Racism. Introduction to social science. Assignment.

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Racism
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Racism
Typically, racism appears to characterize current world state of affairs. In politics, populist leaders are on constant rise everywhere. In economy, outdated isolationist calls are surfacing in order to protect national products and secure national economies against external market chaos and distortions. In social life, more and more people are living in enclaves defined by race, social class, education, profession and zip code. In culture, gaps are widening across generational, racial and educational lines. The outdated, or what most believed is outdated, prejudiced discourse against minorities is now hitting back home hard and deep. Indeed, not only differences are no longer welcome but, sadly, differences are now a major cause for conflict, not dialogue, misunderstanding, not diversity, and, not least, a cause for distancing, not for deeper self-understanding.
Generally, racism is understood along racial lines almost exclusively. For millennia, human race has experienced one form or another of so called “racism”. That is, an arbitrary distinction between different human races based, primarily, on skin color. The emergence of racism as a device for colonial control, particularly during discovery and great expansion period as of 1500s and on in Europe, is, needless to say, well documented and still experienced, albeit in subtler ways in 21st century. This conventional racism, so to speak, is one increasingly invoked for all reasons: political, economic, social and cultural. True, lynching, i.e. physical lynching of blacks and lesser races, is no longer practiced. However, modern dynamics of racism are making conventional racism more benign in comparison. Specifically, modern racism could be such that a social structure is designed to “shut out” lesser races from a range of opportunities necessary for social mobility. In contrast to conventional racism, where explicit statements supported by
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clear public policies denied specific races certain political/economic/social rights (e.g. voting, education, healthcare, etc), modern racism has developed a system of social control whereby laws, designed and put into effect by a dominant race, deny lesser races, in an apparently very formal and legal way, all means to social mobility and, ultimately, equality. This shift in characterizing and practicing racism is, indeed, substantial and, more important, indicative of how racism could still be practiced, albeit in much subtler – and, for that matter, damaging – ways.
Then again, racism is a much more complex concept. In addition to historical challenges of social injustices, informed by racial bias and compounded by colonial subjugation, racism is an inheritable state of affairs. By “inheritable” is meant, racism is a concept which, granted arising from a specific set of events in a given period and/or place, could be passed on not only geographically, according to racial affiliation or similarities, but also across generations. That is, whilst racism could be – assuming all, or most, involved parties are willing – minimized, let alone e...