Болградський навчально-виховний комплекс

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HISTORY OF RACISM IN AMERICA

Кваліфікаційна робота

З англійської мови

Учня 8-В класу

Каспіровського Кирила

Керівник:А.Т.Николаева

Болград 2019

History of racism in America………………………………………………… 3

 2

Causes and Effects…………………………………………………………… 5

The Future……………………………………………………………………. 6
Hate crimes…………………………………………………………………... 6

Hateful views………………………………………………………………… 7

Alleviation…………………………………………………………………… 8
Atlantic slave trade…………………………………………………………... 9
1980s to present……………………………………………………………. . . 10
Anti-Asian legislation in the late 1800s……………………………………… 12
Hangouts…………………………………………………………………….... 14
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History  of  Racism  in  America

 
 
Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results
in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.
The use of the term "racism" does not easily fall under a single definition.The era
of civil rights movement mainly started in the 1960s.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s
powerful “I Have a Dream” speech  at the March on Washington in 1963 is what I
believe too be one of the greatest speeches of all time, and one of the greatest
advances for African American people.  While this peaceful act was taking place,
the Birmingham Police Commissioner made a bold decision and used powerful fire
hoses and released police dogs to attack black civil rights activists.   Although the
civil rights activists made great pushes towards freedom, the greatest problem
which remains in our great nation is that of Racism and/or Racial Profiling.  Over
the years, racism has been a growing problem in all parts of the United States. 
Back in the 60s there were such problems as segregated schools, which meant only
kids of certain color could attend a certain school.  Also blacks had to drink from
different bubblers and white kids did in some public places.  There were many
things and rules that were terribly wrong at this time.  The most  legislative action. 
There has been a significant amount of coverage taking place in the media.  This is
referred to as media blackface.  As far as the police go, the racial profiling is pretty
direct.  The individual officers act on racial stereotypes against racial minorities,
specifically African Americans.  Also this goes on in the media, when a news
channel might exaggerate or over-represent the number of black people when the
subject at hand has something to do with some type of political punishment.  The
media tends to do this sometimes and many people get upset over this time of
racial profiling.
        
Some examples of issues that are used to define blackface are the black drug
abuser or drug dealer, a black criminal, blacks on welfare, and the black
affirmative action recipient.  The significance of this racial profiling, is that
whatever the issue may be - crime, welfare, or drug abuse; the people that are
subjected to this believe that these types of issues are associated with African-
Americans only.  Some people are so naive that they say  things such as the trait of
blackness being associated with crime is an unfortunate reality that we face in our
society today.  I believe that idea is a complete misinterpretation.  It goes to show
that there are people in today’s world that have greater problems than racism
itself.  There have been many recent studies and stories in the mainstream news
that are good examples of racial profiling.
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If one was too look up the definition of Civil Rights Movement in the United
States, they would see that it is a political, legal, and social struggle by black
Americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality.  Even if the
person understands the definition, there is no way you can sum up what is really is
in one sentence.  Black Americans have been fighting for decades to gain there
freedom and receive their equal rights.  
        
Most people tend to say that the whole movement began with the Montgomery Bus
Boycott in 1955, and ended with the Voting Rights Act in 1965.  But some say it
has not yet ended.  One thing is for sure, there have been many important groups of
people and individuals that have influenced the march toward freedom and are
important figures in United States history. 
        
Segregation was an attempt that whites mad in the south to separate the races in
every aspect of life and to prove that they were superior to blacks.  It became very
common in most of the southern states.  Reconstruction governments passes laws
though opening up economic and political opportunities for blacks.  Blacks had
separate schools, parks, transportation, and restaurants.  If this wasn’t already bad
enough, they were poorly funded and had much worse condition to that of whites. 
Blacks were also denied their voting rights.  In protest of the segregation, blacks
attempted to create national organizations.  In 1890 the National Afro-American
League was formed; in 1905 the Niagara Movement; and in 1909 the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  One of the early
leaders of the NAACP was W. E. B. DuBois, who started in 1910 by making
powerful arguments in favor of protesting segregation.  He was the editor of
NAACP magazine.  Also, in 1910 the National Urban League was formed to help
blacks make the transition to urban and industrial life.
        
