Directions: Read the four sources carefully, focusing on a theme or issue that connects them

and the different perspectives each represents. Then, write a logically organized, well-
reasoned, and well-written argument that presents your own perspective on the theme or issue
you identified. You must incorporate at least two of the sources provided and link the claims
in your argument to supporting evidence. You may also use the other provided sources or
draw upon your own knowledge. In your response, refer to the provided sources as Source A,
Source B, Source C, and Source D, or by the author’s name.

Text A

Europe

As media watch US uprisings, EU has a

racism problem, too
The European Union has little ground for finger-pointing when it comes to racism. EU
countries are by no means free of discrimination and violence — and calls for change are
growing louder.

Margaritis Schinas is the EU commissioner for "promoting the European way of life." He
feels that the struggle against racism falls under this purview.

"There is no doubt that Europe as a whole has been doing better than the United States in
issues of race, also because we have better systems for social inclusion, protection, universal
health care," he said. But he also acknowledged that the European Union has "some way still
to go" toward equality and inclusion, with a number of issues yet to be addressed.

"They want to make us believe that they accept us," law student Kesiah said. "But I find that
there is a lot of hypocrisy here. It isn't like with George Floyd in the US, where you see the
racism a thousand kilometers off: It's more hidden. In France, you notice it in lots of small
ways: when looking for jobs or when you are stopped in the street for no reason."

Kesiah was one of the thousands of people in France who took to the streets last weekend to
protest racism and discrimination. Those protests were also fueled by terrible cases of police
brutality in France, including the death of Adama Traore in police custody in 2016.

Police violence is not the only manifestations of racism in the France: Profiling is also par for
the course in the suburbs of Paris. A survey of 5,000 young men with African or Arab
ancestry carried out by the Council of Europe found that they are 20 times as likely to be
stopped by police as other French people.

The mass protests in France have brought about change: Interior Minister Christophe
Castaner has banned police from using chokeholds when detaining suspects. "Some police
are racists," Castaner said, though he does not believe that all officers are.

Belgium's colonial legacy

There were also protests in Belgium's capital, Brussels. "We have come because this is the
capital of Europe," said Branda Auchimba, one of the organizers. She is angry at the
"everyday discrimination and attacks by police, who stop young African and Arab men at
every corner."

It wasn't until recent decades that Belgians began to seriously examine their country's
historical atrocities.

Britain's cultural battle

In London, even the mayor is on the side of those who want to take down the statues of
historical figures known to have been imperialists and racists. Sadiq Khan, whose parents are
from Pakistan, had the statue of the slave trader Robert Milligan removed from West India
Quay in East London. "It is a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave
trade — but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces," Khan tweeted.

In Britain, people have turned out en masse to protest in solidarity with Americans who are
demonstrating after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer. The Black Lives
Matter movement has also led to increased discussion of casual racism, deprivation of social
rights and police violence against communities of color.

Ben Bowling, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at King's College London said
communities of color were overpoliced in Britain. "You clearly see it in Germany and France
and everywhere across Europe where there are minority communities, who are identified by
the police as a problem that needs to be controlled."

'I am ashamed'

To address racism at the institutional level, it might help for the European Union to increase
the representation of people of color across EU institutions.

One of those 24 MEPs is Alice Kuhnke, of the Swedish Greens remains optimistic that
demonstrations across the European Union will set something in motion. "I am convinced
that we can use the fact that so many people are upset and taking notice," she said. "But it
mustn't end in nice words about equality: It has to be reflected in EU legislation at last."

Text B

Anti-Asian Hate Crime Crosses Racial and

Ethnic Lines   
By Masood Farivar
Updated March 24, 2021 09:56 AM

WASHINGTON - For many Americans, a 21-year-old white man has become the face of
anti-Asian violence that has swept the country over the past year. That impression may be
misleading.
Robert Aaron Long, the son of a southern Baptist lay leader from Canton, Georgia, is accused
of murdering eight people, including six Asian American women, at three spas in the Atlanta
metropolitan area last week.   

While investigators have yet to determine a motive in the case, many of those who carry out
attacks on Asian Americans do not fit Long’s racial profile.  

In New York City, where anti-Asian hate crime soared nearly nine-fold in 2020 over the year
before, only two of the 20 people arrested last year in connection with these attacks
were white, according to New York Police Department data analyzed by the Center for the
Study of Hate and Extremism. Eleven were African Americans, six were white Hispanics and
one was a Black Hispanic.  

"I thought it was jarring," said Brian Levin, executive director of the center, noting that the
finding runs counter to assumptions made by many that perpetrators of anti-Asian hate are
mostly angry white men who blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Text C

The Problem Today Is Not Tribalism But Its Absence

The fellow-feeling that tribalism cultivates can fix what factionalism has broken

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili May 20, 2020

The dirtiest word in US politics these days is tribalism. For pundits and policymakers,
tribalism is blind group loyalty that is tearing our country apart. Mindless tribal affiliations,
they say, drive our polarizations and prevent us from finding common ground. The greatest
danger of tribalism, we are told, is that it morphs political leanings into social identities,
creating political morass, gridlock, and decay.

