Racism: What It Is and How to Deal with It - Uned

A Guide to Talking about Racism | 126
“Well, a scene I saw the other day on the subway, that really surprised me, was
that, there were three seats together, right? And in one there was a girl who was
black and next to her there were two seats, then an empty one and then another
girl. So a young girl and an elderly man got on the subway. So the young girl
went to sit down but when she saw the older man, she said to him ‘Do you want
to sit down?’ and he said, ‘No, I don’t want to sit next to anybody who’s black.”
So, out of those two seats, one was empty and then there was the girl. So this
girl left and the elderly man went to sit down in the seat that was not next to the
black girl. So the young girl sat down and covered up the other seat and said,
‘Excuse me, the thing is I don’t want to sit next to anyone who’s a racist, either”
and the man left. But what surprised me a lot is that, yes, they treat people
pretty badly”
On the other hand, the construction of prejudices and stereotypes is also another way
to create a reality for ourselves out of a larger reality that sometimes presents itself as
hard to cover as a whole. It is impossible to have empirical knowledge about all the
realities that exist. Prejudices and stereotypes 39 help us to shape an idea of these
realities. Hanna Arendt points out that prejudices and stereotypes serve to protect us
from reality, to carry out an exercise of comprehension on the broad complexity of our
surroundings ( Arendt, H., 1999).
Newspaper headlines. What is written with capital letters.
The journalist writes the news, the chief editor decides on the headline.
Collect articles, headlines, web pages on Internet, for a week and pay attention
to the news and radio programs, also pay attention to bits of conversations with
colleagues and friends. From the information you obtain, compare the body of
the news article to the headlines offered. If possible, do this same exercise with
another colleague so that you can later exchange and contrast the information
detected.
39 You will find this term in the glossary.