Essay on Racism: Race and Racist Radical Ideas

Submitted By Frankenstein12
Words: 876
Pages: 4

Do I believe that America is post racial? No, I do not think that America is post racial because racism is still a daily occurrence in many people’s lives. Racism runs all across America today, and it is not localized thought process, but a national thought process. However, there are some places in America that do not have huge racist radical ideas. One such place is the state that we live in, California. I would say that California, in general, is a very racial tolerant state, though not the entire state: there are some counties that house pro racist ideas and groups; Nevada County in Nor Cal is a county that has a lot of pro racist groups like the KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood. Just because a black man became president does not mean that the entire country is tolerant of race, and it does not mean that one race is finally gained equal civil rights. I do not think that white subjectivities are “holding back” black progression. I believe that the blame falls on both color spectrums, maybe with more blame towards the white part of the spectrum. As a Caucasian I feel no guilt towards a person of different color, simply because I have done nothing to verbally/physically harm them that can be deemed as racism. It is true that white male subjectivism held back research on the feminism front; historically speaking, black men have gained more freedoms before white women. Just look at when blacks were allowed to vote, in the late 1800’s (1870) when the fifteenth amendment was passed. While white women were not allowed to vote until the 1920’s, this happened when the nineteenth amendment was added to the constitution. It is true that the majority of black people voted for Obama, and it is of note that an equal amount of white voters voted for him. However, what is interesting is that it was a certain age demographic that voted for him. I learned this is my high school political science class that it was voters in between the ages of 18- 25 were the ones that voted for Obama the most. It also showed the decline in of votes for Obama as the age of the voters went up, and this included elderly black people. Now this can be interpreted as a post racial America, the younger generations voting for a black man to show tolerance and equality, but it also show some political thoughts behind the voters. As age went up, there political stances of different races changed and some aligned with the “old white guy”. Obama’s presidency can be seen as a step forward to racial equality, and it can be seen as a step forward for women’s equality.
A city, an actual physical space, cannot be racist, but the people who occupy the city can and will be racist. The indicator that a city has racist persons present is if these racist people are on the street spreading their hatred of certain people to everybody on the street. To see if a city’s population is overly racist, social geographers have to look at what type of demonstrations that are being held with in the city. Are there demonstrations like the Chicago Nazi demonstration in the 1978, or are there other