But these pundits and policymakers have the story backwards. Indeed, we have enormous
political challenges because we no longer value or know how to live like tribes: to make rules
together, to develop consensus, to work out difficult problems without calling for outside
help. In fact, tribes — real tribes — provide a great deal of meaning, community, and
connection. Let me take this a step further: if American society were to adopt some “tribal”
characteristics, we would all be a lot better off.

During the medieval period, Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (b. 1332) developed a sophisticated
theory of tribal politics that has enormous resonance today. In his treatise Muqaddimah he
wrote that tribal societies are defined by their social cohesion and a sense of group
interconnectedness. This solidarity brings groups together in ways that are crucial for the
creation of public goods. The secret to success was what he termed asabiyya—or group
feeling. Tribes that had strong asabiyya could build strong empires, forge strong armies, and
develop effective governance structures. Leaders who could not cultivate this group feeling
among members struggled to find legitimacy, and ultimately collapsed.

Asabiyya is a kind of social capital. It is the glue that holds a society together. It is central to
the success and failure of tribal governance structures. Yet, we would never know that if we
looked at how tribes are described in modern parlance. Contemporary political “tribalism” is
just the opposite of all of this.

No doubt, there are ugly sides to tribes in blood feuds and seemingly internecine conflicts.
Yet, as political scientists James Fearon and David Laitin pointed out almost two decades
ago, groups with differences exist side by side all around the world but very few of them
engage in violent conflict. In other words, conflict among groups with strong affinities is an
aberration rather than the norm.

By contrast, for pundits and policymakers the idea of tribe has provided a conceptual hook
that helps them explain the loss of community we see around the world. This idea has
become an empty vessel for something larger. Indeed, I would argue that what they describe
as tribalism is actually its absence. They describe a derisive politics that is a yearning for
group feeling. It is a yearning for asabiyya.

In my wanderings around dozens of Afghan villages, I found something unexpected: the

death of tribal and other forms of customary authority was greatly exaggerated. Instead,
communities worked quickly to resurrect customary structures out of the ashes of conflict.
Why? Because they provided the kinds of public goods and services that were of value to
people when they could not rely on a state that was unwilling or unable to help.

Not only did communities resurrect tribal and other forms of customary governance
structures, they created new institutions that would encompass diversity. This means they
updated technologies of custom to help them solve the most challenging of modern conflicts.

For years, American strategists in Afghanistan ignored the positive role tribes and customary
authorities could play in politics as they fixated on strengthening top-down government
institutions. Several years into the war, young soldiers posted to remote locations started
demanding change. These boots on the ground faced life or death every day. What many of
them found was that maintaining good relations with community leaders was key to their
survival. On message boards and blogs, they argued the United States was losing in
Afghanistan because it was not working with customary structures.

In Afghanistan customary leaders were able to build legitimacy because they cultivated a
sense of group belonging. They did this by treating most people with dignity, fairness, and
respect — even those with whom they disagreed. A far cry from the tribalism frequently
weaponized in the US.

The real danger facing the United States now is not tribalism but factionalism. America’s
Founders warned us against this even before the Constitution was signed. In Federalist 10,
James Madison famously wrote of these dangers. They have always been here; they are not
new. The key is to have leaders who can help us overcome divisiveness and rely on one
another, just as leaders within tribes must build consensus.

What society has lost is asabiyya—the glue that holds us together. Tribes can provide us this
glue, a sense of community and belonging. Certainly, tribes can exclude, but this is not
their raison d’être, which is to provide, to give meaning, and to protect.
Text D

Fear is uninformed

A soldier once told me: “It is much easier to kill someone you have never met, from distance.
When you look through the scope, you just see a red dot, not a human.” The less you know
about them, the easier to fear them, and to hate them.

This human tendency and ability of destruction of what is unknown and unfamiliar is meat to
the politicians who want to exploit fear: If you grew up only around people who look like
you, only listened to one media outlet and heard from the old uncle that those who look or
think differently hate you and are dangerous, the inherent fear and hatred toward those
unseen people is an understandable (but flawed) result.

To win us, politicians, sometimes with the media’s help, do their best to keep us separated, to
keep the real or imaginary “others” just a “concept.” Because if we spend time with others,
talk to them and eat with them, we will learn that they are like us: humans with all the
strengths and weaknesses that we possess. Some are strong, some are weak, some are funny,
some are dumb, some are nice and some not too nice.

Extract from The politics of fear: How it manipulates us to tribalism

March 19, 2019 10.45am GMT Updated July 17, 2019 5.10pm BST