Imagine if the human race did not have the notion in their heads to think differently of people because of their skin color or where they are from. If everyone were accepting of every person, then we wouldn’t have the problem of racial discrimination. This notion is passed down between generations, and between people, through ideas and thoughts and “talk”. When we are younger we don’t think of these things, until our parents tell us we can’t hang out with some one because of their race or the way they look.
As Foner states, “race is a changeable perception” and “people act as though it is real and thus it has become real in its consequences” (142). The concept that race is based on social and cultural contexts, how we interpret and view each aspect of it, determines who we see as inferior or superior. It is interesting how these interpretations have changed over time, how quickly it comes about and how it is determined who is more inferior than another. At first it all depended on what part of Europe you came from. You may have been “white”, but you were “not- yet-white-ethnics”. And yet Italian immigrants seemed to blend in after a while moving from an inferior to superior race. Even Jews did the same, not as much as the Italians, but they still are superior today at least. Today immigrants are coming to the United States from countries other than Europe, and skin tone plays a huge role in how they are perceived in society. Why is this? The simplest reason being, they don’t look like everyone else. This sets them apart from the start, where as the first European immigrants had to worry more about the language they spoke, and what jobs they took. Immigrants today have this aspect piled upon everything else.
I think this perception that we have of people has to do with the fact that they are new and the idea of who was here first. Once new people started coming in, they were “invading” the land. They are the most different so people used them as scapegoats, which caused even more discrimination towards them. Or if one person did something wrong then all of their people would be looked at in a negative way. And at first I thought that with the new immigrant wave, the discrimination of the older immigrants died down. I thought that one day if a new wave of immigrants comes into the country from somewhere else, the discrimination of the newer immigrants would die down as well. However, Asians are still discriminated against and so are African Americans (though they are different because they were brought over as slaves – from the beginning an inferior race). So I couldn’t say that this would change over time, unless the perceptions that people have change. I think people are just scared by things they aren’t used to. It’s all in our heads, and unless that changes I don’t think anything will.
