Why Does Racism Exist

Our earth is made up of many different humans and races. According to Sociocultural Anthropology, race is “used to refer to the presumed genetic, natural, heritable characteristics of a group of people, normally based on physical attributes such as skin colour, eye colour or hair type”. The vast number of races that live in the world make humans unique…so why does racism exist? Racism is the discrimination or mistreatment of racial groups. For many years, racism has existed, especially due to race being conflated with behavioral issues. These behavioral issues can lead to racial injustice, which our planet has seen way too often. The Ku Klux Klan is a large cult of white humans who believe that whites are the supreme race. This white-supremacist group believes that dark skinned people need to be tormented and terrorized in order to keep the white race from being “wiped-out”.
However, racism isn’t always due to discrimination or prejudice, but can take place from structural racism.
Aboriginals have been an important part of Canadian history, as they have been deeply connected to our triumphs and trials in the past. In the past, Canadians used Aboriginals as slaves and sold them for labour. It was cheap, economically profitable and advantageous for those who did it, but was it morally proper? Absolutely not. White privilege is another issue, due to the many races around the world. This refers to “in many societies, white people have access to greater power, authority and privileges than non-white people.” White privilege can come in many forms; better jobs leading to better pay, better respect and treatment, and so on. While injustices such as this shouldn’t exist in our world, it does due to our society and how we treat
others. People can argue that white privilege isn’t true, but I have seen this first hand. In high school, my friend and I went to the dollar store at lunch to get food. The store liked to watch every student that came through to make sure they weren’t stealing. When we entered the store, the owner let me through with my backpack on without a problem but stopped my friend and told him to take his off. He was black. When my friend asked why the owner responded by saying “We have to be sure there is no stealing going on here”. This is racism and white privilege at its finest. How come I, as a white man, am able to walk by without any problems but my friend gets stopped and told to take his bag off? How is that fair? Who’s to say, hypothetically, that I wasn’t going to steal?

This is the problem with societies around the globe. We need to stop treating others like they are other races. We need to treat them as PEOPLE; they are humans just like you and me. We shouldn’t be defined by our skin colour, we should be treated like humans. In a world that is currently hurting every single day due to mass shootings and terrorist attacks, we need to stand as one. There is no tolerance for racism, and only once we truly understand that will we finally become united