What is commonly referred to as the Sit-Ins is when in February of 1960, four
black college students at North Carolina A&T began to protest racial
segregation in restaurants by sitting in lunch counters that were primarily for
whites and waited to be served.  This triggered more sit-ins in the following days
and weeks in North Carolina.  This showed people that young blacks were
determined to reject the idea of segregation and would do so openly.  After the sit-
ins, members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee participated in
the Freedom Rides of 1961.  The Freedom Riders were both black and white
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people that traveled around the South in buses to test how effective the Supreme
Courts decision was in 1960.  The decision declared that segregation was illegal in
bus stations that were open to interstate travel.  When some buses reached
Alabama, they were met by police forces and the buses were burnt and the riders
were beaten severely.  The violence that occurred attracted nation-wide attention to
the Freedom Riders.  President John F. Kennedy’s administration proceeded to
protect the Freedom Riders.  The Freedom Riders then continued on to Jackson,
Mississippi where they were stopped, arrested, and thrown into jail, ending the
protest.  The importance of these Freedom Riders, although they were not very
successful in changing a lot of segregation, they showed just how hard people were
willing to work and how far they would go to reach their goals.
        
The March on Washington was arguably the most important event in the Civil
Rights Movement.  The national civil rights leadership decided that they were
going to keep pressure on the Kennedy administration and Congress to pass the
civil rights legislation proposed by Kennedy.  They planned the March on
Washington for August of 1963.  Members of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the
Urban League, and the SNCC would would all be present.  Martin Luther King
delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in front of the stature of Abraham
Lincoln.  It is what I believe to be the most influential and important speech that
any man has made to this day.  Martin Luther King would later be assassinated.
 
Causes and Effects
        
In this particular issue, the causes and effects are directly connected. Whether it be
the police forces or media that is portraying the racial profiling or racism, it is seen
by eyewitnesses and viewed on television and read in books.  There have been
many recent studies and stories in the mainstream news that are good examples of
the effects that racism/racial profiling have on today’s society. The Physician
Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNDP) conducted a study in March of
1999.  The PLNDP is a high-profile group of doctors composed of high ranked
health officials from the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.  They
concluded that drug treatment was an effective health measure.  The other section
of the study showed , that despite the popular perception, drug addicts are not
primarily black or members of minority racial groups.  The study also discovered
that more than half of those people which have admitted to using heroin in the last
year were white and over 70 percent of monthly cocaine users are white.  Maybe
the most dominant statistic is the fact that almost 80 percent of regular marijuana
users are white, only one in six being African-American.  
        
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Yet another study was performed back in 1997 by Press and Politics, an academic
journal.  The study was labeled “Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary
World of Local News.”  It was done  by UCLA professors Franklin Gilliam and
Shanto Iyengar.  They found that a local television station in Los Angeles,
California, they did coverage of crime which included two important messages:
“Crime in violent and criminals are nonwhite.”  What the truth of the matter was,
was that television viewers were so used to seeing black crime suspects on the
local news that even when the race of a suspect was not revealed, the viewer
tended to remember seeing a black suspect.  This I believe is real bad.  People
should not have this view on African-American people.
 
The Future
        
After doing a great amount of research on the issue, I have learned that African-
Americans have done everything possible to gain their freedom, and some people
in today’s society still refuse to give that to them.  Which is why I cannot make as
bold prediction as to what will go on in the future.  One thing that makes me
absolutely sick is the Klu Klux Klan.  The KKK uses violence and threats against
anyone who is suspected of favoring desegregation or black civil rights.  This is
my main concern.  Hate groups are terribly wrong.  Hopefully, someday the people
of this nation will realize that all men are created equal and not only African-
Americans, but all ethnic groups deserve to have all of their rights and deserve to
be treated equal.
 

Contemporary issues
Hate crimes

In the United States, most crimes that target victims on the basis of their race or
ethnicity are considered hate crimes. (For federal law purposes, crimes targeting
Hispanics because of their identity are considered hate crimes based on ethnicity.)
Leading forms of bias cited in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
Program, based on law enforcement agency filings are: anti-black, anti-Jewish,
anti-white, anti-homosexual, and anti-Hispanic bias in that order in both 2004 and
2005. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, whites, blacks, and Hispanics
had similar rates of violent hate crime victimization between 2007 and 2011.
However, from 2011 to 2012, violent hate crimes against Hispanic people
increased by 300%.When considering all hate crimes, and not just violent ones,
African Americans are far more likely to be victims than other racial groups.
The New Century Foundation, a white nationalist organization founded by Jared
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Taylor, argues that blacks are more likely than whites to commit hate crimes, and
that FBI figures inflate the number of hate crimes committed by whites by
counting Hispanics as "white". Other analysts are sharply critical of the NCF's
findings, referring to the mainstream criminological view that "Racial and ethnic
data must be treated with caution. Existing research on crime has generally shown
that racial or ethnic identity is not predictive of criminal behavior with data which
has been controlled for social and economic factors." NCF's methodology and
statistics are further sharply criticized as flawed and deceptive by anti-racist
activists Tim Wise and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The first post-Jim Crow
era hate crime to make sensational media attention was the murder of Vincent
Chin, an Asian American of Chinese descent in 1982. He was attacked by two
white assailants who were recently laid off from a Detroit area auto factory job and
blamed the Japanese for their individual unemployment. Chin was not of Japanese
descent, but the assailants testified at the criminal court case that he "looked like a
Jap", an ethnic slur used to describe Japanese and other Asians, and that they were
angry enough to beat him to death.
Hateful views

