Racism Essay -- essays research papers

What is Racism?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Racism is one of those unusual things which seem to escape the understanding of clear and to the point definition. Racism is a system of racial discrimination and prejudice. The concept of race as classifying people can be seen as misleading people and prejudicial as far as it’s involved in the quality of human life. The term race has been quite confusing because of its four principle connotations. 1. Physical anthropologists have called races the various subspecies of the human race characterized by certain phonotypical and genotypic traits. 2. Laymen have profusely used the word race to describe a human group that shares certain cultural characteristics such as language or religion. 3. Race has been loosely used as a synonym for species. 4. Many social scientists describe race as a human group that defines itself and/or is defined by other groups as different from other groups by moral excellence of having an essential characteristics and unchangeable characteristics.(Van den Berghe, Race and Racism pg. 42) The last key term to define racism is any set of beliefs that organic, genetically transmitted differences between human groups are associated with the presence or the absence of certain socially relevant abilities or characteristics, hence that such differences are a legitimate basis of invidious distinctions between groups socially defined as races. Racism in America There is no nation in the world that sees â€Å"racis...