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Racism And Racism

Decent Essays

Racism is defined as ‘prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior’ according to Oxford Dictionary. When talking about racism and discrimination, many people think back to the time of the Jim Crow laws. These laws allowed racial segregation in the southern states of the United States of America. Having separate restaurants, drinking fountains, and even different schools for whites and blacks was all common during the Jim Crow Era. People most likely think back to the violence and riots that were a result of these laws. Although physical violence was a major aspect of the time, most do not realize that mental and emotional abuse was a huge result as well and often times went unnoticed. W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin share that racism not only results in physical abuse, but also mental and emotional abuse which can lead to mental health issues and unique ways of processing the world by describing these effects as diseases.
Baldwin shares that outside of his neighborhood of Harlem, black people were made a target for hate crimes and racism, which ultimately led to a distorted mental state. He describes his own paranoia in the quote, "People were moving in every direction but it seemed to me, in that instance, that all of the people I could see, and many more than that, were moving toward me, against me, and that everyone was white," (Baldwin 405). His warped perception of the world

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