Continuing antisemitism in the United States has remained an issue as the

2011 Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America, released by the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL), has found that the recent world economic
recession increased some antisemitic viewpoints among Americans. Most people
express pro-Jewish sentiments, with 64% of those surveyed agreeing that Jews
have contributed much to U.S. social culture. Yet the polling found that 19% of
Americans answered "probably true" to the antisemitic canard that "Jews have too
much control/influence on Wall Street" while 15% concurred with the related
statement that Jews seem "more willing to use shady practices" in business.
Reflecting on the lingering antisemitism of about one in five Americans, Abraham
H. Foxman, ADL national director, has argued, "It is disturbing that with all of the
strides we have made in becoming a more tolerant society, anti-Semitic beliefs
continue to hold a vice-grip on a small but not insubstantial segment of the
American public."
An ABC News report in 2007 recounted that past ABC polls across several years
have tended to find that "six percent have self-reported prejudice against Jews, 27
percent against Muslims, 25 percent against Arabs," and "one in 10 concedes
harboring at least some such feelings" against Hispanic Americans. The report also
remarked that a full 34% of Americans reported "some racist feelings" in general
as a self-description.[4] An Associated Press and Yahoo News survey of 2,227 adult
Americans in 2008 found that 10% of white respondents stated that "a lot" of
 8

discrimination against African-Americans exists while 45% answered "some"

compared to 57% of black respondents answering that "a lot" exists. In the same
poll, more whites applied positive attributes to black Americans than negative
ones, with blacks describing whites even more highly, but a significant minority of
whites still called their fellow Americans "irresponsible", "lazy", or other such
things. In 2008, Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman remarked
that, in the modern U.S., racism and prejudices are "a deep challenge, and it's one
that Americans in general, and for that matter, political scientists, just haven't been
ready to acknowledge fully." In 2017, citizens gathered in the college community
of Charlottesville, Virginia to attend the Unite the Right rally. One woman was
killed and dozens of other people were injured when a white supremacist drove his
car into a group of counter-protesters. Vice President Mike Pence condemned the
violence stating, "We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white
supremacists, neo-Nazis or the KKK. These dangerous fringe groups have no place
in American public life and in the American debate and we condemn them in the
strongest possible terms."

Alleviation
There is a wide plethora of societal and political suggestions to alleviate the effects
of continued discrimination in the United States. For example, within universities,
it has been suggested that a type of committee could respond to non-sanctionable
behavior.
It is also argued that there is a need for "white students and faculty to reformulate
white-awareness toward a more secure identity that is not threatened by black
cultural institutions and that can recognize the racial non-neutrality of the
institutions whites dominate" (Brown, 334). Paired with this effort, Brown
encourages the increase in minority faculty members, so the embedded white
normative experience begins to fragment.
Within media, it is found that racial cues prime racial stereotypic thought. Thus, it
is argued that "stereotype inconsistent cues might lead to more intentioned thought,
thereby suppressing racial priming effects." Social psychologists, such as Jennifer
Eberhardt, have done work that indicates such priming effects subconsciously help
determine attitudes and behavior toward individuals regardless of intentions. These
results have been incorporated into training, for example, in some police
departments.
It has been argued that more evidence-based guidance from psychologists and
sociologists is needed to learn what is effective in alleviating racism. Such
evidence-based approaches can reveal, for example, the many psychological biases
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to which humans are subject, such as ingroup bias and the fundamental attribution

error, which can underlie racist attitudes.
Psychologist Stuart Vyse has argued that argument, ideas, and facts will not mend
divisions but that there is evidence, such as that provided by the Robbers Cave
Experiment, that seeking shared goals can help alleviate racism.
 
