When the words racism is mention what comes to mind? To most people racism is

when one belief that his/her genetically physical characteristics is better than the

characteristics of another race. But what does not comes mind is racism did and can

lead to the elimination of another race ,division of a nation and the enslavement of

another race , as what took place in history. In this modern time where there are laws

against discrimination of any sort and words like " we are created equally "are said

almost everywhere, one will think racism does not exist and it is part of history. But racism

is still around because the causes of racism still exist.

Therefore we should examine the causes of racism. Sometimes racism can develop

among people of different race because of the lack of knowledge about the other race

culture, belief and history. Since little is known about the other race their behavior can be

misinterpreted. For example the pilgrims that settled in America taught the Native

Americans were barbaric.

Social norms is also one of the causes of racism because some people are taught

to dislike other race by their family or someone who has great influence on them.And in

some instances they tend to pass what they were taught to the next generation. For

example of a social norm, one of my High school classmate were taught by his parents to

dislike a certain race because they were consider to be "bad influence".

In the film "Skin Deep" one of the students was saying that when one black

person shoplift the whole black community feel the effect because the other races will look

at black people as shoplifters.That is a perfect example of stereotyping where the