Lanre Akinsiku The Price Of Blackness

Mad World
The way a person looks, acts, and moves can tell plenty about an individual. The way one dresses, for example, can define social status, field of work, and even income. It is often said to never judge a book by its cover. However, it is also true that the cover is the first thing that can be seen: it inevitably creates a first impression and it is the main contact with a new unknown person/thing. Lanre Akinsiku, in the article “The Price of Blackness,” demonstrates how appearance influences decisions and reactions of people. He describes the frightening experience of been pulled over by a police officer and receiving an unfair treatment based on the color of his own skin. Being black, according to the behavior of the police officer …show more content…
Discrimination is stated as “action that denies social participation or human rights to categories of people based on prejudice” (“discrimination”). An individual is often discriminated against for various reasons such as age, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, and race/color. My whole life, I have witnessed numerous acts of discrimination, especially in the school environment. For example, children from different cultural/ethnic groups are easily targets for discrimination because of their non-typical look or talk. These prejudice acts, especially at early ages, are often source of behavioral issues as well as depression, isolation, and low self-esteem. Discrimination against someone’s race can also be considered as a form of racism: this is the belief that a culture is superior to another based on the ability to create evolved societies. Racism does not only cause hate between ethnicities, but also frames intolerant individuals against any kind of diversity. The most common conception of racism is to attribute biased stereotypes the somatic …show more content…
Many individuals recognize Charles Darwin as the beginner of this way of thinking. Darwin’s theory is that populations are in competition with each other for natural resources; in this struggle to survive, the environment makes a selection known as “natural selection.” In this process, Darwin describes how the weakest individuals, because of their natural characteristic, do not survive. Only the individuals who are strong and adaptable survive and transmit the genes to the offspring. Common sense seems to dictate that his idea justifies, directly or indirectly, acts of selfishness, racism, and violence. This happened as Darwin’s concept of natural selection evolved from biology to human relationships. Scientifically, humans are “social animals”: our natural instinct is to identify ourselves with determined group. One group distinguishes itself from another because of competition. When confronting different population between each other, it is immediately noticeable the diversity of behaviors, and cultures. Populations are different, but there are not superior ethnicities: in fact, from a genetic point of view, populations do not even exist. In fact populations have always been the product of the meeting of different