Linda Chen
AP Language & Composition
Mr. Felder
31 December 2016
When our founding founders wrote the Constitution they had no idea of the many intruding factors of today’s society that would come into play of the numerous of controversial topics that loom over our day. With politicians arguing back and forth with what is the correct way to interpret the Constitution it is not a wonder that our politics is so divided in opinions. Of these topics, one that has sparked a long debate about is the concept of race. Although many people have agreed that our society is much more accepting than it was back in the 18th century, studies show that white people often feel uncomfortable talking about race and have high stress levels when they are in conversations about it. So why is that the case? This is because discrimination, even though viewed as rotten, is still ingrained into our system and will continue to be as long as our skin colors remain to be different.
Our society works in strange ways. What was viewed as socially acceptable in the 17th and 18th century was frowned upon at the turn of the new century. At the same time the idea of discrimination was never really gone because people still believed that one race was superior to the other. After all, why would people still be talking about it if it wasn’t important right? There is a saying called “history repeats itself.” While this saying is true at times, history does not exactly repeat, but is strikingly similar to one another. That is why the 21st century is vastly different from its ancestors, but is similar at the same time. We have moved on from most of our racist views but at the same time we have not. This is why stereotypes still exist and are part of our everyday society.
In addition, just by looking at our community today we can see how racist beliefs still grip the population. I mean just look at the recently elected president: Donald Trump. This man undoubtedly holds numerous of racist ideologies and isn’t afraid to announce them all out to the public. People either hate him or love him and obviously we have enough of the population to agree with him for Trump to have won the presidency. Although, not all the citizens who voted for Trump claims to agree with his racist ideas, they have willingly accepted it as perfectly fine for them to still be able to agree with him and look past it. Hence, it is clearly evident that discrimination is still alive and well in our nation because we can still accept racist ideas as okay.
In ways we discriminate ourselves as well. Look into any school and how people gather with one another. More often than not they gather based on either gender and of course race. Even in schools that boast racial diversity, people seek their own kin because they feel more comfortable with them rather than other. If I were to look at my own friends even I realize that the majority of them are Asians and back in middle school I would only hang out with Asians. Therefore, even if we were to deny that race plays no role in how we see people, unconsciously they still do even without you realizing it.
In the end, the outside matters more than the inside at times because it is the outside that people first see and immediately they have their own interpretation of what you are like at first glance. It is not the others fault that their skin color is different, but rather that society has already trained us to believe that certain groups are committed to act a certain way. Thus, discrimination will always be alive and well in our community as long as our skin color remains different from one another.
