Hate is one of the many emotions everyone feels in their lives. From getting pissed off at a driver that cuts you off on the freeway to hating a person based on their skin color, it comes in many forms and affects every person on this planet.
According to How Stuff Works, our capability to have this intense dislike for people/things/events date back as far as 150,000 years. This ability to feel this way might have been an evolutionary adaption to better humanity’s chances of survival and because of this adaption, it made it easier for our early ancestors to hunt for food and protect their group. Even though we’ve come a long way from hunting our own food, we still feel that seething negativity today.
In modern society, we hate because it is a way to protect the things that matter to us the most; our family, friends, reputation, etc. When someone or something threatens any of those things we value most, we immediately have the reaction to dislike said person/thing.
So in this day and age, why is racism still a problem?
It’s still a problem because people are scared for their safety. With recent events like the bombings in Brussels, the shootings in Paris, and the countless terrorists attacks all over the world, people have the overwhelming need to blame a group for why all of these events are happening. And to some people, they blame it on any practicing Muslim.
It’s clear that most Muslims don’t condone the recent attacks that have been plaguing the news and detach themselves from the ones that orchestrate them, yet society clumps them all in the same group “just to make sure” there are no terrorists coming into their country.
Another group that is unjustly profiled are African Americans. It seems like there’s a new hashtag for someone that was a victim of police brutality. From Trayvone Martin to Sandra Bland, black people are subjected to unjust police brutality more than any other persons of color in America.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
“black people make up 37.7 percent of the total inmate population and Asian and Native American inmates make up a total of 3.5 percent of the total population combined.”
So why are they seen as a race that is more dangerous than any other race?
One of the many reasons why is because of the history America has had with black people. When the first African slaves arrived on Dutch ships in 1619, it started the beginning of a divide that almost separated a nation. Even though slavery was a key factor in in the development of our nation, it also created an societal divide to generations of African Americans.
The effects can still be felt in today’s society by the media and popular culture still portray’s African Americans as a race that is the root of most criminal activities.
Even though society knows that racism is wrong, it has been engrained in our culture to the point where we don’t realize that we’re being actually being racist in subtle ways.
When we witness a traffic blunder or someone driving in an inappropriate way, we automatically assume it’s someone from Asian decent. And according to Donald Trump, whenever he sees Mexicans, he automatically assumes that they’re criminals, rapists and drug dealers and but he tries to cover up his blatant racism with by stating that, “some are good.”
The reason why we have these assumptions of so many races is mostly because it saves us time from trying to figure out how the person is really like by pigeonholing them in to a description that describes them based on their race.
If we want racism to end, we have to acknowledge that we are all inadvertently racist.
Whenever we catch ourselves being racist, we need to remind ourselves that what we’re doing is wrong and try our best to not revert back to that kind of mindset. If we see an act of racism taking place, we need to defend and protect each other and not stand in the sidelines hoping someone else will help out. If we collectively work on bettering ourselves, we have a better chance of ending racism.