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade had an economic foundation. The dominant ideology

among the European elite who structured national policy throughout the age of the
Atlantic slave trade was mercantilism, the belief that national policy should be
centered around amassing military power and economic wealth. Colonies were
sources of mineral wealth and crops, to be used to the colonizing country's
advantage.Using Europeans for labor in the colonies proved unsustainably
expensive, as well as harmful to the domestic labor supply of the colonizing
countries. Instead, the colonies imported African slaves, who were "available in
large numbers at prices that made plantation agriculture in the Americas
profitable".
It is also argued that along with the economic motives underlying slavery in the
Americas, European world schemas played a large role in the enslavement of
Africans. According to this view, the European in-group for humane behavior
included the sub-continent, while African and American Indian cultures had a
more localized definition of "an insider". While neither schema has inherent
superiority, the technological advantage of Europeans became a resource to
disseminate the conviction that underscored their schemas, that non-Europeans
could be enslaved. With the capability to spread their schematic representation of
the world, Europeans could impose a social contract, morally permitting three
centuries of African slavery. While the disintegration of this social contract by the
eighteenth century led to abolitionism, it is argued that the removal of barriers to
"insider status" is a very slow process, uncompleted even today (2017).
As a result of the above, the Atlantic slave trade prospered. According to estimates
in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, between 1626 and 1860 more than
470,000 slaves were forcibly transported from Africa to what is now the United
States.Prior to the Civil War, eight serving presidents owned slaves, a practice
protected by the U.S. Constitution. Providing wealth for the white elite,
approximately one Southern family in four held slaves prior to the Civil War.
According to the 1860 U.S. census, there were about 385,000 slave owners out of a
white population in the slave states of approximately 7 million.

1980s to present
 10

From 1981 to 1997, the United States Department of Agriculture discriminated

against tens of thousands of black American farmers, denying loans that were
provided to white farmers in similar circumstances. The discrimination was the
subject of the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit brought by members of the National
Black Farmers Association, which resulted in two settlement agreements of
$1.25 billion in 1999 and of $1.15 billion in 2009.While substantial gains were
made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public
employment, black poverty and lack of education continued in the context of de-
industrialization.Despite gains made after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing,
some violence against black churches has also continued – 145 fires were set to
churches around the South in the 1990s and a mass shooting in Charleston was
committed in 2015 at the historic Mother Emanuel Church.
During the 1980s and '90s a number of riots occurred that were related to
longstanding racial tensions between police and minority communities. The 1980
Miami riots were catalyzed by the killing of an African-American motorist by four
white Miami-Dade Police officers. They were subsequently acquitted on charges of
manslaughter and evidence tampering. Similarly, the six-day 1992 Los Angeles
riots erupted after the acquittal of four white LAPD officers who had been filmed
beating Rodney King, an African-American motorist. Khalil Gibran Muhammad,
the Director of the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture has identified more than 100 instances of mass racial violence in the
United States since 1935 and has noted that almost every instance was precipitated
by a police incident.
Politically, the "winner-take-all" structure that applies to 48 out of 50 states in
the electoral college benefits white representation, as no state has voters of color as
the majority of the electorate. This has been described as structural bias and often
leads voters of color to feel politically alienated, and therefore not to vote. The lack
of representation in Congress has also led to lower voter turnout. As of 2016,
African Americans only made up 8.7% of Congress, and Latinos 7%.
Many cite the United States presidential election, 2008 as a step forward in race
relations: white Americans played a role in electing Barack Obama, the country's
first black president. In fact, Obama received a greater percentage of the white vote
(43%),than did the previous Democratic candidate, John Kerry (41%). Racial
divisions persisted throughout the election; wide margins of Black voters gave
Obama an edge during the presidential primary, where 8 out of 10 African-
Americans voted for him in the primaries, and an MSNBC poll found that race was
a key factor in whether a candidate was perceived as being ready for office. In
South Carolina, for instance,"Whites were far likelier to name Clinton than Obama
as being most qualified to be commander in chief, likeliest to unite the country and
most apt to capture the White House in November. Blacks named Obama over
Clinton by even stronger margins—two- and three-to one—in all three areas."
 11

