Racism Definition
What is racism? It is a contemptuous and hateful attitude to representatives of other races. It rarely appears in a form which is more precise: like Nazism, which means hating others not for their race, but for their nationality.
Racism shows itself up in the forms quite inoffensive (bad jokes about other races, their special qualities, behavior, religion, culture, etc.), or appears as a reason of numerous cruel events, and even bloody wars. It seems to be strange: why should people go to wars, battles, fights and other casualties only because of their fault beliefs like “black people must disappear” or “all Asians are to be exterminated”.
And finally, where does this hate to other races come from? Their representatives mostly didn’t ever hurt those who haven’t liked them! And the main question is: why this hate has such a huge motivating power?
The examples of that motivation can be easily found throughout human history, and they can often be witnessed in present times, too. Oppression on black-skinned people in American history, hate to “Soviets” & “Commies” which ruled in some countries in the second half of XX century, Russian skinhead attacks onto the representatives of “non-Russian” nationalities. In some cases, this hate can be explained with certain “rational” arguments, for instance with the fact of oppression and territory capture provided by the representatives of the “hated” race.
Yet sometimes this hate appears literally for no reason. No, really, could brown-skinned people do something bad to white-skinned inhabitants of America, being accepted only as a work force, as the “second grade” humans, who were treated in accordance to these beliefs?
What is the most interesting thing: if someone asked the human, why he hated the representatives of another race, they won’t give any clear answer. They would say something about “blacks” or “yellows” to be bad people, but won’t be able to prove their opinion.
Racists who are more intelligent, will answer that there is a larger percent of criminals (rapists, for instance) among the representatives of the race they hate. It can often be heard about wrong manners, too. Especially erudite racists can even bring some statistical data.
But if you continue asking the racist questions about the way they personally got hurt because of the hated nation, you’ll notice racists themselves can’t understand the reasons of their hate. If to continue thinking this way, we can summarize, that any kind of racism is a serious problem not having fast and easy solutions. But despite that, it’s a problem which has to be solved, because if this won’t be done at least on 80-90 percent, the future consequences may be sorrowful.
On one side, we can notice the fact, that general percentage of racism got lower from past centuries till nowadays. People all over the world become more conscious and reflexive about their racist impulses. Plus, ideologies of many countries call for tolerance towards the representatives of other races and nations.
In other words, we can see the world mainly takes serous actions in a struggle against racism, and the problem becomes less noticeable.
Yet on the other side, racism actually flourishes in certain regions of the world. For instance, it happens that way in “black” neighborhoods of USA cities; in some regions of Caucasus in Russia where Russians are treated as invaders and conquerors; in other countries of the globe.
In recent times, there is an especially noticeable form of racism, based on religious beliefs. What does this mean, and why does it happen that way?
There appears a “prophet” or a religious person, or someone else who starts explaining the religious dogmas and writings with the help of logical arguments. Religion is being turned by this logic in the way, telling that “infidels” or representatives of other nationality or race are to be eliminated. Through this, religion becomes their instrument, helping to control people who follow the “prophet”.
Nature of Racism
Why do the others follow these ideas? Why do they believe fake “prophets”? Because these leaders’ charisma is able to convince people who don’t have their own ideology. Same principle works not only on fake prophets, but on fake teachers, fake mentors or other fake heroes, who dare to rule the other people’s lives.
Yet it turns out that way because humans need leaders. It’s natural, because the absolute majority of people don’t really have their own ideas and inner cores and they need their so-called “master” to think for them, to tell them what to do). And when the person who is really deeply convinced in racism ideas becomes such a leader, people follow them willingly, especially if there is no any anti-racism ideology in a country.
In this case, we can even talk about turning people to some kind of racist zombies, because of to look onto the situation sensibly, it’s easy to feel and understand how nasty and harmful any racism ideas are. But this works only with people who were “infected” with racism. When talking about a single person having deep racism beliefs, it is a lot more difficult to understand where his ideology comes from.
But, if to summarize all the facts and statements above, one can say that the most powerful weapon against racism and people who are psychologically ill with it, is forming the pure ideology and giving everyone the ability and possibility to develop their own worldview. Denying any prejudices about other races can be very helpful here, too (the example of such prejudice is “Mexicans are silly”). And of course, the main way to fight racism is to learn people how to tolerantly interact with those who have other skin color, other religion or nationality.