is limited due to the lack of flexible occupational benefits.
• What Stories Can Teach Us About Racism On top of this before the establishment of the school there was no public education for the Negro children and this made it more difficult for the children to access education just like the other […]
• Racism in Canadian Medical System The difference in the treatment of indigenous and non-indigenous individuals in Canada is a result of racism in the medical facility.
• Profit and Racism in the Prisons of the United States As an argument for the work of prisoners, the prison of Angola makes the argument that work is a way of rehabilitation for the prisoner.
• Rio Tinto: Case Study About Racism and Discrimination The repercussions of this situation for the preservation of cultural heritage may be considerable, as the expert community was denied an opportunity to research the artifacts.
• Critical Social Problems Research: Racism and Racial Domination According to his opinion, which is proven today by many examples including the attitude of the authorities, people of color are treated as if they are worthless and not destined to achieve success.
• Criminal Justice: Racial Prejudice and Racial Discrimination Souryal takes the reader through the racial prejudice and racial discrimination issues ranging from the temperament of racism, the fundamental premise of unfairness, the racial biasness and the causes of racial unfairness to ethical practices […]
• Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch Discrimination Racism Lawsuit: An Analysis The case was filed in June 2003, and the claim was that this company has grossly violated the rights of the citizens as provided for in the constitution of the country.
• The History of Racial Discrimination and Its Effects on the American Races The saddest part of it all is that our Indian American brothers are discussed in public and used as examples in a manner that makes it seem like they exist only as a mere caricature […]
• Racial Discrimination in the US Criminal Justice System This report argues that when one studies the proportion of blacks in the Cincinnati community and the number of times that they have been stopped for traffic violations, one finds that there is a large […]
• Policing in America: The Issue of Violence and Racism While the former proposition has various negative aspects to be considered, the latter appears to be the appropriate reaction to the challenges posed for the United States’ society in 2020.
• Institutional and Interpersonal Racism, White Privilege One should be aware of the fact that issues such as institutional and interpersonal racism, privilege, power, and bias are complex problems, which need a thorough analysis and consideration of all the facts.
• Anti-Racism in Shakespeare’s Othello For Shakespeare, Brabantio’s views are representative of the racial prejudice of the society in general, rather than of his personal feelings towards the protagonist. On the other hand, Othello’s story is cohesive and believable; he […]
• Racism and Sexism as a Threat Women suffer from sexism, people of color are affected by racism, and women of color are victims of both phenomena. Prejudices spread in families, communities, and are difficult to break down as they become part […]
• The Development of a Measure to Assess Symbolic Racism The originators of the concept applied it only to the African-American race, while other scientists engaged in researching and applying the construct of symbolic racism to other races and cultures.
• Racism and Tokenism in Bon Appetit: Leadership and Ethical Perspective Leadership is defined as a set of actions and beliefs of a manager who directs and controls the followers to achieve a common goal.
• From “Scientific” Racism to Local Histories of Lynching Both chapters serve as a premise to the following arguments in the book, arguing that White power is still dominant in the contemporary world, and give context to the broader scale of oppression worldwide.
• Subjective Assumptions and Medicine: Racism The given supposition demonstrates that Allen believed in the superiority of white southerners over Black Americans because the latter ones were made responsible for the deteriorated health of the former.
• Racism Experiences in the Workplace in the UK This research paper provides the background of racism in the UK, particularly in the area of employment. The UK struggles against racial discrimination and paves the way to equity and inclusion in the area of […]
• The History of Immigration to the United States and the Nature of Racism The development of the idea of race and ethnicity along with the idea of racial antagonism has two main stages in the history of the United States.
• Race and Racism in the USA: The Origins and the Future In conclusion, the author suggests that the possible solution to the problem of racial conflicts is the amalgamation of different races and ethnics.
• Racially Insensitive Name-Calling in Classroom Probably, the teacher had to initiate the lesson devoted to the topic of racial discrimination and to think over all the stages of the discussion, to organize it in a polite and friendly manner.
