What is Racism and how does it significantly impact the world?

Definition of “Racism”

The official meaning of “Racism” in Cambridge English Dictionary, is defined as “policies, behaviours, rules that result in continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race”.

As racism is one of the main considerations that many people are concerned about, such as the BlackLivesMatter movement, discrimination upon Asians during the case of ‘COVID 19’ -calling Asians the “China Virus” ,and many others.

While racism is such a big issue, we must know what kind of issue people are facing out in the world.

For instance, the discrimination which African Americans were forced to experience since the 1500s, from the whites who treated them as their slaves. As the inequality African Americans were experiencing and are continuously experiencing, it was historically marked as one of the biggest events that directly influenced the whole population in the world. One of the recent event: the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which started with the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013, affected the people to stand for their freedom, with 3 black women: Alica Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi first created a campaign for the lives of African Americans in the United States. A case that happened in 2020 saddened the world population: the death of George Floyd by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck until he passed out on the floor, while he was protesting against the people who were treating them unfairly. The BBC applied: “The key events that led to Mr. Floyd’s death happened within just 30 minutes”.

Furthermore, President Donald Trump’s racist intentions against the #BlackLivesMatter movement were blamed by many people as he “called the Black Lives Matter as a symbol of hate”. His reason for this was because African Americans were calling the white police officers “pigs in a blanket, frying like bacon” while they were rioting. He also declared that he does ‘care about the rights of African Americans, but does not admit that the nuance of his words was wrong’.

Another event that is still occurring today, is an issue that Asians are suffering from the discrimination that they get when they are with the white community. The pandemic: COVID-19 is affecting the whole population around the world, such as people losing their jobs, losing relationships with family and friends, the mental stress they get from quarantine. As the virus is originated from Wuhan in China, Asians were undergoing the discrimination they get from the Western community. For example, in the United States, a university student was beaten up by a group of Western students, just the reason why he is 'Asian' even though he was not Chinese. Asians who live in a European country tend to suffer similar situations in public areas: restaurants, parks, and so on. However, the social media platforms seemed to be the causation to spread the rumors about these unreliable sources and seemed to exaggerate facts about Asians relating to COVID-19.

The examples that I have mentioned in the above sections are problems that are happening today. They are not issues to take it easy. They are situations that the world must know and which must be solved. The uncountable lives of African Americans and Asians are suffering from this. We must know and change.

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The resources that I have used to make this post is the following down below:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726#:~:text=George%20Floyd%2C%2046%2C%20died%20after,was%20pinned%20to%20the%20floor.&text=The%20key%20events%20that%20led,happened%20within%20just%2030%20minutes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/world/asia/coronavirus-chinese-racism.html