Is there racism in America?

Charphanik Conway
University of Phoenix
BCOM 275

Is there racism in America?
Introduction
In the past 1000 years, racism practice on the Western culture to non-Westerners has been of great impact on our history more than other form of racism discrimination; like the racism between Western groups or between Easterners, like the Africans and Asians. The wrong practice of racism by the Western countries is slavery, specifically the enslavement of individuals from African in the modern World (slavery and the slave trade started many years ago). The enslavement practice would be accomplished since the racist believed that Black people have not yet evolved to full human being like the white Europeans.
Racism in Communication can be defined as the principle idea that individual’s races are more superior (physically, intellectually, or culturally) than others, and, hence, poses the right to control, manipulate and dominate them (Alexander, 2005). In the U.S., racism is evident, by whites discriminating against other races mostly the blacks, and this has created semi-permanent racial tension and American’s society conflict. Until the opposition brought by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, white people dominating blacks was even absolved in institutions and carried out in all levels of government, by not giving blacks their civil rights and chances to actively participate in political and social- economic activities of communities (Alexander, 2005). The thing is we are not born racist. It’s not in our genes. It comes from our views and beliefs that develop as we grow up. We can be influenced by friends, family, newspapers, and society in general. If a child or young person grows up within a racist family, or has friends who are racist, they may believe that racism is normal and acceptable. But it’s not!
Without much argument, it’s clear that America’s history is greatly plagued in racism. Slavery activities still a usual act on America’s history, which many is less forgettable. Other highly believe it is likely to be forgotten, hence racism is lesser significant issue in current American cultural world. First, Racism exists in the Media; a study in Philadelphia and Media’s Index of Race by Entman-Rojecki, discovered overwhelming variance on characters portraying in movies between non-American and white. For example, Black women take up the characters of violence in movies. Racism is also depicted in news programs. The Index study noted that it’s more probable that a mug shot of non-American will be depicted in a criminal document than a mug shot by white individual. News on suspects of non-American are also most likely to portray restrains by suspect than white (Alexander, 2005). The Katrina disaster is another example of this bias. Most of the controversial press coverage about looting as well as criminal action in the aftermath of Katrina New Orleans emphasized on African-Americans. Individual critic commentators parodied shows by the media by classifying that “Black humans ‘loot’ food, but white people ‘find’ food” (Belgrave & Allison, 2009). Contrary, media in the U.S has shown not to be prejudiced against the non-American given that; Oprah Winfrey’s show is ranked highly in the U.S. media, given equal broadcast airtime to the songs played by individuals from different race group, for example, Beyonce (black-American) is one of the dominant musician in the U.S music industry.
Second, Light Skin is more worth than Dark Skin; racial discrimination based skin’s shade. Several studies noted that racism against non-Americans is much serious for darker than lighter skin. A study by Stanford University indicated that, in cases of death row, a defendant of non -American has a high probability of receiving the death penalty just because of darker skin, and traditionally the features comparison of African with lighter skin African-Americans and more features of Europeans