• Environmental Racism in the United States: Concept, Solution to the Problem With regards to this definition, a row of issues connected to social justice and the equality in the rights of people which is firmly established in the Constitution of the United States are to be […]
• Protecting George Wallace’s Organized Racism Instead of claiming that segregation was a necessary evil or that it benefited the minorities, he claimed that it is the only way to protect the freedom of the white people.
• How Can the World Unite to Fight Racism?
• Racism in America and Its Literature
• Race, Class and Gender. Racism on Practice
• Racism: Term Definition and History of Display of Racism Remarks
• Institutional Discrimination, Prejudice and Racism
• Racism in Contemporary North America
• Racial Discrimination of Women in Modern Community
• Racial and Gender Discrimination in the Workplace and Housing
• “Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison: Themes of Racism and Unequal Opportunity
• Racism Without Racists in Patriarchal Society
• Racism in Employment Practices
• Racism: Definition and Consequences
• The Problem of Racism in Canada
• Exploring and Comparing Racism and Ethnocentrism
• Racism Cannot Be Unlearned Through Education
• Racism Among Students of Swinburne University
• Racism in Movies: Stereotypes and Prejudices
• Racism Concepts: Influence of Politics
• Racism: Resolving by Means of Education
• The Issues of Racial Discrimination in US
• Facing Racism: A Short Story
• White Supremacy as an Extreme Racism Group
• American Racism: So Why Isn’t Obama White?
• Rasism in “No Telephone to Heaven” by Michelle Cliff
• Modern Racism in American Society
• Obama, the First US Black President: Is Racism Over?
• Philosophy of Human Conduct: Institutional Racism
• Racism and Civil Rights: Then and Now
• Primary School Teaching: Challenging Racism
• Racism and White Supremacism in the American Government
• Racialism From a Biological Point of View
• Social Construction of Race and Racism
• Racism Issues: Looking and Stereotype
• Hurricane Katrine Exposed Racism in New Orleans
• AIDS in a Different Culture Review: Cultural Differences, Prejudice, and Racism
• Anti-Racism Policy Statement in Australian Schools
• Racism, Minorities and Majorities Analysis
• Racism and Ethnicity in Latin America
• Problem of Racism to Native Americans in Sport
• Racial Discrimination in Song ‘Strange Fruit’
• Social Psychology: Racism in Jury Behaviour
• Racism in the United States of the 21st Century
• “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” by C. West
• Appiah’s Ideas of Racism, Equality, and Justice
• Racism in Media: Positive and Negative Impact
• Racism: World Politicians Discussion
• Racism: Once Overt, but Now Covert
• Racism: “Get Out” Film and “Screams on Screens” Article
• Environmental Racism and Indigenous Knowledge
• Racism Effects on Criminal Justice System
• Everyday Racism in C. Rankine’s “Citizen” Novel
• Scientific Racism: the Eugenics of Social Darwinism
• Racism in the “Do the Right Thing” Movie
• Racism in African American Studies and History
• Racism vs. “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself”
• Racism in Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders
• Racism in Australian Football League Sporting Clubs
• Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism
• Racial Discrimination in Australian Society
• Racial Discrimination Forms Against Afro-Americas
• Pressing Issues in Femininity: Gender and Racism
• The Origins of Racial Hierarchy in Colonial America
• Racial Discrimination in Employment
• Racism in The Paper Menagerie Essay
• Racial Bias and Discrimination in Law Enforcement
• White Privilege and Racism in American Society
• Racism, Privilege and Stereotyping Concepts
• Racism in Rankine’s “Citizen” and Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad”
• Kansas State University Community’s Racism Issues
• Racism Against Roma and Afro-American People
• Impact of Racism as a Social Determinant of Health
• Racism in the United States: Before and After World War II
• Baldwin’s and Coates’ Anti-Racism Communication
• The Problem of Racism and Injustice
• Racism as the Epitome of Moral Bankruptcy
• Racism in Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal”
• Racism and Prejudice: “Gone With the Wind“ and “The Help”
• Racism in “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
