Essay About Civil War And Affirmative Action

Ethnic Relationships Around the World
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Ethnic Relationships Around the World
The word “ethnic” is defined as “relating to a
>sizable group of people sharing a common and
>distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic,
>or cultural heritage; relating to a people not
>Christian or Jewish; heathen.” By the definition
>alone, it is no surprise that ethnic relations around
>the world have always been a source of tension. Family
>members cannot live in the same house because of
>differences, sometimes resulting in anger, violence
>and bloodshed. One can see that the human population,
>too, is always up in arms about some differences,
>whether real or perceived. The big problem is that
>people do not take the time to find anything out about
>the other ethnic groups, or if they do find something
>out, they only focus on the unpleasant, not the good.
Saddam Husseins trial, which is going on now in
>Baghdad, is an example of ethnic differences. His
>actions are similar to what happened in South Africa
>with apartheid. People are murdered and tortured not
>based on who they are or what they are capable of
>doing, but rather on the color of the skin or what
>side of the country they live in. The early years of
>the United States were filled with such differences
>also. People were judged on the color of their skin.
>The darker the skin, the lower one was treated. Even
>when the person was black, the lighter blacks were
>given jobs such as servants and nannies, while the
>darker blacks were forced to work in the fields and do
>manual labor. The belief seemed to be that the dark
>skin made a person less intelligent and less
>civilized. With modern communication, what happens in
>South Africa doesnt stay in South Africa anymore, so
>the world has sort of forced South Africa into
>restructuring. The United States used violence, as in
>the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, to
>attempt to force changes in their ethnic differences.
Despite the efforts of both countries and their
>attempt to straighten up the countrys acts of
>discrimination, individual discrimination still
>exists. Im sure it always will. People have opinions
>and their main opinion is that their opinion is
>derived from some higher power and should be blindly
>believed and followed by everybody.
Projection uses the belief that people are either
>good or evil. A person who projects will not admit any
>fault in himself because that would put him into the
>bad category. So to keep himself from being thought of
>as bad, he sometimes goes to extreme measures and
>thoughts. This results in the behavior called racism.
>A “scapegoat” is the person who is blamed for any
>actions that the projectionist doesnt care for.
>Scapegoats change. The African Americans were always
>blamed for crime and unemployment, but in recent
>years, they have remained the scapegoat for violent
>crime but another ethnic group, the Hispanics, have
>become the scapegoat for unemployment.
Affirmative action was put into place as an attempt
>to end segregation in the United States. This action
>forced employers and schools to have a representative
>portion of all races and ethnic backgrounds. This
>system worked well in the beginning but it was
>repealed for some obvious faults. Affirmative action
>was based on the cognitive-dissonance theory, which
>states that if behavior is changed, then attitudes
>will often change to become consistent with the new
>behavior. What affirmative action, as well as other
>institutionalized minority assistance programs, has
>done is created a new kind of racism. Symbolic racism,
>a subtle form of modern discrimination, refers to a
>pattern where people are not overly racist but oppose
>any social policy that would reduce racial
>inequalities.
Going back to the projection theory, religious and
>sexual discrimination is strong with this group. Even
>though there is