During the Project which called “Racism Tools” the topic was mostly about racism and how to prevent it. Anka ProjectTeam joined the project as a partner organisation in Paris/France between 2-10 December .

During the Project which called “Racism Tools” the topic was mostly about racism and how to prevent it. Anka Project Team joined the project as a partner organisation in Paris/France between 2-10 December .

Racism, a belief that reflects the racial view —the ideology that people may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”;  and that some races are superior to others

People often think  racism with acts of abuse or harassment. However, it doesn’t need to contain any  violent or intimidating act. Take racial name-calling and jokes. Or consider situations when people may be excluded from groups or activities because of where they come from. All of this could be considered as racism.

Racism can be revealed through people’s actions as well as their behaviours. It can also be reflected in systems. But sometimes it may not be revealed at all sometimes it could be hard to understand which form of racism will we are facing with. Not all racism types are obvious. For example, someone might look through a list of job applications and decide not to interview people with certain  name and surnames , or they can make a joke about particular races which is completely racist but they laugh at it, some group of people can bully a group of people  because of their race and maybe even they discriminate these people according to their race etc.

Racism has a levels in the society. It starts from the bottom and it increases slightly to the top. First level of racism is “racist jokes”, almost every nation has these jokes because they don’t seem to be harmful for  too many. People don’t even bother to think about these kind of jokes if they are offensive or not. The second level of the racism is “hate speech” this is far more offensive than the jokes but it is easy to get this level if you don’t stop the people who make racist jokes. The other level of racism is “Racist act”  which means taking actions about the racist ideaolgy by the people that have and the final level is “ Hate crime” which is the worst part of racism, it means committing a crime just because of the racist point of view.

On the project “ Racism Tools” we had the chance to make discussion about these topic a lot.  While we learn about racism we also learned that it still remains on our society. Almost every people from diffrent countries in the project (Poland,France,Bulgaria,Romania, Germany and Turkey)  told that they had seen a racist act on their daily lives. The prejudice for the immigrants and the refugees is a huge problem in their country according to the other participants’ opinions, they said that there is a huge discrimination for the immigrants and refugees just because of their status and their race and it is normal in their life which is totally unacceptable.

Racism is more than just words, beliefs and actions. It includes all the barriers tat prevent people from enjoying a life with dignity and equality because of their race. To stop racism, we all should step forward and do as much as we can!

by Şamil ŞAHİN