The endless battle of racism began in the year 1619 when the first shipment of slaves came to America from their home in Africa, resulting in a bloody battle for the ending of their ownership over 200 years later.  The battle for full equality continued long past the freeing of slaves; in 1955, a fourteen year-old boy named Emmett Till was lynched for flirting with a white woman and eight years later Martin Luther King Jr. confessed his dream for a better future. Since the Civil Rights Movement, our society has improved tremendously, but the issue of racism has never truly gone away.

I believe everyone can agree that racism has been a predominant issue in our American society since before we can remember. While we have come a long way from the Jim Crow Laws, our schools, homes, and workplaces are still plagued with racial prejudice.

“When you have many different people with different ideas, different upbringings, different beliefs coming together it’s very hard for people to get rid of their preconceived stereotypes,” English teacher Mrs. Sheryl Ciotti said.

The majority of our society’s racism isn’t intentional; it’s not even conscious. In fact, there’s a good chance just last period you heard a fellow student spit out some racist term against someone else, even if the prejudice wasn’t intentional. We throw around these ethnic jokes and racist comments when we are typically unaware of just how much damage our verbal sticks and stones can cause.

“As society changes, people tend to change, but people have come to a point at which they believe that racism is bad but the predominant idea is still there,” junior David Kroll said. “People just don’t realize they’re being racist.”

Everyone has prejudices whether they like it or not, and we seldom realize just how bad they are. Our media-driven society has painted misconceived portraits of races, religions, and even countries. The sad truth is that these ideas often stick with us.

“People still cling to the underlying ideals that our country was raised with, which, consequently, lead to a biased view of others and racism,” freshman Lexi Brown said.

We’re not entirely to blame though. Racism has existed for as long we can remember, and in a much more drastic way.  Slavery, Jim Crow laws, and even the malevolent practice of lynching have all impacted our modern day prejudices.

“White Europeans engaged for so long in the transatlantic slave trade and then continued a domestic slave trade. You set up a whole class of people to be sort of sub citizens. That’s engrained; that’s not easily erased,” social studies teacher Mrs. Katie Quartuch said.  “You have this long history of segregation even after slavery ended. For most of our country’s history, blacks have been treated very poorly. I don’t think that’s easily erased. That sets up some of that subconscious racism.”

Fortunately, there are ways that we can fix this problem. We as members of society need to engage in open discussions about our problems with prejudice. We need to cut down our segregational barriers and engage ourselves with people of all different races.

“People  need to recognize the ways that they may be subconsciously discriminatory,” Mrs. Quartuch said.  “They need to be allowed to come to that realization without feeling so much guilt, which may be holding people back. There needs to be more conversation.”

As America has continued to grow and change, we have come a long way from the errors of the past. We need to continue to push for a brighter tomorrow where everyone, no matter what race, religion, or class, can enjoy the same rights as human beings.