Sociologist Russ Long stated in 2013 that there is now a more subtle racism that
associates a specific race with a specific characteristic. In a 1993 study conducted
by Katz and Braly, it was presented that "blacks and whites hold a variety of
stereotypes towards each other, often negative".The Katz and Braley study also
found that African-Americans and whites view the traits that they identify each
other with as threatening, interracial communication between the two is likely to
be "hesitant, reserved, and concealing". Interracial communication is guided by
stereotypes; stereotypes are transferred into personality and character traits which
then have an effect on communication. Multiple factors go into how stereotypes
are established, such as age and the setting in which they are being applied. For
example, in a study done by the Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media in 2014,
89% of black women in movies are shown swearing and exhibiting offensive
behavior while only 17% of white women are portrayed in this manner.
In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old teenager was fatally shot by George
Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer,
claimed that Martin was being suspicious and called the Sanford police to
report.Between ending his call with police and their arrival, Zimmerman fatally
shot Martin outside of the townhouse he was staying at. National outrage occurred
when Zimmerman was not charged in the shooting. The national coverage of the
incident forced Sandford leaders to arrest Zimmerman. He was charged with
second-degree murder, but was found not guilty. Public outcry occurred following
his release and created an abundance of mistrust between minorities and
the Sanford police.
In 2014, following the Shooting of Michael Brown, the Ferguson unrest took
place. In the years following, mass media has followed shootings against other
innocent black men and women, often with video evidence from body-
worn cameras which places officers in real time. The U.S. Justice
department launched the National Center for Building Community Trust and
Justice in 2014.This program is center on collected data concerning racial profiling
to create a change in the criminal justice program concerning implicit and explicit
racial bias towards African-Americans as well as other minorities.
It is reported that in 2015, there were 315,254 African-Americans deaths. Only a
few gain national media attention. For example, amongst 15 high-profile cases of
an African-American being shot, only 1 officer faces prison time.
In August 2017, the United Nations human rights experts issued a warning to the
US government to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and
crimes. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued the
rare warning following the violence break out in Charlottesville during a rally that
was organized by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in July

Anti-Asian legislation in the late 1800s

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The 1879 Constitution of the State of California prohibited employment of Chinese

people by state and local governments, and by businesses incorporated in
California. Also, the 1879 California constitution delegated power to local
governments of California to remove Chinese people from within their
borders.The Chinese Exclusion Actbanning immigration of Chinese people was
enacted on the national level in 1882, while the immigration of people from Asian
countries in addition to China was banned by the sweeping Immigration Act of
1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals,
people with intellectual disability, and people with an anarchistworldview. The
Chinese Exclusion Act was the first time that a law was passed to exclude a major
ethnic group from the nation.
Several massacres of Chinese people, including the The Rock Springs Chinese
Massacre of 1885 and the Hells Canyon massacre of 1887 further exemplified deep
American racist animus against Chinese people.
Local discriminatory laws were also enacted to stifle Chinese business and job
opportunities; for example, in the 1886 Supreme Court case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins,
a San Francisco city ordinance requiring permits for laundries (which were mostly
Chinese-owned) was struck down, as it was evident the law solely targeted
Chinese Americans. When the law was in effect, the city issued permits to virtually
all non-Chinese permit applicants, while only granting one permit out of two
hundred applications from Chinese laundry owners. When the Chinese laundries
continued to operate, the city tried to fine the owners. In 1913, California, home to
many Chinese immigrants, enacted an Alien Land Law, which significantly
restricted land ownership by Asian immigrants, and extended it in 1920, ultimately
banning virtually all land ownership by Asians.
Japanese immigrants, who has been unaffected by the Chinese Exclusion Act,
began in 1907 to enter the United States in large numbes, filling jobs that were
once filled by Chinese workers. This influx also led to discrimination
and President Theodore Roosevelt restricted Japanese immigration. Later, Japanese
immigration was closed when Japan entered into the Gentlemen's Agreement of
1907 to stop issuing passports to Japanese workers intending to move to the U.S.
During World War II, the Republic of China was an ally of the United States, and
the federal government praised the resistance of the Chinese against Japan in
the Second Sino-Japanese War, attempting to reduce anti-Chinese sentiment. In
1943, the Magnuson Act was passed by Congress, repealing the Chinese Exclusion
Act and reopening Chinese immigration. However, at the time, the United States
was actively fighting the Empire of Japan, which was a member of the Axis
powers. Anti-Japanese racism, which spiked after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was
tacitly encouraged by the government, which used slurs such as "Jap" in
propaganda posters and even interned Japanese Americans, citing possible security
threats. Soldiers in the Pacific theater often dehumanized their enemy, leading
to American mutilation of Japanese war dead.The racist nature of this
dehumanization is apparent in the inconsistency of the treatment of corpses in the
 13

