Racism and ethnicity Essay

Joseph Addison once said that, â€Å"If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world. † This holds true to the sentiments I have when it comes to the numerous injustices people incur due to their skin color, ethnicity, and the like. I have seen and witnessed first hand the harm people can cause to one another due to petty differences between them; and I have also often pondered why such acts occur in our world. I used to think that this may be an isolated case; a freak phenomenon that has occurred solely in the confines of my home land. A social phenomenon that has existed in my home land due to the history our people have gone through. Yet, I have seen that such injustices and anger occur in other lands such as the United States of America and knowing of this makes me wonder if racism can be found in all societies regardless of geographic location and history. To get a better understanding of this social phenomenon I have decided to look into the cases of racism I have seen in my home country of Serbia and compare that to those acts I have seen here in America. Before I do proceed, I think it is necessary to take into consideration what racism really is. Many scholars have given various definitions to this phenomenon and the differences in the definitions can be attributed to the fact that the term covers a broad spectrum of implications of race-based bigotry, prejudice, violence, oppression, stereotyping or discrimination. Since it covers such a wide array of topics and takes into account various social issues we can take into account 2 general definitions of racism; the sociological and the legal. Racism is broadly defined as a form of discrimination based on characteristics of race and existing either as individual racism, which originates in the racist beliefs of a single person, or institutional racism, which occurs when racist ideas and practices are embodied in the folkways, mores and norms (Leeder. 2003). On the other hand, sociologists Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as â€Å"†¦ a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/’race’ supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry,† (Cazenave and Maddern 1999: 42). Based on these definitions we can see two dominant themes when we speak about racism. The first among the two is the fact that racism takes into account the psyche of an individual. To be more precise, we deal with the construct of beliefs a person or group may hold against others as embodied by the mores and norms they have. The second aspect that we find is the fact that racism is a highly organized group structure as pointed out by Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern. With regard to the second aspect, we find that racism is a social construct, a privilege of certain groups within a society. Hence, we are led to conclude that the social phenomenon can very well exist in any society. After all, there is no true homogenous society and the fact remain that differences abound between groups. Take the United States of America, though it is a single country the social structure can still clearly delineated between the different races that occupy its geography. As for my home country of Serbia, we also see that racism cuts across groups as I have seen people display acts of racial discrimination on gypsies; a group who since their unexplained appearance in Europe over nine centuries ago, the gypsies have refused to fall in with conventional settled life. They remain a people whose culture and customs are beset with misunderstanding, and who cling to their distinct identity in the teeth of persistent rejection and pressure to conform. This social group has been long been ridiculed and persecuted in Serbia. I have also personally seen people who look like neo-Nazis with their shaved heads launching verbal assaults and beating up gypsies. It is a saddening truth that things like this happen. What’s worse is the fact that gypsies are actually persecuted all around Europe. Other shocking instances of racial acts can also be seen in soccer games in Serbia. An example of this is even cited on a blog/news commentary on the Fox Sports website.