Racism in Schools: Growing Prejudice & Discrimination - Essay Sample

Introduction

Racism is where a group of people belonging to a different race get discriminated or prejudiced based on beliefs such as people who belong to a different race have traits that are only common to their race. Enid Lee stated that racism is the granting or denial of respect, resources, rights, and representation to an individual or a group of people based on their skin color. Schools have faced rampant growth in the cases of racism whose expressions take various forms. Some of these forms include the calling of names, verbal abuse, exclusion, bullying, and even teasing. All kinds of people can experience racism in schools from parents, students, workers, and teachers. As a result, the learning environment, individuals, and working fraternity have been negatively affected due to racism in schools. Therefore, racism in schools is a vice that needs eradication.

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Racism has adversely affected sociability within the schools since it becomes difficult for students from different races to establish a friendship. The same condition affects workers, parents, and teachers. It leads to a situation where people only develop a rapport with people from the specific race only creating circles of people with the same race further enhancing racism within the school setting. Sociability gets compromised when people cannot become friends with other people from different races, leading to slow social growth within communities.

It has been observed that due to racism, students adopt bad behaviors like disruption and negative aggression (Ryan, 43). Due to the hatred that racism vice has instilled among the students, students only pick these terrible behaviors and proceed to use them against other students from different races to prejudice them. There have been reports of several cases of physical fights that came up as a result of racism. Such conflicts take place between students and other individuals from different backgrounds, or among students themselves. Racism has also seen students use abusive language against their fellow students leading to adverse effects on the personality of the students, and as a result, there is the need to eradicate racism within the schools.

School dropout cases have also emerged from the racism vice since the victims of racial discrimination end up hating school and consider themselves happier when they are away from school. They find it more comfortable to stay at home where there would be no one to discriminate them, hence end up dropping out of school. Another contributor to their dropping out is that they attain low grades since they are continually discriminated in class. Their parents also lack confidence in the education system and the school, and this may also lead them dropping out. When the parents lack confidence in the schools, they, therefore, get discouraged from advising their children to go back to school (Jubenville, 35). Dropping out of schools has adverse effects on a person since most of them end up frustrated in life and engage in criminal activities to make ends meet.

Racism has also affected teachers too since they get prejudiced by their fellow teachers and even students. As a result, they lose the fun in teaching and become unhappy with their profession. They no longer want to go work but instead, feel miserable and anxious. In the long run, the students' grades get affected since the performance index of such teachers reduces, and this is another reason as to why racism in schools should be completely eradicated.

There have been issues raised about racism affecting the health of the victims negatively whereby they gain poor health due to the sadness and stress caused by racism. According to Kennedy et al., in every 1% increase in racial disrespect in the United States, there was a corresponding 350.8 per 100,000 black mortality. According to the results obtained from health surveys in the United States, there is a high correlation between racial discrimination and birth weight, hypertension, days off sick, and self-related health. The fight against racism should, therefore, be considered a health issue and dealt with in the seriousness it deserves.

Others have tried bringing some arguments on the advantages of racism by stating that as a result of racist experience, an individual can become a stronger person. They support such a discussion by saying that through racial discrimination, and individual gains more pronounced resilience levels. While this could be true to some extent, there is no proof to it since the underlying studies only indicate that racism causes self-doubt and low self-esteem among the victims making the person weaker.

Sheryl (2010) in her video illustrates that only six percent of the whites believe that there still exist racism in America. That is the reason why the attitude against racism is like secret cancer eating away the quality of our students' dreams. It was sad in the video to watch the little black girls who cannot be identified as being beautiful or smart because their skin is not white, or because they did not meet the society's criterion for the definition of beauty in the video "A Girl Like Me." Nothing has changed 50 years down the line even with the civil rights gains and the opportunities that have continued popping up, and the discomfort that these black girls face for being who they are is sad and paralyzing. Howard also talked about identity in the case where the marginalized groups fight for their voices to be heard as they tell their own stories (Howard, 66). The white teachers who are also the dominant professionals in the field of education must also face the probability and possibility that they are responsible for feeding the prevailing mindset, although unintentionally. Action needs to be taken against racism, and it is time.

Everyone stereotypes and we all judge people and this is something we do unconsciously. However, people find it hard to own that since there are kind, pleasant, and oral teachers who have an imbalanced view and they see behavior in some kids to be different than in others (Rowe, 9). Rowe further stated that this is just like research where the results come out that people pay more attention to boys than they do to girls (Roe, 9). However, we have to accept the fact that whites are the majority in most of these schools and there is no way we can argue that the minority who are the blacks are the ones discriminating the whites.

Racism is a critical voice in society, and it needs serious intervention. It has led to lower academic performance by the victims through instilling fear and low self-esteem to the minorities. As seen, racism has a lot of negative impacts not only on the students in school but to society at large. The adverse effects of racial discrimination range from social, health, and even psychological, and this implies that this is a very dangerous vice that needs to be plowed out from the society for us t have a healthy environment where all individuals can coexist peacefully and be able to tap into their potentials (Dennis et al., 43). The government should put in place anti-racism measures within schools to have this situation corrected and prevent such cases from occurring again in the future.

Works Cited

Dennis, Syeachia, Rachel Gold, and Frances Wen. "Learner reactions to activities exploring racism as a social determinant of health." Family medicine 51.1 (2019): 41-47. https://journals.stfm.org/familymedicine/2019/january/dennis-2018-0085

Enid Lee, "Anti-Racism Education: Pulling Together to Close the Gaps", in Beyond Heroes and Holidays, 1998, 27, Print. http://www.enidlee.com/s/ELee-AntiRacEd.pdf

Howard, Gary R. We can't teach what we don't know: White teachers, multiracial schools. Teachers College Press, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=et6cDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Howard,+Gary.+(2006).+We+Can%E2%80%99t+Teach+What+We+Don%E2%80%99t+Know.+2nd+Edition,+Teachers+College+Press:+New+York.&ots=HAZf_O_-5W&sig=QIjL1WDkvw-3ELmxh-tUyIAlNys

Kennedy, B. P., Kawachi, I., Lochner, K., Jones, C., & Prothrow-Stith, D. (1997). (Dis) respect and black mortality. Ethnicity & disease, 7(3), 207-214. https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/9467703

Rowe, Claudia. "Race dramatically skews discipline, even in elementary school." The Seattle Times 24 (2015).

Ryan, Jim. Leading diverse schools. Vol. 2. Springer Science & Business Media, 2006. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=cDnhBwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Ryan,+Jim.+Leading+Diverse+Schools.+Springer,+2003,+Print.&ots=KeVnAeLRq_&sig=rhJmuWVYSFcvhiRSAof3LhoGld4

Sheryl WuDunn. Our century's greatest injustice. TED, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sheryl_wudunn_our_century_s_greatest_injustice.html