Pacific and the European theaters. Apparently some soldiers mailed home Japanese
skulls as souvenirs, while none mailed home German or Italian skulls. This
prejudice continued for some time after the war, and Asian racism affected U.S.
policy in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, even though Asians were on both sides of
those wars as well as World War II. Some historians have alleged that a climate of
racism, with unofficial rules like the "mere gook rule",allowed for a pattern in
which South Vietnamese civilians were treated as less than human and war crimes
became common.
Prior to 1965, Indian immigration to the U.S. was small and isolated, with fewer
than 50,000 Indian immigrants in the country. The Bellingham riots in Bellingham,
Washington, on September 5, 1907, epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for
Indians and Hindus. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and
culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized, with U.S. officials
casting them as "Hindu menaces" and pushing for Western imperial expansion
abroad.In the 1923 case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court
ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially
ineligible for naturalized citizenship. The Court argued that the racial difference
between Indians and whites was so great that the "great body of our people" would
reject assimilation with Indians. It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a
quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens.
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 dramatically opened entry to the
U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups,
and as a result would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix
in the U.S. On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen
Klineberg stated the law "declared that Northern Europeans are a superior
subspecies of the white race."In 1990, Asian immigration was encouraged when
nonimmigrant temporary working visas were given to help with the shortage of
skilled labor within the United States.
In modern times, Asians have been perceived as a "model minority". They are
categorized as more educated and successful, and are stereotyped as intelligent and
hard-working, but socially inept. Asians may experience expectations of natural
intelligence and excellence from whites as well as other minorities.This has led to
discrimination in the workplace, as Asian Americans may face unreasonable
expectations because of this stereotype. According to the Journal of Organizational
Behavior, in 2000, out of 1,218 adult Asian Americans, 92 percent of those who
experienced personal discrimination believed that the unfair treatment was due to
their ethnicity.
These stereotypes can also obstruct career paths; because Asians are seen as better
skilled in engineering, computing, and mathematics, they are often encouraged to
pursue technical careers. They are also discouraged from pursuing non-technical
occupations or executive occupations requiring more social interaction, since
Asians are perceived to have poor social skills. In the 2000 study, forty percent of
those surveyed who experienced discrimination believed that they had lost hiring
 14

or promotion opportunities. In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission reported that Asians make up 10 percent of professional jobs, while
3.7 percent of them held executive, senior level, or manager positions.
Other forms of discrimination against Asian Americans include racial profiling and
hate crimes. The FBI noted that in 2015, 3.2 percent of all hate crimes involved
anti-Asian bias. In 2016, the Seattle Police Department reported that there was a 40
percent increase in race-based crimes against Asian-Americans, both criminal and
non-criminal.
Research shows that discrimination has led to more use of informal mental health
services by Asian Americans. Asian Americans who feel discriminated against
also tend to smoke more.

Hangouts

Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another, which often results
in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.
The use of the term "racism" does not easily fall under a single definition.
The ideology underlying racism often includes the idea that humans can be
subdivided into distinct groups that are different due to their social behavior and
their innate capacities, as well as the idea that they can be ranked as inferior or
superior. Historical examples of institutional racism include the Holocaust,
the apartheidregime in South Africa, slavery and segregation in the United States,
and slavery in Latin America. Racism was also an aspect of the social organization
of many colonial states and empires.
While the concepts of race and ethnicity are considered to be separate in
contemporary social science, the two terms have a long history of equivalence in
both popular usage and older social science literature. "Ethnicity" is often used in a
sense close to one traditionally attributed to "race": the division of human groups
based on qualities assumed to be essential or innate to the group (e.g.
shared ancestry or shared behavior). Therefore, racism and racial
discrimination are often used to describe discrimination on an ethnic or cultural
basis, independent of whether these differences are described as racial. According
to a United Nations convention on racial discrimination, there is no distinction
between the terms "racial" and "ethnic" discrimination. The UN convention further
concludes that superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false,
morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous. It also declared that there is
no justification for racial discrimination, anywhere, in theory or in practice.
Racist ideology can manifest in many aspects of social life. Racism can be present
in social actions, practices, or political systems (e.g., apartheid) that support the
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expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices or laws. Associated

social actions may
include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, suprem
acism, and related social phenomena.