Racism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Racism - Essay Example Two of these stereotypes are the idea that Chinatown and Chinese people are somehow immoral and dirty. A lot of the background of these and other racial ideas has to do with a shift in the thinking of the nineteenth century "from ethnocentrism to a radical biological determinism," where people tried to come up with scientific proof that one race was somehow better than another (Anderson 585). These resulted in stereotyping of other races and also, such as in the case of Chinatown, the splitting apart from mainstream society of other races so that their lesser qualities would not "contaminate" white society (Anderson 585). Anderson quotes a secretary of state from 1885 in Canada who says that Chinatown is "attended with evils" and that "because of their habits of lodging crowded quarters and accumulating filth, is offensive if not likely to breed disease" (Anderson 586). This idea continues to grow in the period from then until the 1920s. Darwin's ideas and other scientific advances w ere used to argue that Chinese were inferior, dirtier, and that the areas they lived were bad because of this. It was the council of Vancouver who officially labeled the area "Chinatown" in the 1890s and then actually destroyed some of the buildings because of supposed health complaints. The other idea which grew at the same time period was the idea of Chinese immorality. Anderson says the area was seen as "non-Christian, uncivilized, and amoral" and that because of this perception, Chinatown was supposed to be a lawless opium-addicted area with "wickedness unmentionable" (589). At the same time he disagrees that this perception came about purely because Chinese people were not white. He says that instead, the government was motivated by "economic competition" and racial myths which were thoroughly embedded in the government's employees (Anderson 590). 2) In the Aitken reading on school shootings, how is the media depicting these tragic events? And, what is the importance of place i n the varying reactions to the murders? Aitken talks about several school shootings which took place near San Diego in 2001, and compares these to the Columbine shooting that was so shocking when it happened. Several other authors have claimed that the Columbine shooting was inspired by Neo-nazi movements, and that it is disturbing that the media did not report on this information (Aitken 594). Although Aitekn does not think the San Diego shootings were inspired in the same way, he says there is still an element of racism in how the media represented them in news. Specifically this has to do with where the murders took place. Aitken argues that both the place of the school shootings and the way the media reported on them after they happened point towards what he calls "a normalizing and mythic geography of fear" (595). What he means by this seems to be the combination of the old idea everybody has that it can never happen where a person lives because where that person lives, at leas t in America, is always normal, middle-class, and safe. The fear and horror takes place in other parts of the world, or in non-white communities, in places other than the "mythic place of white middle-class America—