Today's world is very different from what it was a hundred years ago. But there is still racism in today’s society. There is still racism against black people, but black people can also be racist towards white people. There are white people that are racist towards black people, but that is all you hear about. “When racist ideas resound, denial that those ideas are racist typically follow. When racist policies resound, denials that those policies are racist also follow” (Kendi). Racism is hate, if we don’t stop hating people for what they look like, then racism will never disappear. Racism happens to all races, including white.    

People will always disagree. It is human nature. The world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Some people still haven’t changed their mindset from 60+ years ago and that is wrong because things change and your mindset must change as well. Racism will continue if we keep teaching it in schools, but on the other hand, we won’t change anything if we don’t know what we did wrong. The first step is for people to stop using racial slurs like the N-word (this includes the Black community) because if we just take words like that out of our vocabulary then fights that start with a  person calling another person a racial slur can be avoided. 

People need to start looking at other people for who they are and not the color of their skin, like the quote from Raisin in the Sun, “If you are going to measure a man, measure him right,” (Hansberry) meaning if you judge someone, judge them on their personality and beliefs and not their skin color.

 When a black person gets shot, it is all over the news. When a little white kid that was only 5 years old, gets shot, it isn’t on the news. Around 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020, Cannon Hinnant was shot in the head by a black man. "I just don't understand why he did it. How can you walk up to a little boy, point-blank, and put a gun to his head and just shoot him? How could anyone do that?"(ABC News). But where are the riots and protests for the poor 5-year old that was playing in front of his house, doing nothing to anyone, and then out of nowhere a man with a gun shoots him in the head?

The Black community thinks of me as a white privileged male that owes them something, but I haven’t done anything to them. The people in black communities around the nation are killing one another. Why am I to blame for this violence? I am a kid just trying to live his life, but who feels threatened to go into big cities like Denver. There are a lot of places that my parents and I are scared to go to because we are white. 

No one is arguing that African Americans have not gone through a lot with slavery and hate groups like the KKK. The KKK made it their goal to get rid of the black race. “The Bureau of Investigation (as the organization was known then) had few federal laws to combat the KKK in these formative days” (FBI). The black community countered the KKK by creating their own hate group called the Black Panthers. “It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. It was part of the Black Power movement, which broke from the integrationist goals and nonviolent protest tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” These people wanted to get even with the white supremacists. 

The black community has also had to deal with the government going against them, people from the same country killing them just for walking down the street or talking to a white girl. There are still people out there that don’t like the black race, calling them names and treating them unfairly. The black community thinks that police officers are like those people because of white cops shooting and killing people of color and yeah it is messed up but not all cops are like that. 

More African American people have been shot by police officers than other races. According to the Washington Post, thirty-five African-Americans per million have been shot by police, there are 42 million African-Americans in the United States. So that equals 1,448 people of color getting shot by the police. There are more whites being shot by police, but the population of whites is about four times larger than the black population in the United States. The total number of white people being shot by police is 2,786 people.

Another group of people that have been racially stereotyped is the Latinos. These people face discrimination because some people think that most Latinos are illegal, but that's not true. Approximately 10 to 12 million of the 40 million Latinos that are in the United States are illegal. This has led to problems in the United States political elections where some people were calling Republicans racist because they wanted a wall to make sure that if Mexicans came here then they would have to do it legally. If you look back in America's history then you will find that this has happened before. In the 1920s, European immigrants dealt with hatred over their taking jobs and working for lower salaries. This is happening a lot with Mexican immigrants. It looks like we, as a nation, are repeating the worst parts of history. People need to start understanding that these people are trying to come to America for the American dream. 

The Hispanics are sadly getting shot by police too, but not at as high a rate as Blacks and Whites. Hispanics are being shot at a rate of 26 per million and there are about 40 million Hispanics in the U.S., making the total number of deaths by police around 1,027 Hispanic people.          

Lately, there has been a lot of hate crimes against Asian-Americans because of COVID-19. People are blaming every person of the Asian race for the virus that is spreading throughout the world. Plus, people that are Asian are called many racist names and they have some of the worst stereotypes. They stopped publishing several books by Dr. Seuss because they are racist towards people of color. In If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Suess, there is a page that depicts, “A white boy holds a large gun while standing on the heads of three Asian men”(Adams).  But this still isn’t as widespread as blacks or whites. They're not getting shot by cops or getting beat up in the street for just walking. A survey was taken and “of nearly 700 Asian Americans across the country, 16 percent reported being deliberately coughed or spat on. And 24 percent reported workplace discrimination while 14 percent said they had been barred from an establishment like a shop”(Vaughan). This is discrimination because these people are American and we should treat them like Americans. Americans must deal with the aftermath effects of the global pandemic by joining together to make our country stronger.

There is one race that many Americans dislike, and that is the Muslim race. Americans have distrusted them since Sep 11, 2001. The U.S has been at war with the Muslims for more than 40 years. There are a lot of racist names that some Americans use to offend this race.  Many are being banned from countries around the world.

We as a nation, need to stop using terms like white, black, etc. We are all Americans, so we need to start acting like a united nation. Racism will be either the downfall of this wonderful country or will cause the mass separation of the country. There is still a lot of racism in this country and we as a nation need to work hard to eliminate it, otherwise, we will repeat history. We need to start treating everyone in this country with the same respect regardless of skin color.