Times have changed…..or have they?
Everyone knows about the racial prejudice that African Americans faced in our country for such a long time, but are people aware that racial prejudice still exists today. Today most people think that the society in which we live in is so past racism and has learned from the past, but unfortunately prejudice is still seen today. Perhaps it is not seen in such a public atmosphere as it once had been, which is why the misconception of it not existing anymore could be believed, but don’t be fooled, its still out there, perhaps just more in disguise. As Foner says, “in the new atmosphere of public tolerance, there are more subtle ways of casting aspersion on racial and ethnic groups. Instead of eregious epthets or slurs, ‘code words’ are now used to refer to negative characteristics of minorities.” It’s no longer acceptable to say negative things about a race in public, but has that really eliminated the problem of racism all together? Yes these statements aren’t being said aloud, but what’d stoping them from being said at all, it’s not like someone is stopping you from saying them in your own private home environment. So we must think to ourselves, has the problem of racism really gone away, or does it still exist just in a hidden manner?
Recently while reading the New York Times an op-ed article written by Bob Herbert addresses this issue of racism still existing. Here’s a link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/opinion/22herbert.html?scp=9&sq=oped%20herbert&st=cse
It’s interesting to read about each of the minority groups and how they each face racism. The three minority groups mentioned are Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Something that really stood out to me was how in each one of these groups people didn’t want to be confused with a particular group. For example, with the Blacks the West Indians were very cautious when introducing themselves to people to remember to make sure to mention that they are West Indian in order to ensure that they are not confused with African Americans. To them, they feel as though being classified as a black is something that lowers their social status and therefore would rather not be associated with the identity. We see this similarly with the Brazilians being categorized as Hispanics. This fact stood out a lot to me because when I think of Brazilians I would never think of them as Hispanics, so to learn that they are actually under the racial category of Hispanic was rather shocking to me. But just as the West Indians, Brazilians did not want to be associated with a label that would harm their social status. This same notion is also seen with the Asians who do not want to associate themselves with the other minority groups, rather they view themselves as superior to blacks and Hispanics. These tensions among the actual minority groups themselves reminded me of the movie Do the Right Thing, that we watched for the Arts in New York City Seminar last semester. It’s interesting to read about things that occurred in the past thinking that things have improved so much now, but then read about cases in which we see the same things that were occurring in the past still taking place even now.
