Racism

3 Pages 861 Words

Racism (according to Webster’s Dictionary) is an excessive and irrational belief in or advocacy of the superiority of a given group of people or nation on racial grounds alone. Racism in this country has been a problem since the beginning of civilization in America. Although not all people have a prejudice to others it still has affected our culture and equality dramatically. Frantz Fanon, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Langston Hughes are some of the people that spoke and fought for the “All men are created equal” vision.
Unity is the pillar and foundation of our struggle to end the misery, which is caused by the oppression which, is our greatest enemy. This repression and the violence it creates can not be ended if we fight and attack each other. Racism bloats and disfigures the face of the culture that practices it. Racism belongs in a characteristic whole: that of the shameless exploitation of one group of men by another that has reached a higher stage of technical development that legitimizes racism. The habit of considering racism as a mental quirk, as a psychological flaw must be abandoned.
Fanon argues that racism is a singularly important consequence of colonial rule, a result of the “shameless exploitation” of one group by another. Fanon speaks with the understanding that racism generates harmful psychological constructs that both blind the black man to his subjection to a universalized white norm and alienate his consciousness. A racist culture prohibits psychological health in the black man. Fanon states that “If culture is the combination of motor and mental behavior patterns arising from the encounters of man with nature and with his fellow man, it can be said that racism is indeed a cultural element. There are thus cultures with racism and cultures without racism”.
In his Letter from Birmingham City Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. stated that “ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice ever...