Racism And Anti-Racist Practice free essay sample

Race was a term used to describe a human being of being different in physical features and ancestry features. In other words they are of different human species with differences biologically. Usually black people are portrayed as naturally inferior to white people characterized by notions of white supremacy (Dommielli 1997). Racism is when one person of a particular race discriminates against another person of a different race, however that used to be the terminology based on mistaken science that we had biological differences as human species. Terminology has moved on to be ethnicity rather than race, which are used in similar ways to differentiate people. Ethnicity describes and gives identities by differences in groups of people by skin colour, beliefs, culture and language (Fenton 1999). According to Skellington (2011) we still do live in a racist society he provides evidence and various researches that show that there were 61,262 racial attacks in England/Wales in 2006/07. We will write a custom essay sample on Racism And Anti-Racist Practice or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The U. K Home office statistics show there has been a 7% decline in racist incidents from 2009 to 2011, which can be politically biased, or perhaps people have become less racist. However the tolerance towards ethnic minorities was reported to far below European averages (Skellington 2010; Home Office 2011). The Stephen Lawrence incident report proved that there was institutional racism at the top level in police forces, failure of leadership by senior officers and incompetence of professionals. McPherson (1998) in his enquiry found that institutional racism could be seen in the attitudes, processes, prejudices, ignorance and racist stereotyping of ethnic minorities that discriminates and disadvantages them. McPherson (1998) uses words like unwitting prejudice, which suggests that racism is deep rooted within all people. (Macpherson 1999). I experienced racism in school during my junior years to high school, there were constant bullying based on the colour of our skin, the school teachers were not fully equipped to handle or notice racist bullying, as many of the school fights and bullying went unnoticed. I had the constant fear of being bullied at school and it affected my attendance. At high school there were constant fights after school, the school and police were aware but there were no constructive policy in place to stop further racisms. This racism still exists in the same school as my daughter frequently reports of violence between white and Asian people which the local police regularly gets involved. My local primary school does not want to recognize the needs of the 40% Muslim children dietary needs even after highlighting the issues; there is no choice but to accept vegetarian meal. The key features of anti- racist social work practice should be not to discriminate people based on their colour of skin or ethnicity. Practitioners should know how to recognize racism. They should be culturally aware and any assumptions are checked out which could cause stereotyping. For example from personal experience, White social workers would not understand the concept of Muslim service users that friends are allowed during confidentiality issues with consent by service users and that it can be distressing for the service user if this was not allowed by a social worker, they should have knowledge of particular group or individual in hand and challenge discriminatory practices that affect families, groups, individuals. Respect diversity and different cultures and their values as stated by the National Occupation Standards (NOS) (2004). Social workers must always incorporate and have knowledge of legislation such as Race relations Act (1976), Equality Act (2010) and Human Rights Act (1998) preventing discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, beliefs. GSCC (2002) code of practice should be compulsorily used when practicing to ensure anti-discriminatory and anti oppressive practices.