POWER AND DIFFERENCE- GENDER, RACE & ETHNICITY

Power and Difference- Gender, Race & Ethnicity

Power and Difference- Gender, Race & Ethnicity

Introduction

This paper discusses my personal experience with a family of John. This family has a mother who is struggling to cope with her teenage son. John is involved in illegal actions and is smoking cannabis frequently. The mother is struggling to cope with her sons challenging behaviour. They are continuously arguing and she has asked for help from social services. The mother is a single parent. The father is not concerned about the family's life and he is presently in prison. The mother also has a history of substance abuse and much of her son's parenting has been done by the maternal grandmother. I have worked with this family in order to soothe the relationship between the mother and her son. The main reason for working with them is the existence of race and gender in this day and age. I believe that they have been victims of Power and difference, race & ethnicity.

Discussion

The term 'racism' refers to the theory that human characteristics and abilities are determined by race and to the practices of hostility towards and annihilation, sterilization, separation (apartheid) and deportation of the excluded 'races'. It has largely replaced the older term 'racialism'. The idea developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explain the hierarchy of interdependence between different groups of people and to justify differences in productive relations and material wealth. Racism was often bound up with nationalism and helped to form certain national identities. With the decline of empire, racialized discourses focused on internal boundaries within nation-states , notably between ethnic minorities or migrant populations and the majority. There is a history of racism against Jews, Muslims, blacks, gypsies, and indigenous and colonized populations.

Racism dates back to the beginning of human existence, when small, isolated communities feared those who looked different or practiced different customs. Among the first civilizations, economic success and technological prowess incited a sense of superiority and the characterization of other population groups as "savage" or in some way inferior. The Roman Empire's active expansion over the rest of Europe, for example, involved subjugation of fierce, war-ready Germanic tribes that it deemed "barbarians." The ancient Greeks also harbored negative stereotypes of foreign peoples, such as the Persians. This paper discusses racism and its current situation.

The extent of the problem of racism for some races especially African Americans in contemporary society is a topic of heated debate, especially given the election in 2008 of Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United States. The Economist magazine claims Obama's election “provided solid evidence that race matters less in America than pessimists suppose”. (Wise, 12-20)

The extent to which race still matters is relevant to determining the extent to which racism is a serious problem in the United States, whether racism is institutionalized in society and culture, whether affirmative action programs should be pursued, and what—if anything—needs to be done about ...