Racism is a human rights issues that has been an issue in the world and still is now. Today, when we turn on the television and go online, we see evidence of racism in a lot of things, such as white cops killing black teenagers and not much being done to punish the bad cops. The way that racism has been shown by the police is related to Martin Luther King’s quote of “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (King).
What Martin Luther King is saying is still a dream that has not come true for people. Racism is still alive today, even though 50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act had been around for about 2 years. The country was still in the new stage of trying to make civil rights stick. Some people in the world did not want it to happen (Civil Rights Announcement, 1963). However, 50 years ago, people never dreamed how different things are today. The United States has a black president, President Barack Obama. Before that, many black people were asked to sit outside when white people ate dinner. Black people were considered the inferior race.
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In the music world, many black people were not popular. It was people like Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson the 1980’s that opened the door and helped make a way for more black artists. Before that in the 1960’s, black people did not have much of a voice and were not considered equal to white people.
An increase in equality for people of all races is related to the quote that I chose from the Declaration of Human Rights, from Article #1, which is “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood” (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 2-3).
This is an idea that I’m sure everyone agrees with, because it’s only right to treat everyone around you with kindness, as you would want to be treated if they were interacting with you. This statement was as true 50 years ago as it is now, as people from all time periods have wanted to be treated with respect. However, tensions between people of different races were much higher 50 years ago than they are now, even though tension still exists in our present day, so something like the Declaration of Human Rights had to describe that every person deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, just because they are a fellow human, which is all of the evidence that should be necessary.
Today, with technological advancements such as smart phones and an always-present internet, taking the form of social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat and Instagram, it is easier for us to communicate with our fellow humans, which opens the door to a lot of positive communications, but also, unfortunately, a lot of negative communications as well. When the whole world is connected, the stereotypes and bad attitudes some people harbor towards others are suddenly in the open for everyone to see, and that can have hurtful, racist and even dangerous outcomes. While the plus side of being able to connect and communicate with almost anyone is all of the pleasant, constructive communications that can take place, the negative side of the internet often shows itself as well.
This is especially true for people of the Muslim faith who, after the events of the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States, find themselves as the targets of internet debate and hatred. Muslims are often stereotyped as violent and prone to terrorism, even though the average Muslim person had nothing to do with 9/11.
This is yet another reason why Article #1 of the Declaration of Human Rights is very important today, because it is important to remember that, even though the person that someone is communicating with on the internet isn’t physically there with them, they are still a person, and deserve to be treated with the respect that a person deserves, as a fellow human being.
