History of Racism

In class this week, my group and I read articles dealing with the history of racism. One of the themes that stuck out to me the most was the way people changed the ways they justified keeping others as slaves. It first started with religion. After many African Americans converted to Christianity, they changed the blame to ancestry. Europeans also justified keeping others in bondage by claiming that they were doing them a favor by taking care of them and believing that Africans were not as smart as themselves. I believe that it basically boiled down to fear. They were afraid of these people rising up against them. By oppressing this other race they kept their power. We call this oppression racism. The prominent race puts down the others in order to stay on top. Although slavery is no longer a factor in today's world, racism still exists.
I see examples of it everywhere in my hometown. The "N" word is thrown around constantly. If you don't say it then you are the weird one. Because it is a small city, it is easy to split up where the races live. Most African Americans live on the worse side of town. I also see this in the school. In my honors classes in high school there were only white people. There were only two non white honor graduates. I blame this on racism; however, it's not obvious. At my school many of the white people including teachers and administrators expect less from the African American students. Therefore these students do not have a reason to accomplish anything better. They are made to feel that they are not as smart as their classmates. Racism is not just saying something bad about another race, its feeling that you are better than them because of their race. As a teacher, it is important that you treat every student the same and teach your students that the differences are what makes us better.