Religion and Racism

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Religion and Racism

Racism is prejudice against people of another race or ethnic group.

Prejudice means pre-judging: making up your mind about someone or

something when you have not considered the facts or the evidence.

Racism has been around for a very long time, one of the first times

that it happened on a major scale was when the Jews moved to Egypt,

but were put into slavery because the Egyptians thought of them as

inferior because their skin colour and religious beliefs.

People are, or can be racist due to three main points, the first is

that they were brought up by parents who were racist, and they

automatically adopted the views of them because that was all they knew

as right. Secondly, when a person came into your land and you had

never seen anyone like them before, people could be scared, because

people fear what they do not understand.

Finally, people who live in an area of poverty often need someone to

blame, a famous case of this was in Germany, where food and money

shortages were blamed on the Jews and this is one the reasons why they

were targeted and killed.

One type of racism is colour prejudice, this is when a person has a

problem or does not like a person, for the sole reason that they have

a different colour skin to that of themselves. There are many things

that a person might do to show that they do not want this particular

person or group of people here. They might incite racial hatred, this

is when a person makes racist comments, which might encourage other

people to discriminate against others because of there colour or

ethnic background. Another is to use violence to get your point

across.

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...solve anything, and even though racism is wrong, violence is just as wrong. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are people in the past who have achieved a lot to cancel out racism without turning to violence. Although it took them longer to achieve it, in the end less people were hurt so violence does not pay off.

Bibliography

1. Contemporary Moral Issues- Joe Jenkins- Heinemann- 0-435-30311-2

2. Christian Perspectives- Libby Ahluwahlia- Hodder and Stoughton-

0-340-78965-4

3. Today's Issues and Christian Beliefs- Simon and Christopher

Danes- Lion- 0-7459-2521-9

4. Racism (21st Century Debates)- Cath Senker- Hodder Children's

Books- 0-7502-4209-4

5. Racism (Just The Facts)- Adrian Cooper- Heinemann Library-

0-4311-6140-2

6. Racism (Global Issues)- Samid Garg- Hodder Wayland- 0-7502-1173-3

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