nature of racism

Racism, though long deemed to hold been eradicated in modern society, is regrettably more ingrained than once thought. It is not provided centralized in America, where slavery was once a dominant issue, but it has roots everywhere in the world that hu macrocosms have reached. As George Orwell recounts in his narrative, injure an Elephant, racialism feeds upon numerous psychological f exploitors. These atomic number 18 the same psychological factors that Memmi too come inlines in his essay, Racism and Oppression. The overlap of their works, which is seen through tracing the psychological foundations of racism, provides a framework in which to examine this general condition.The first point of intersection between the two works is in Memmis declaration that to be big, each the racist need do is climb on soul elses back. This someone else is the most obvious victim of racism the poor, the weak, and the unfortunate. The racist does not try to oppress those who be known to be strong, as they know they cannot step on these people on their expressive style to perceived superiority. Instead, they turn their attention to those who are already defeated, to the people who have on the whole but given up fighting. These were the people who were the perpetual victims, never the victors. Hence, they commission all their racist attention on the people who, with very trivial effort, acquiesce to them, as they have already been shown to be defeated while and again in the annals of history.And indeed, this is how the British came astir(predicate) to conquer the Burmese. When the elephant began destruction the town, Orwell was called to restrain the animal, as the Burmese population had no weapons and were quite bewildered against it. If the people had no weapons to protect themselves from a creature they were in day by day contact with and one that they knew could very well erupt in a rage anytime, then hopes for any sort of sophisticated weaponry to shield o ff their invaders is dim.Furthermore, these people were very poor, living in a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf. Contrast this with the homes of the Europeans back in their own country, which utilized locomote architectural technologies and materials. With the flimsy materials the Burmese used to build their houses, the Europeans knew that they were a disinclined people, one that history left behind in the past. As such, they recognize that it would be easy to conquer and subjugate the Burmese.However, Memmis point is refuted in Orwells realization of the real nature of imperialism and the real motives for which despotic governments act as he sets expose to shoot the elephantThe group was watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it I could feel their two g-force wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the washcloth mans dominion in the East.Here was I, the white man with his gun, rest in front of the unarmed native crowd seemingly the conduct actor of the piece but I reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own independence that he destroysTo come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having through no issue no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white mans life in the East, was one long campaign not to be laughed at.The white man, in this scenario, is the one who is now macrocosm controlled, manipulated, and even, in a w ay, subjugated by the Burmese. Through colonizing, they themselves have run low the ones colonized. The Burmese people, instead of beingness the ones stepped upon by the British, have become the ones who are stepping on the backs of these historically strong people. As they know the British are fastidious about cultivating an appearance of power and authority, the Burmese exploit this weakness for their own advantage.A second point that appears in Orwells literary work is that there exists the surprising racism practiced by the loaded man himself. In theory, people who are victims of abuse and oppression should bandage together, for it is through one another(prenominal) that they are able to weather the in kind treatment and subjugation imposed on them. In number, they should find strength. In practice, however, this fails to hold. nonetheless the people who have been victims of racism can inflict and carry out the same kind of abuse on others and becoming racists themselves. In snap an Elephant, Orwell illustrates this reverse form of racism by depicting the various ship canal in which both he and his fellow Europeans were insulted and jeered at by the Burmese. world a sub-divisional police officer of the town, Orwell became the favorite target of the anger, ire, and anti-European sentiment of the Burmese. This is because he was extremely visible, going around the town as he went about his duties. Furthermore, it was his job to enforce the rules, which are made by the British Empire. though the Burmese had no guts to raise a riot, they certainly carried out their insults in more personal ways.One time, during a soccer match, Orwell was tripped by a Burmese player and the referee, another Burmese, simply looked the other way. The crowd roared with laughter, and the Burmese players, knowing they could get away with such an insult, continued clear Orwell on the football field. As a result, whenever he was spied on the streets, insults were infinitely th rown at him when he was already several meters away.Finally, Memmi points to a universal conclusion about racism, that everyone, or nearly everyone, is an unconscious(p) racist, or a semi-conscious one, or even a conscious one. It encompasses people from all cultures, races, and religions, including the most-liberal disposed(p) man, the most politically sensitive nation, and the highest-educated woman who do not needfully fit into the mode of the stereotypical racist. Different people approach racism differently, offering differing logical reasons and interpretations, though it always boils down to the same thing we are all guilty of being racists in one way or another, overtly or covertly.Orwells Shooting an Elephant, by presenting ideas that status with and vie for the Burmese people, can seem to be anti-racist. Indeed, Orwell explicitly states his repel with the empire theoretically and secretly, of course I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the Brit ish. Yet, Orwell is not the morally scrupulous anti-racist he paints himself to be.Just a hardly a(prenominal) lines after this declaration of being all for the Burmese, he describes them as being evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make his job impossible. His greatest joy in the world, on the other hand, would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priests guts. These sentiments, he said, were simply the normal by-products of imperialismOn the other hand, if Orwell was one of those people whom Memmi described as being an unconscious racist, his fellow British were the fully-conscious types. When Orwell was discussing with some other officers his act of violent death an elephant for killing a coolie, the younger men in the group responded that he was impose on _or_ oppress for doing so, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. For them, the worth of a human life, especially one of their colonized victims, is negligible compared to the worth of an el ephant. It is simply another way of saying that the life of the people under their rule was not important.Orwell and Memmi both present the universal problem of racism. Though they do not agree on all points, they do agree that racism comes at a huge cost, both for the racist and the victim.