“Us” Vs “Them”
“Our true nationality is mankind.”
H.G. Wells
Society is made of a wide variety of groups. These groups of people have their own cultural traditions, historical and social backgrounds. Our groups show “us” and use powerful control on how we think, how we feel and even how we behave. When our group use the word of “us” for sure also, use the word of “them” to define people who are not belong to our group. All these definitions cause to racism. Oxford dictionary defines racism as “the belief that some races of people are better than others; unfair ways of treating people that show this belief.” (Oxford Dic., 538) Also, Macmillan online dictionary defines racism as “a way of thinking or behaving that shows that you do not like or respect people who belong to races that are different from your own and that you believe your race is better than others.” For me, racism simply means one thing: it is the first type of discrimination we can think over it. This paper argues that racism takes it’s source from society; because, every child grow up with the factor of other people in society.
Racism which is still a large part of our society has always existed in human history and will never end because of many factors such as movies, cartoons, advertisements, etc.. When we examine a person as a whole from the babyhood to the death ,we can see so many small pieces which refer to association of “others” idea which is the alternative definition of racism. Hanif Kureishi explains it with these example; “Television comics used Pakistanis as the butt of their humour. Their jokes were highly political; they contributed to a way of seeing world. The enjoyed reduction of racial hatred to a joke did two things: it expressed a collective view (which was sanctioned by its being on the BBC), and it was a celebration of contempt in millions of living rooms in England. I was afraid to watch TV because of it; it was too embrassing, too degrading.”...