Essay On Racialisation

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• Racialisation- Racialisation is a sociology concept which describes the process by which people are categorised by their apparent differences. (Robb and Douglas, 2004) Racialisation can also be associated with dehumanising people and producing racial identities. When slavery was abolished in the USA is an example of racialisation. Some would argue that it was a key moment in black’s racialisation. Because of their differences, blacks were not free, at least not to the extent of whites. They had to deal with the consequences of anti-black riots, segregation and a whole range of discriminatory acts. (Wolfe, 2002)
• Ethnocentrism- Ethnocentrism is the belief that a certain nation, group or culture that one belongs to is superior to another. People within these nations, cultures or groups often show strong loyalty and give preferential treatment to others within their group. They also often share a mutual dislike to those that are not part of their nation, culture or group. Ethnocentrism could be defined as self-centeredness but on a huge scale. Ethnocentrism is quite simple to make happen as shown in the 1970s by a man called Henri Tajfel, who conducted a series of experiments in Bristol, England. Along with the help of his colleagues, he showed that simply putting individuals into two different social groups was enough to show in-group favouritism. During the experiment, participants were given the chance to allocate money to other participants who were only known by what social group they belonged to. Participants would choose to give higher amounts of money to participants in their own group rather than a member of the outgroup, even without knowing anything about the personal identification of the participants. It was interest...

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... that this is a particular attitude or belief held by the student audience they are aiming their competition at. Again as mentioned earlier, individuals are susceptible to outside influences (Cashmore and Troyna, 1990) and if the media continues to socially construct this view of Thailand then this view will continued to be held in years to come and still be a piece of ideological racism.
In conclusion I believe the media plays a vital role in our views and beliefs of race and also contributes significantly to the social construction of race. They use many ideas to do this but racial stereotypes in particular. I think unless the issue of back handed racism in the media is addressed, we will continue to live in a world in which certain groups of people are victimised just because of a different appearances, cultures or even because they are believed to be inferior.

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