Institutional Racism and Its Effects on Britain - Essay Example

Institutional Racism Student’s name: Institution: Instructor: Subject: Institutional Racism Institutional racism is the collective failure by the organization to provide the appropriate professional services to the people because of their ethnic region, culture or colour (Philip & Bowling, 2010, p. 22). It promotes a system of inequality that is grounded on race. In most of the situations, this kind of racism occurs in private and public universities, private business corporations like the media outlets and the public government bodies. As a result, those who are affected by this racism have more difficulties in finding access to the opportunities, services and even goods in the society. When such discrepancy becomes like a habit in the institutions, it becomes very hard to change the situation. As a result, racism would dominate this kind of institution and any new comer would continue reinforcing it by confirming to the traditions of that institution. This paper seeks to explain how institutional racism has affected Britain. Institutional racism is often taken as way through which racism pervade in an institution and as a result the people who are working in that institution are regarded as racist and bad elements of the institution (Young, 2002, p. 99),. The racist culture often sets bad culture and even the good people working in such institutions finds themselves part of it and unable to resist it. A failure that may come up due to individuals failing to handle the race grievances becomes the major problem. Individuals may be discriminated for the reasons of personality make up. Such discrimination may take a strong root in the institution then persist for the simple reason that the membership of such an institution is dominated by the white or the rich and the persons they are dealing with are black or poor. As a result the institutional racism would be a product of the fact of stereotype of a minority poor people. The police institution for example, provides a good example of how the institutional racism is persisted by those in the power. Since they are the ones in charge of reinforcing the law, the police would easily be used by those in power to enforce promote unfairness between different groups of people. Of all the agencies of the criminal justice, the police are the most likely habituated to the technique of the pre-emptive criminalization. This is more so because, a substantial part of the tasks that are involved with the police are related to the general management and scrutiny of the unemployed, poor and the powerless. Tolman & Mullendore( 2003, p. 228) observes that persistent negative stereotype is part of the reason why institutional racism is continues to grow. Intern, this stereotyping create a cultural pattern that greatly erodes the interpersonal relations. To eliminate this kind of misunderstanding between the groups that are involved would involve overall creation of a system that does not discriminate a person on the basis of who that person is or looks. According to Acker J. (2006, p. 448), due to racism, the inequality regimes have comes up. Inequality regime results when certain groups of people have more privileges than others. This inequality normally results to a socially defined difference which is based on historical domination and oppression, culture and the physical characteristics. Racism is normally justified by the entrenched beliefs. Sometimes, ethnicity accompanies race all of which would result to inequality. In Britain, race is often integrated with the class hierarchies, though in a different pattern than that of gender. According to Phillip & Bowling (2010, p. 217), in Britain, the struggle for equality started with the demand for equal political and legal rights. However, even today it is not true that there is one law for both the rich and the poor. Once there was one law for one group of people and another law for another group of people, poor and rich, country and town, women and men, layman and clergyman, Catholic or non-conformist, Jews and the Church of England. There have never been laws lasting more than a century in England that have been giving tolerance to the different in the skin colour of the British citizens. However, there have been laws that have always been very restrictive to the Asians and the black people who would want to enter in Britain or want to become the citizens in Britain. Continued struggle have always been experienced where groups struggle in order to see that there are equal laws that are applied for all the citizens. Petch (2001, p. 205) observes that the fight for equality has partially won for the people to have equal political and legal duties and rights. Again the state has to ensure that there are equal opportunities for all regardless of who you are. As a result, the universal, free and compulsory education that is fully funded by the state was introduced for the young. The elite grammar schools that are in the state sector were then largely replaced by what is today called the comprehensive schools. The university education was then vastly expanded and most of the opportunities were sort in the state provisions so as to ensure that in all the situations the citizens were guaranteed a minimum of shelter, clothing, food, medical care and the access to physical and mental improvement facilities. Racism has greatly contributed to a number of racist beliefs on the ability of different people (Reid, and Jarvie, 2000, p. 218). As a result, there are many arguments on race relations to the activities that people involves themselves in everyday life. A number of events, both positive and negative, have been triggered by the issue of racism in Britain. Sporting activities were enhanced in order to breach this gap. Sporting activities have some inherent properties that would make it possible in harmonizing and integrating the race relations. The colonialism and Imperialism significantly contributed to the institutional racism in the Britain country. Phillip & Bowling (2010, p. 283) observes that at the time that they were colonizing other countries, the British often saw their colonies as inferior people who would not achieve anything by themselves. The communities that were colonized hated the actions of the British colonist. The conflicts between the two parties ended up creating very strong and bad relationships between the colonizers and the colonized peoples for a very long period of time. In the modern society, much as the citizens are civilized, there are still elements of bad relationships that were attributed to the bad relationships that were triggered by the fore fathers. Most of the claims that arise out of the institutional racism have produced stereotypes, myths and prejudice about one ethnic community often minor. By the nature that the community may be minor, it would be impossible for it to be properly represented in forums that require equality. Packer (2007, p. 28) explains that due to this kind of situation, discriminations arise not because the people in the community are bad, but because of bad rumors about them. Popular arguments of discrimination are mainly rooted within the traditions, political thought and the culture of the minor community. The earliest studies of Britain race studies in 1940 majored on the immigrants colour and how the racist related to the white Britons (Reid & Jarvie, 2000, p. 212). The studies of this period majorly concentrated on the interactions that were there between certain groups of the white that were in the local situations and the coloured immigrants. The second major theme involved the role that was played by the imperialism and the colonial history when they wanted to determine the popular conceptions of race and colour. By the time 1948 Marxist theories on the race had proposed for the racism involved a class of rulers whose main ideology was developed under the capitalism with the aim of dividing the black and the white workers. The divide and rule became a means through which the rulers were able to drive their agendas. It is these kinds of bad traditions that were set by the in British that have periodically taking new forms and becoming almost impossible to totally eliminate them completely. In conclusion, institutional racism gains root when the majority of the people in organization create a culture of discriminating certain groups of people either of their religion, culture or the race. These kinds of discrimination have mostly results to negative results both to the people who are discriminating and those who are being discriminated. In Britain, educational, social and governmental policies have a times been charged with the institutional racism. References Acker J. (2006). Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in Organizations, Gender and Society. 20 (4), 441-464. Dennis, N, Erdos, G & Al-Shahi, A.(2000). Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics. Great Britain, Cromwell Press. Ignatieff, M, Brien, M, Skidelsky, R, Green, G, Grieve G.D, & French, J. (2000) Institutional Racism and the Police: Fact or Fiction?. Great Britain, Cromwell Press. Packer, H. (2007), The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford Ca, Stanford University Press. Petch, E. (2001). Risk management in UK mental health services: an overvalued idea, Psychiatric Bulletin, 25(6), 203-205. Phillip, C. & Bowling, B (2010), Racism, Ethnicity and Criminology: developing minority perspective, British Journal of Criminology. 43.2, 269-290. Reid, I, and Jarvie, G. (2000), Race relations, sociology of sport and the new politics of race and racism. Leisure Studies., 211-219. Tolman, O. & Mullendore, K.( 2003), Risk Evaluations for the Courts: Is Service Quality a Function of Specialization? Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 34(3), 225-232. Young, J. (2002), The Exclusive Society, London, Sage. Read More