Frowning upon Racism

---

In the readings from this chapter, I have come to see racism or colorism,
whatever you want to call it, increase in this country. Obviously,
racism started way back with the owning of slaves. However, in the late
1800s and early 1900s, this same kind of racism played a huge role in
almost every event we are learning about. Prejudice against certain
groups of immigrants that came here occurred from all other groups of
immigrants that had come before them. Then came the Indian removal.
The term “removal” makes the Indians sound like garbage that needs to be
taken out. Whites wanted to make the Indians move further west because
of the color of their skin and their way of life. They were considered
wild savages and uncivilized. However, before the Europeans started
coming to America, living in this uncivilized way was all they knew.
They believed this was the best way for them to live. The Americans
involved in forcing them to move out of the east were simply ignorant.
This kind of ignorance still occurs today. In some countries in Africa,
there is a practice called female circumcision. Most women living in
these cultures have their genitals removed. This is obviously a painful
and sometimes unsafe procedure. As Americans, this seems outrageous and
disgusting. However, to the Africans that believe in it, it is
customary. They believe it decreases promiscuity. Women who do not get
the procedure feel like outcasts in their society. There have been
articles discussing ways of going into these countries and removing this
practice from their culture. However, as horrible as this is, we cannot
understand their ways and it is not our place to end a tradition of
theirs. This is similar to the Indians and how they were judged by
their ways of life and forced out because they were not civilized.

---