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Definition Essay: Prejudice And Racism

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Honestly, I hate the way people use the terms racist and racism. To begin, let’s get this out of the way, the definition of racism according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is, “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race” and according to dictionary.com, racist is “a person who believes in racism, the doctrine that one’s own particular racial group is inferior to the others”. Finally, the term race according to dictionary.com is “a group of persons related by common descent or heredity”. If we were to go by these terms, then by definition I am a racist, I call it being proud of your heritage. What I am not okay with and completely disagree with, is discrimination, which is “the practice of unfair treating of persons or groups of people differently from other people or groups of people” according to the Merriam Webster dictionary. I disagree with Elaine Quijano’s article, “Are college campuses becoming more racist” first, because in my view I don’t think it’s an issue of racism, but an issue of discrimination and whether college …show more content…
In the article Elaine Quijano wrote that, “According to the Department of Education, the number of racial complaints reported on college campuses has increased”, this does not convince me that college campuses are becoming more racist. Perhaps what its saying is that students are becoming more aware of how to report discrimination incidents. Even if the students are learning how to report discrimination incidents, the act of reporting an incident is not going to deter students from discriminating, but having a zero tolerance for all discrimination

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