Racism Synthesis Essay

Racism can be “defined as the hatred of one person by another or the belief that another person is less than human because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. It has influenced wars, slavery, the formation of nations, and legal codes” (“What”). The face of racism over the past 50 years has changed but yet, some still stay the same. People made laws against racism and it is not as blunt anymore. But opinions and stereotypes will remain which will cause others to still be treated differently. One way the face of racism has changed is that there are now laws against it. Because racism was such a major problem back then, the 14th amendment was created, which provided everyone guaranteed equal protection of the law and “prevents unreasonable searches and seizures” (“Racial”). In my high school, there is a wide range of diversity in races among the students. Not just a school of Blacks, or just Whites, or even just Asians, but the students are made up of a variety of races. A law that allows this diversity to happen is called Affirmative Action. “Affirmative Action refers to policies that take factors including race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group in areas of employment, education, and business, usually justified as countering the effects of a history of discrimination” (Affirmative). According to James McBride in The Color of Water, him and his family “were shocked by the racial division of the city and surrounding country, where most of the black kids attended understaffed and underfunded city schools while whites attended sparkling clean suburban schools with fantastic facilities” (McBride 180). This suggests that since racism changed up north, in New York, there aren’t as much segregated schools anymore. While in the south, in Delaware, there still are segregated schools and rough

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