Barack Obama Research Paper
Barack Obama is America’s first black president of the United States. That fact means racism is gone and out of this country right? The belief that racism is gone, that after president Barack Obama was elected racism was a thing of the past, is a lie and only hinders the process of reaching equality. What is racism? Well in order to know that one must first know what race, ethnicity and prejudice are. Race, as defined by Kathleen J. Fitzgerald in her book “Recognizing Race and Ethnicity: Power, Privilege, and Inequality” is “Race specifically refers to a group of people that share some socially defined physical characteristics, for instance, skin color, hair texture, or facial features” (Fitzgerald 9). Ethnicity refers to “a group of people
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The first kind of racism that was around is old fashioned racism or now known as Racism 1.0; where there were people running around verbally and physically abusing racial and ethnic minorities. Tim Wise, author of “Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama”, makes it clear that although racism 1.0 is still around just not as prevalent because “Obama’s election to the presidency demonstrates that old-fashioned racism (or what I call in this volume Racism 1.0), though still far too prevalent in the nation, is capable of being defeated” (Wise 19). In recent, more accepting years, Racism has not vanished but instead simply evolved into racism 2.0. Wise explains it as “Racism 2.0, in which whites hold the larger black community in low regard…and yet carve our acceptable space for individuals such as Obama who strike them as different, as exceptions who are not like the rest” (23). Racism is not the same as it used to be; where people are running rampant in the streets just looking for a person of color to beat to a bloody pulp, it is not obvious anymore. It hides under a blanket of white privilege and oppression. It has adapted to a new society where going up to someone of color and calling them a racial slur is not acceptable. Thus, causing many to think racism is a thing of the
The first kind of racism that was around is old fashioned racism or now known as Racism 1.0; where there were people running around verbally and physically abusing racial and ethnic minorities. Tim Wise, author of “Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama”, makes it clear that although racism 1.0 is still around just not as prevalent because “Obama’s election to the presidency demonstrates that old-fashioned racism (or what I call in this volume Racism 1.0), though still far too prevalent in the nation, is capable of being defeated” (Wise 19). In recent, more accepting years, Racism has not vanished but instead simply evolved into racism 2.0. Wise explains it as “Racism 2.0, in which whites hold the larger black community in low regard…and yet carve our acceptable space for individuals such as Obama who strike them as different, as exceptions who are not like the rest” (23). Racism is not the same as it used to be; where people are running rampant in the streets just looking for a person of color to beat to a bloody pulp, it is not obvious anymore. It hides under a blanket of white privilege and oppression. It has adapted to a new society where going up to someone of color and calling them a racial slur is not acceptable. Thus, causing many to think racism is a thing of the