Racism is Poisoning Our Society

Racism remains a major issue in today's society. More specifically, racism is targeted towards black people and Muslim people. In today’s society, many people throw around racial stereotypes such as black people are all “thugs”, all Muslims are terrorists, all Asians can’t drive, etc. Racism is complicated to understand, as we wonder why till this day this issue has not been solved. Moreover, if we don’t continue to bring light to this horrible prejudice, the issue will never be solved and it will continue to be passed on to many generations.

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I am here to relate the current issue of racism to the essay we read in class, “Typecast as a Terrorist”, by Riz Ahmed. Riz Ahmed is a famous actor that does huge shows and movies. Despite that, he is still a regular human that has been wrongly mistreated by people of a different race. When he was a child in the 1980s, he and his brother were stopped by a skinhead and had a knife towards his throat because he was considered “black.” Many many years later, a similar situation happened to him while he was in an airport. It was “post 9/11” and this time he was held thrown against a wall and pinned in a painful wrist-lock by British officers. He was now labeled as a Muslim, however, in their words, he was considered a terrorist. The British officers insulted, threatened, and attacked him. The moral of the story is that what those officers did to him was illegal. He could’ve sued these officers but instead, he decided to bring light to the issue and wrote about it and sent it to journalists.

"As my acting career developed, I was no longer cast as a radical Muslim – except at the airport."

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This story by Riz strongly portrays the issue of racism that is broadcasted on the news several times and continues to be a current world issue. In the UK, students at a university are demanding for the world to take action due to racism that occurred directly towards them. Chris Omanyondo, Arsalan Motavali and Roman Ibra, all 21, have come forward to describe incidents of racism. The black student has been called an offensive term towards blacks several times by a group of students. Another student has been named “Paki” multiple times and has made offensive comments about Muslims and 9/11.

L to R: Arsalan Motavali, Chris Omanyondo and Roman Ibra said universities needed to let all students know that racism was not OK.

As I have described, racism is a serious issue that needs to bring light upon and action must be taken. Just as Riz Ahmed mentioned in his essay, this issue is a current world issue and if no one steps into the solution, it will never be solved.