• Racism and Society: Different Perspectives
• Racism in Trump’s and Clinton’s Campaigns
• Obama’s Presidency and Racism in the USA
• Colin Powell and the Fight Against Structural Racism
• Racial Discrimination in Employment in the US
• Racism in Media and Objective Coverage
• Racism in “Passing” and “Uncle Tom’s Children” Novels
• Racism in “To Kill Mocking Bird” by Harper Lee
• Racism Elimination and Sociological Strategies
• Racism History in No Name on the Street by Baldwin
• “Nigger” as a Racially Directed Slur
• Social and Cultural Diversity and Racism
• Does Unconscious Racism Exist by Lincoln Quillian
• Racism and Discrimination in Religion Context
• Racism in Film “Savages” by Oliver Stone
• Racism: Theoretical Perspectives and Research Methods
• Racism in the Setting the Rising Sun Postcard
• The Effects of Racism on Learners Academic Outcomes
• Darwin’s and Galton’s Scientific Racism
• The Voting Rights Act and Racial Discrimination
• English Literature Impact on Racism Among Africans
• Jerrell Shofner’s Views on the Racial Discrimination
• Asian American Communities and Racism in the USA
• Racial Discrimination and Its Effects on Employees
• Racism in the USA: Causes, Consequences and Solutions
• Racial Discrimination in Social Institutions
• King’s and Obama’s Views on Racism in America
• Racism Manifests in the Contemporary Society
• Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery
• Racism as a Reality of Modern American Society
• Ethnicity and Issues of Racism in the United States
• Rodney King’s Case of Racial Discrimination
• Educational Attainment and Racial Discrimination
• Racial Discrimination Against Asian American Students
• Racism Issue and Solutions
• Intersectionality and Gendered Racism
• Racism and Education in the United States
• Racism in Michigan University
• Racial Discrimination at the Workplace
• Racism and Sexism Ethical Problem
• Conflict and Racial Hostility
• Racism as a Case of Ignorance and Prejudice
• Racism and Segregation in American History
• Humanism, Racism, and Speciesism
• Racism in American Schools
• Racist America: Current Realities and Future Prospects
• Racism: Impact on Minorities in American Society
• Racism Against Native Americans
• Obama’s First Election and Racism
• Adolf Hitler: From Patriotism to Racism
• “Globalization and the Unleashing of New Racism: an Introduction” by Macedo and Gounari
• Problems of Environmental Racism
• How Obama’s First Election Has Been Affected by Racism?
• How Different Young Australians Experience Racism?
• Racial Discrimination in Organizations
• Understanding Race and Racism
• In Australia, Are Cultural Rights a Form of Racism?
• Racism, Stigma, and Eexism – Sociology
• Racism and Ethnicity in United States
• ‘Animal Rights’ Activists and Racism
• The Racial Discrimination Among Employers
• Psychological Impact: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Racism
• Multicultural Psychology: Cultural Identity and Racism
• How Fake News Use Satire as a Medium to Address Issues on Racism?
• Young Australians and Racism
• Relationship Between Institutionalized Racism and Marxism
• Democratic Racism in Canada
• Social Construction of “Race” and “Racism” and Its Relationship to Democratic Racism in Canada
• Ethnicity: Oppression and Racism
• Racism in Family Therapy by Laszloffy and Hardy
• Racial Discrimination in the US
• The ‘Peopling’ Process of Australia Since 1788 With Influence of Racism
• Is Racism and Anti-Semitism Still a Problem in the United States?
• Globalization and Racism
• Current Day Racism vs. Traditional Day Racism
• Society Moral Standards: Racism and Its Harmful Effects
• Racism in Native Son
• The Issue of Racial Segregation in the United States
• Racism and Male Dominance in Education
• Comparison of Racism in the United States and South Africa
• English Racism During World Cup
• The Historical Roots of Racism in Australia
• Racism Is Not All About Individual Attitude
• Discrimination, Prejudice and Racism in the United States
• Racial or Ethnical Discrimination
• The Role of Racism in American Art During the 1930s and 1940s
• Promotion of Racism in US Through Sports
• Racism in U.S. Criminal Justice System
• Racism, Colonialism and the Emergence of Third World
• Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
• Why the Philosophy of King is More Effective in Fighting Racism than Malcolm’s?
