The Importance of Racial Acceptance in a Global Community: the Issues and Solutions
Global and ethnic understanding is a prominent issue seen in America, especially in light of recent events of hate crimes against Asian-Americans and overwhelming numbers of racist incidents due to a lack of racial awareness. While this problem encompasses many facets of social issues, I think that we can reduce these incidents by providing a global education to small towns where it would be difficult to gain cultural exposure. Having a greater range of experiences and workshops focused on diversity will allow individuals to think more open-mindedly about different cultures and ideas. Additionally, it would be beneficial to look overseas at different countries to both understand the roots of racism and additional ways to address it. I believe that an education in cultural awareness, especially in small towns, would greatly benefit our society is becoming more racially accepting while gearing people towards a better, more global environment in both a classroom and work setting.
Racism in America seems to be centralized in small towns where racial exposure is almost nonexistent. In these situations, it can be easy to become more culturally unaware of others and to avoid learning and accepting different racial groups which creates a border against minority members. As a result, I think that this ostracizes different racial groups in these towns and creates a communal sense of animosity and hatred towards them. Culturalism has to be oppressed to try to fit in with the majority and racial comments and “hate crimes” are not viewed as wrong or out of place. Thus, even though the minority makes up a minuscule number in these small towns, it is still important that we address the problems seen from racial ignorance and support and try to create a more accepting community for the betterment of all people.
Specifically, for me, I have personally experienced both aspects of racial and cultural awareness in America. Specifically, growing up in the small town of Green Bay, Wisconsin, my community is mostly white and, in my entire neighborhood, my family and I are the only minorities. Even at a young age, my “almond-shaped” eyes were considered to be anomalies with my friends, and they often pointed out our differences from my straight black hair to the Korean food that I ate. While these observations were innocent and based on childlike curiosity, as we grew older and these differences separated us even more, these comments turned into sharp jabs at me and my race. Instead of making general impressions about my Korean side, strangers attacked me for the way that I looked and called me racist slurs while in school. I felt like these attacks were fueled by both hate against my culture and the ignorance gained from the lack of racial exposure. There were often strong stereotypical and racial impressions that people had about me immediately based on “small-town” thinking and lack of exposure to different cultures and races. I felt like by simply re-educating or exposing these people to a larger diversity of ideas and cultures, I could more easily be accepted with my community at home.
However, it is important to remember that the issue of the lack of racial awareness does not stop in one town; this is prevalent around the world and has been a centuries-old problem with no clear global solution to help combat this. Specifically, similarly to America, in Korea, racism, especially against foreigners, is a prevalent issue. Foreigners often get racially profiled and discriminated against simply for their nationality and culture. This is especially seen in international students in Korean colleges who get mistreated by their classmates and faculty through “feelings of unacceptance..and disrespectful conduct because of one’s ethnicity” (Lee and Kiyong, 2017). Similar to my experience, alienation is a huge social issue that encompasses the principles of racism. These experiences in Korea are a universal issue that can easily translate to many other countries’ specific experiences of racism.
This mainly has to do with Korea’s views of nationality or superiority of their culture over others, which creates a sense of hierarchy and thus discrimination against other “lesser cultures.” While it might seem insignificant, I think that understanding the root of racism is equally important to address ways on how to fix it. This reveals a lot about how certain countries think and explains why these problems need to be addressed locally and not internationally.
When I went abroad to Korea, I experienced this nationalistic ideology because they were not exactly accepting of my American side either. Even though I went to many metropolitan areas where diversity would not be hard to find, I still experienced moments of discrimination. They called me culturally incompetent for speaking English and, while these attacks were less hateful than the ones I experienced in America, I still felt shunned by the Korean community. In Korea, culture or race is not skin deep and, while I might be fully Korean, my inability to speak Korean or fully know about cultural traditions in that area made me inferior to them. Because of this, I felt alienated and shunned by my “own country”. Thus, from both of my experiences in America and Korea, I can understand how racial awareness is still a prevalent issue around the world, despite these distinct differences. I think that now more than ever, it is important to have an education on cultural awareness and exposure, especially starting at a young age, which is essential to increasing understanding towards different races and promoting a global way of thinking. This can ensure that all communities and races feel welcomed and can help reduce racism towards minority groups.
