Prompt #5: Overt and Covert Racism

The reason why the narrator of the documentary, Scott Van Pelt, feels that racism is so prevalent in Europe today is because Europeans are not used to seeing people of color in their country. In other words, Europe is predominantly white. Unfortunately, this common act of racism has affected soccer, the most popular sport played not only in Europe but internationally as well. Soccer, as mentioned in the video clip, has indeed become a beautiful game turned ugly. It is incredible how such amazing soccer players such as Carlos Kameni and Marc Zoro are faced with bigotry and insulting comments just because of the color of their skin. The fact that fans are so cold-hearted enough to throw bananas at them while calling them monkeys is heartbreaking to me; I feel so impotent, not being able to stand on that field to help fight back against racism. It is frustrating to know that Europeans find racism to be normal, when I find it to be a crime.

It is understandable that people from different countries have a different mindset than Americans do today; however, we are in the 21st century and people should be way past racism and prejudice acts. We are all people whether we are dark-skinned or light-skinned. Moreover, there are bad people in every country worldwide. Whites, blacks, and tanned people can all be criminals. Why have a stereotype of blacks only? I strongly believe that the European Soccer League and the European government should take strong measures in order to put a stop to these harsh acts. Some people, like one of Italy's teams, have already started acting against these problems. However, Italy's anti-racism shirts that say "Uniti Contro Il Razzismo" are only a small step in the process to stop racism.

Furthermore, in the other video clip, there are two possible reasons why so many people were ambivalent or going along with the rude cashier at Dunk n Donuts: either they were scared to speak out and fight for their rights, or the "covert" racists felt support from the rude cashier and were no longer ashamed to ridicule a human being because of the color of their skin or their place of origin. The actions of the cashier are definitely racists. He refused to serve customers because of their broken-English and because they were Mexicans. In the video clip, he told them to get back into their pick-up truck and that this country was building walls to keep them out. Although the day laborers were also actors, the words of the cashier must have hurt them profoundly.

Moreover, although racism is not very popular in the United States today, we can not ignore the fact that it does exist; strong measures must be taken to solve this dilemma. My sister and I experienced a racial act during the presidential election day in November 2008. We were exiting the North Bergen library after voting when a racist white male harassed us demanding to know who we voted for. Obviously, I did not answer but my sister's mistake was that she did. This guy immediately started shouting, "Why would you vote for a terrorist? You f****** Hispanics". Comments like these are sad to see and truly upset me. We should do something to stop these prejudice acts and preconceived notions of others due to the color of their skin, origin, culture, religion, etc.