by Chris Leahy

Created on: April 17, 2009

Is racism still prevalent, meaning commonly and frequently found, in schools today?

Racism has been reduced, but by no means has it been removed completely. You can find it anywhere in the hallways, in people's verbal chats or by email, in classrooms- wherever. The biggest reason for racism or racial terms is ignorance.

There is the "politically incorrect" racism, which could be the pulling of an African American's hair, or the staring at a poor child with Asian ancestry as a class talks about the Chinese Revolution. On no account should a child be thought to know EVERYTHING about their ancestors' history, nor are they accountable. What their family's history is does not define a student's academic success, personality, character, or any aspect of the person. This is commonly misunderstood.

There is also the upfront ignorance, where people just don't know the full implications of racial terms or other. So, naturally, they causally toss one out once in a while- maybe calling a black kid the n-word, or a Latino the w-word, or an Asian the c-word. Evidently, those are censored for sensitive eyes, but the cause for the use of the word(s) is the same. Today, hardly will you find students with outright anger towards people of certain descent, but may simply think it's cool to use such words, or to rough up someone that isn't their race. Ignorance plays a large role in today's school world of racism.

That's not to say gangs aren't formed. That's not to say social cliques don't develop, and exclude people of different races.
That's not to say violence doesn't occur in schools weekly because of a student's race.

Admittedly, we do not have people segregated into "white" and "black" buses, and don't have "white" and "black" fountains. We also don't have the K.K.K on the march, threatening to mass-murder anyone of African American descent.

But what we do still have are the remnants of centuries of discrimination and hatred now embedded in schools across the world. In England, over a 100,000 incidents have now been documented. In the United States, public school incidents have grown to nearly 1 in 4 students being harassed because of their race.
These figures, however, seem to be on the rise, and are not necessarily declining.

So what causes it?
Not many know, apart from brief recap history from the slave trade to the 1960s Civil Rights. But that's mostly the war between blacks and whites.
What about Asian immigrants, Latinos, Islanders, and so many others?

Those stories crop up too; a few months ago, a Latino was roughed up by a group of white high school kids in the U.S. and one black. He was just walking home, and got "jumped," so to speak.

But as for schools, minorities vs. the majority continually wage war. Students fight, cuss, spray-paint graffiti, and physically injure each other in the classrooms. Racism is still evident; whether you're going to public school or private school, it's still in the classrooms, and is still something that needs to be toned down.

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