These observations lead to the interesting viewpoint that, although America and South Korea face similar problems of racial discrimination and cultural awareness, they stem from different issues. In America, racism seems to be a result of hate and malice towards other cultures, which can create feelings of animosity and lead to more violent crimes. However, in South Korea, these issues are driven more in an economic sense; as Keith Richburg states, “Much of what I’ve seen in Asia can be attributed to the naive racism of ignorance..with lighter skin being associated with a higher social class rather than a different ethnicity” (Richburg, 2016). Korea is driven less on “hate” and more on cultural misconceptions and nationalistic viewpoints, creating an entirely different issue from America. Thus, I think that seeing racism from a worldly viewpoint helps us understand that, while racism and cultural awareness is a global issue, we need to address this issue in a local sense. As seen in America and Korea, this issue stems from problems that vary from country to country based on cultural stances or integrated viewpoints, and, as a result, needs to be addressed differently for each country.
However, no matter where this issue stems from, as a community, we still need to find ways to fix it. Even though the bases of racial ignorance are all the same, the result and negative impact that it has is universal. Every group that faces hate against their kind and culture feels ostracized and disconnected from their own community, something that is difficult to face for anyone. From personal experiences myself, I understood the differences behind the racial incidents that I faced, but I still felt the isolation that resulted from it. It is extremely difficult to be shunned just because of your culture and race, which is something that is still prevalent around the world. As a result, we have to try to create an environment where global thinking and racial acceptance become the norm.
In America, reeducation in cultural awareness should be more focused on acceptance and understanding of different cultures while abroad, this focus should shift to being more welcoming and willing to learn about new cultures. By tailoring these programs to each countries’ specific needs and wants, we will be able to address these cultural issues and reach resolutions in a faster, more efficient manner. However, with this being said, I believe that there should be a baseline format that we should encourage countries to implement. Especially now, having a general reeducation in cultural and racial awareness can benefit most regions, especially small towns where this diversity might be hard to find and understand. This focus should be implemented throughout a young age and into adulthood to encourage greater cultural understanding and a stronger community while preparing people for working in a global world.
Especially in adolescents, having an education basis in procuring more global-geared thinking, helps to enforce and promote these ideas of racial acceptance at a young age. In Korea, there are already programs and studies where they encourage this way of thinking in a classroom environment to help promote more multicultural exposure and understanding. In situations such as elementary/middle-school education, it is important to tailor this focus towards educating the teachers and having them relay this in a classroom environment. Furthermore, “Teachers with greater multicultural sensitivity have reciprocal relationships by positively influencing others and..have high-quality teaching strategies and construct a positive classroom atmosphere that elicits encouraging” (Huh, et. al, 111–112). As seen with this Korean study, since teachers play a heavy role in a student’s education, they must be the ones to try and enforce cultural awareness in a classroom setting positively and constructively. Having this education is essential and vital in an adolescent’s life to help enforce this way of thinking at a young age. These positive effects can be seen in experimental studies here in America where, after dialogues and information focused on racial awareness, the majority of adolescents were able to become more ethnically aware by almost 20% (Adriana et. al, 2012). This information and data are extremely vital to study and understand because this displays how education in a classroom setting for children is essential to help them understand racial acceptance so that they can be more aware and open to learning on a global scale. I would especially like to emphasize that this change was most prominently seen in areas of lower education where this type of cultural learning could be difficult to obtain. Thus, this education should be especially enforced in more rural areas where diversity is less common. Additionally, by focusing a global education towards adolescents, this way of thinking will become more natural and innate which will more easily translate over to future interactions and environment.
However, I am not saying that education on racial awareness should stop at a young age. Especially in small areas where this exposure might be difficult, addressing these issues should be an ongoing education that continues into older individuals of college-age and beyond. Studies involved in this analysis display that, “Using a 10-year longitudinal sample of 8,634 alumni from 229 institutions, diversity workshop participation is significantly and positively related” towards individual growth, beliefs, and social skills (Bowman et.al, 2016). I think that this shows that having an open environment geared towards racial acceptance in older individuals is important in aiding individual growth and understanding of ethnic issues. In small areas, people can forgo this experience due to the lack of opportunity, but, as seen in these studies, this is essential in preparing people for the future of working with others in a global environment and market (Diggles, 2014). It not only increased a change in the participant’s personal beliefs and thinking, but it also allowed them to better interact with their colleagues. While cultural awareness workshops should be implemented in all college environments, it is important to focus this education on smaller communities as well to increase exposure to a global world.
While there are many positives towards having a global education, this is something that might not easily be recognized and wanted by the general public. Issues around having these topics being implemented in an educational setting is that it can take away from one’s core education. On top of that, many people can be resistant to these changes because of the unwillingness to address these social issues and find ways to change their way of thinking. As a result, it would be a challenge to implement and encourage individuals to think and act more globally (Diggles, 2014). However, although these issues are valid, this does not take away from the fact that racial awareness is still a prevalent problem in America that needs to be addressed and worked through.
