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

Module 1 – What is Racism? | 21
and the process of Spanish colonization in America, seeing
the causes of present-day immigration in the effects of the
process of colonization by Spain that their countries
underwent in the past
• the perception that these adults with immigrant origins (from
their same places of origin) work more hours for lower
salaries
Analyzing the critical incident
How is racism reflected in the critical incident? Directly, indirectly or both? How
do you think young people would react to these kinds of racism? What
consequences do they have? Is there any difference between a direct act of
racism and an indirect one?
This variety of perceptions broadens and refines enormously what the teenagers
themselves associated directly with the concepts of racism and discrimination. Now
we will attempt to offer a framework of reference that will help us to understand the
complexity of these ideas and to relate them to one another.
Reflecting on our own experiences
Before we continue reading, let us stop a moment to think. Write down all the
ideas that you associate with racism, without worrying about any apparent order
or logic; we are only trying to discover what we relate to experiences of racism.
Write down ideas, experiences, feelings, situations, etc.
If you are doing the activity in a large group, you can first do it individually and
later share the results, or you can propose a brainstorming session and organize
the ideas on a blackboard in order to consider them later. If you are the person
stimulating the group, read and reflect previously on the contents that are
developed throughout the module.
In order to begin to perceive the complexity of the phenomena to which we are
referring, we think the metaphor of an iceberg is useful, where the part that is visible is
only a small portion of an enormous mass of ice, the majority of which is submerged
under the water and, therefore, invisible. The same thing happens with racism: the
majority of its mechanisms work unconsciously and go unnoticed even when people
use them against their will, as they often do.