It has often been mistaken that racism only exists between those who are black and white. This of course, has largely been influenced by colonialism and slavery in the New World. Carlos Hoyt Jr in his article, ‘The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism: Reconciling a Discordant Discourse,’ states that although several key concepts in the study of diversity, social bias, and social justice are somewhat nebulous and overlapping, for example, culture, race and ethnicity, there is perhaps no term that provokes the level of confusions, consternation and conflict that the term racism does. This he says is due to the dispute that has destabilized the use of the term for much of its short history and boils down to a sharp disagreement among both professionals and laypeople about whether the original definition of racism should be revised to exclusively and strictly mean the use of power to preserve and perpetuate the advantages of the dominant social identity group – that is, white people in American society. (Hoyt, 2012)
However a working definition is provided by Wikipedia, in which racism is defined as actions, practices or beliefs, or social or political systems that are based in views that see the human species to be divided into races with shared traits, abilities, or qualities, such as personality, intellect, morality, or other cultural behavioral characteristics, and especially the belief that races can be ranked as inherently superior or inferior to others, or that members of different races should be treated differently. Racism may exist between those of Indian descent and African descent like Trinidad, between Caucasians and Latinos in South America, between Chinese and Japanese, Muslims and