There are many possible solutions to combat the problems presented above. Addressing the first issue, I think that education in globalization is equally important to any other subject that one might take in a classroom setting because it aids in both individual and societal growth. These skills are essential for a work and classroom environment and help an individual fit in and contribute to a global society. Delving into the second issue, especially in a small town where change can be hard to facilitate, it might be difficult to get the general public to actively participate in these workshops and global education. While resistance might be met at first, this should not stop or inhibit the promotion of racial awareness. We can combat this by creating more community and social-based events aimed towards racial and cultural growth to create an inclusive environment that still focuses on these issues (Diggles, 2014). In other words, we can make workshops and events both educational and fun to promote active participation and a larger attendance.
While these solutions solve problems that might be faced with the reception of global education, we have to address issues that we might run into with finding ways to promote racial awareness. For example, in my area, there are small workshops like “Passports around the World” or “Taste of India” where we can find snippets of a diverse environment. In these programs, college students or community members would bring small cultural traditions or objects such as food and use them to help introduce their culture to others. These usually take place in a private venue or on a college campus and are “pay to participate programs,” meaning that they are funded by participant payments. Thus, while these activities are fun and engaging, it can be difficult to find these events past adolescent age and they can get a little pricey. More importantly, since they introduce small aspects of a singular culture, it is difficult to promote multiracial awareness and understanding of cultural acceptance as a whole. Cultural awareness is completely different from culture introduction, and I think that it is important that, as a community, we have workshops and events geared to people of all ages that focus specifically on the topic of racial awareness. I believe that it is especially important to emphasize that this “reeducation” should encompass many facets of cultural understanding to ensure the best possible solution to racial inequality. As stated by Hyein Kim, “Multicultural education in Korea should move beyond merely tolerating, celebrating, and co-existing with ‘Other’ students. Multicultural education should include exploring inequalities, stereotypes, and discrimination, and should teach social justice.” It is important that we, as a community, learn to celebrate and actively learn about these differences instead of learning to just tolerate or live with them. This way, they introduce a wide variety of ideas and cultural acceptance instead of just one aspect for a broader understanding.
While this is essential to community and societal growth, it can be difficult to find a more readily available source of global education. Thus, I think that, in these small areas, it is important to encourage minority members of the community to step up to share their culture and experiences/discrimination that they face because of their race. By doing so, they can help share personal accounts and ways to become racially conscious. More importantly, promoting multicultural awareness through their community engagement can bring in a larger audience and encourage active participation. Additionally, as seen with Ariel Beaujot’s project “Hear, Here” we can implement technology to bring greater racial awareness on issues seen in society in places where it is difficult to bring in racial diversity. With this project, Beaujot’s team put up signs and phone booths around the city encouraging people to dial a toll-free number to hear stories and learn more about racial injustices or issues in certain areas (Beaujot, A). I believe that this would be a great way to implement more global and racial experiences because it makes these resources readily available to the public while encouraging people to learn on a wider scale. Additionally, these activities are fun and engaging, which would bring in a greater range of participation. Even though organizing global events in small areas could be a challenge due to a lack of resources, there are many possible solutions to overcome this barrier.
Although it is not impossible, global education, as seen with the above solutions, will be difficult to fully implement on a global scale. Consequently, this leads to the question of, “Is a global education and racial acceptance really that important?” I think that the answer to this dilemma is multi-faceted in that this encompasses all ranges of social interactions and individual acceptance. First, and probably least importantly, the world is becoming more global by the day and, from an economic and business standpoint, we need to support a community that is able to keep up with this global need. Different racial groups have to learn how to work together by addressing their differences and learning to accept each other. However, most importantly, in a global sense, racial acceptance is something that we have failed to fully implement. We need to learn how to be a strong community in both a local and global sense so that all individuals, no matter their racial background or cultural group, are recognized and promoted in a school, work, or social setting. “…achieving diversity within these institutions involves more than objective inclusion — it also necessitates the psychological inclusion of racial minorities” (Chen and David, 2015). In other words, even though racial ignorance and ostracization create a physical divide that we can see and understand, this problem creates deeper emotional problems and issues that are permanent and even more damaging. Thus, while these issues might stem from one area or be focused on a specific country or town, the effects are global. We have to, as a global community, address and find ways to fix this problem in order to create a stronger society, fixed on positive ideals of racial acceptance and understanding.
In conclusion, while it might initially be difficult to get an education on racial awareness accepted by the general public, it is important and essential to drive for this to be implemented in an educational setting, especially in small towns where this exposure would be difficult to obtain. Our goal in this education should not be to force change, rather try ways to facilitate a more global way of thinking for individuals. As a result, we can promote greater cultural understanding in a communal sense which would lead towards a more productive and accepting society.
Works Cited Page
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