The Causes of Racial Tension

Today, there is racial tension all around the world. Racial tension means the feeling that exists when people do not trust and be aggressive to each other. In Malaysia, racial tension has deepened recently. The Indian government has released an advisory for its foreign students that studying in Australia which showed that racial tension appeared around the White and Indian (“MEA issues travel advisory to Indian students in Aus”, 2010). Racial tension between the Han and Uighur communities in Xinjiang, China was enhanced in July 2009. There are several factors that causes racial tension to happen such as religion topic, government policy, prejudice and discrimination.

Next, racial tension is also easily caused by prejudice and discrimination. According to Jon (1997), “prejudice is a general characteristic of human relationships” (p. 232). Jon (19970 found “prejudice is usually considered the cause of discrimination”. Prejudice is easily being found in someone to the others; especially they are from different races. They may treat the other races irrespectively and violently. First, people will not take it seriously. However, when the cases happen frequently and massively, people won’t take them as specials cases. The races that besieged will tend to feel anxious and strike back in order to protect themselves. Therefore, it tends to create racial tension. For examples, incidents of violence against Indians in Australia were happened frequently in last few months. Later on, an Indian student was killed. These have damaged the relationship between the Indians and Australians and created racial tension. Besides, African-Americans were still discriminated seriously by the Americans even after American Civil War. They had perspective that the African-Americans were slaves like they used to be. They received unequal treatment until the success of African-American Civil Rights Movement. The racial tension was existed during the period.

The government policy causes the racial tension as well. The governments launch policies that encourage the development of countries. But if some policies tend to benefit certain races, whether they are majority or minority, will cause the dissatisfaction of other races. In their perspective, all races should be treated equally regardless the number of members. Therefore, they may protest to show their dissatisfaction. If their protest were overwhelmed and the government led by the majority, the racial tension is ensured happen. Racial tension between the Han and Uighur communities in Xinjiang, China is an example. Uighur was the minority in China but the large community in Xinjiang.