• Racism and Discrimination: White Privilege
• Racism and Segregation in the United States
• The Root Cause of Racism and Ethnic Stratification in the US
• Racism and Anti-Semitism in the United States: The Issues Which Are Yet to Be Solved
• Racism in the USA
• Evidence of Racism in the American Schools
• Analysis on Religion, Racism and Family Conflicts
• Racism in American Schools: A Critical Look at the Modern School Mini-Society
• The Concept of Racism
• The Theme of Liberation From Racism in Two Plays by August Wilson
• The Policy Status Quo to Prevent Racism in American Schools
• Racial Profiling: Discrimination the People of Color
• Racism as a Central Factor in Representing Asian American History
• The Problem of Racism and Injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Reducing Racism in the University of Alberta and University of York
• Achebe’s Views on Racism
• Racial Stereotypes in Movie Industry
• Racism in the American Nation
• The Civil Rights Movement: Ending Racial Discrimination and Segregation in America
• Institutionalized Racism and Sexism
• The Problem of Global Racism in Modern World
• Comparison of Ethnicity and Racism in “Country Lovers” and “The Welcome Table”
• Racial Discrimination at the World Bank
• Australian Identities: Indigenous and Multicultural
• Racial Discrimination in America
• Institutionalized Racism From John Brown Raid to Jim Crow Laws
• Racism in America After the Civil War up to 1900
• Have You Experienced Racism in Korea?
• Racism in the “Crash”
• Contemporary Racism in Australia: the Experience of Aborigines
• Racism By Thomas Jackson
• Addressing the Racism in Society
• Racism in the Penitentiary
• Different Challenges of Racial Discrimination
• Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Attitude to Racism in Literature
• American Indians: Racial Segregation and Discrimination
• Why it is Safe to Say that Northrop’s Book Exposes the Roots of Racism in America
• Psychological Development: Racism, Affirmative Action and Health Care
• How Has Racism Changed Throughout History, Starting From the Emancipation Proclamation to Today?
• Do Racism and Discrimination Still Exist Today?
• How Did Ideas of Black Stereotypes and Racism Become Embedded in American Culture?
• How Does Racism Affect the Way of a Caste Like System?
• What Connection Is Between Globalization and Racism?
• Why Do Exist Discrimination and Racism?
• How Do Educational Institutions Perpetuate Racism, Sexism, and Patriarchy?
• How Do Racism and Exclusion Shape the Social Geography of Race and Ethnicity?
• What Ways Does Cultural Racism Manifest Itself?
• How the Media Maintains Racism?
• Why Slavery and Racism Issues Still Affect America Today?
• How Racism and Ethnicity Affect the Sector of Education?
• How Has Racism Impacted Immigrant Families and Children?
• When Did Racism Begin?
• Racism: Why It’s Bad for Society and the Greater Health Issues It Creates?
• How Have Evolutionary Ideas Shaped Racism?
• Why Is Racism Bad for Society?
• What Effect Does Color-Blind Racism Have On Minorities in Society Today?
• How Does Sports Helped Diminish Racism?
• How Does Both Individual and Institutional Racism Impact Service Provision and the Experiences of People Receiving Services?
• Did Slavery Cause Racism?
• When You Think About Racism, What Do You Think About?
• What Does Racism Mean?
• Does Affirmative Action Solve Racism?
• Did Racism Precede Slavery?
• How Does Racism Affect Society?
• Does Racism Still Occur Today and Why People Can’t a Change?
• Between Compassion and Racism: How the Biopolitics of Neoliberal Welfare Turns Citizens Into Affective ‘Idiots’?
• Does Racism Play a Role in Health Inequities?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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IvyPanda . 2024. "398 Racism Essay Titles & Writing Examples." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/racism-essay-examples/.

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IvyPanda . "398 Racism Essay Titles & Writing Examples." March 1, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/racism-essay-examples/.

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