This semester I have taken a class at the University called Race, Ethnicity and American Dream. This class talked a lot about stereotyping in American Society, and made the students fully aware of the issues that are currently going on in society. Here, I am about to
tell you the three most important things I learned throughout the semester and hopefully you can pass this along to whomever you wish. First and foremost, I learned that race is determined by several different things such as: blood, genes, parents, appearance/skin color, and your nationality.
I found this extremely significant because not many people in society know exactly how race is determined. They just hear the concept almost every day and just think of it as the word race, but instead, in our class we learned exactly how your own race is determined. The next important thing I learned in class this semester is the talk about white privilege, and how whites are the hierarchy in society. White privilege makes whites feel one of three things. First, it makes white people feel comfortable, that the world was designed for them. Secondly, it makes white people normal. They don’t have to describe themselves as white, unlike every other nationality.
Lastly, it equates whites with positive attributes, which entitles beauty, wealth, ability, and even intelligence. White privilege is all about a system of advantages that no other ethnicity can have. The last most important thing I learned in class this semester was the first death penalty that was given out in Texas to white men for killing a different race, occurred recently in 1998. A group of three white men were driving and happened to see an African-American standing outside when they decided to go up to him and beat him to death, for no apparent reason. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that after he was knocked unconscious, but still alive, the white men decided to tie him to their truck and drag him for 3 miles until his body disintegrated. I bet you didn’t know that, did you? The reason that why you didn’t know, is because the media could care less about an African-American getting beat up to death. However, what do you think would happen if it were the opposite way? If three black men were to kill a white man? I certainly believe it would be all over the news, and still talked about in classrooms all over the nation today. The problem is, we still live in a racist society and somehow, this needs to change. It’s not fair to Races other then white who get singled out for no apparent reason. It’s just not fair. Something needs to change now, or the world will never be unified as one.