Racism Essay
What Is Wrong about Racism and Is the War on Racism Over?
Racism is an ideology that is generally considered wrong, disgusting and antiscientific. However, when asked why it is so, most people will say: “Because all people are equal”. And this shows that people just don’t understand what they say and what they believe in.
Racism is wrong not because all people are equal; it is wrong for the sheer reason that people are not equal. After all, no human in his right mind would say that all people are equal when basing on common sense and not vague “general principles”. Some are objectively cleverer than others; some are certainly better in moral sense, even physically it is hard to find two men who would be even remotely equal.
But racism states this thing exactly – that some groups of people are equal among themselves only because they belong to their groups; what is worse, they determine the membership of a group by the reason as primitive as biological heredity. It means that every person is treated according to the vague generalization of traits belonging to his supposed ancestors, without any regard to his personal qualities. Is there anything to add here?
This principle says that a degenerate white is closer to me than an intelligent black for the reason that we belong to the same biologically limited group. I have not chosen such kinship; the nature has chosen for me, and I must obey.
Isn’t it absurd? Can herd instinct go any further than that? Is there anything that makes a human more like animal so that to distinguish between “good” and “bad” according to outward features? Racism is the greatest embodiment of this instinct and is unworthy of human. Hence, all people should be committed to fighting racism – and many members of the Western society and the American society, in particular, have been doing it for the good part of the 20th century.
Today, it may seem that there are no more racist principles lying in the foundation of our life. But is it really so? What results of war on racism can we see nowadays?
The manner in which racism has been denounced for the last several decades has become the source of another phenomenon that is in no way better than what existed before and, in some points, even worse. I am speaking about the so-called affirmative action, which provides benefits and priorities for the members of racial minorities just for the sake of them belonging to these minorities. It means that a company hiring a new employee still cannot do it on the sole basis of the person’s value as a worker. It has to have certain quotas of people belonging to the racial minorities and, if in a crucial moment the employer will prefer an excellent white worker to an incompetent black one, this black one has a full right to denounce the company of being racist, although the only reason for him being refused is his own incompetence.
In order to be really racism-free, the society should eliminate any activities that grant benefits to people for the sheer sake of them belonging to this or that race irrespectively of their personal qualities. Because what it is if not racism, although peculiarly twisted and reverted? Until every person is judged only as a person and not as a member of a minority or majority, we cannot say that there is no racism in the society we live in.
