PaperDue

Essay Topic Hub

Racism
Essays

2,599+ paper examples, study guides & outlines

2,599 papers

1 subject area

UG & Grad levels

Free to browse

About This Topic

Racism is one of the most extensively examined subjects in academic writing, appearing across disciplines such as sociology, history, political science, literature, and criminal justice. It asks students to confront how systems of racial hierarchy are constructed, maintained, and challenged within societies. The topic is academically rich because it connects individual experience to structural power, requiring writers to analyze not only prejudice at the personal level but also how race shapes institutions, culture, and opportunity. Works like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness appear frequently as literary entry points, while frameworks linking racism to sexism, classism, and heterosexism push students toward intersectional thinking about how overlapping identities shape lived experience in America and beyond.

Student papers on this topic take a wide range of approaches. Literary analysis essays examine how race and racism operate within specific texts, while historical and comparative essays trace how attitudes and policies have shifted across time, including the particular experiences of Arab Americans before and after 9/11 or the Chicano community's relationship with racial identity. Other papers take a sociological or policy focus, investigating racism within the criminal justice system, in educational settings, or in relation to the rise of multiculturalism. Some essays engage documentary sources and media to assess how race functions as a social construction rather than a biological reality.

A strong essay on racism establishes a clear, arguable thesis rather than simply asserting that racism exists or does not exist. Evidence drawn from specific historical events, legal structures, community case studies, or close textual analysis carries the most weight. Writers should avoid treating racism as a monolithic, unchanging force — acknowledging its evolving forms and contexts produces sharper, more credible analysis.

2,599 papers

Sort by:

Paper Doctorate

Women and masculinity in science fiction literature

Science fiction has always been a masculine genre, no matter that Mary Shelley invented it in her novel Frankenstein. Until fairly recent times, most science fiction writers were men, and they dealt with subjects like technology, power, space battles, featuring male heroes, explorers and adventurers. In film, science fiction has been a perfect subject for ultra-masculine actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, although Lieutenant Ripley in the Alien trilogy proved that women could be masculine heroes as well and very effective at destroying hostile creatures that threaten humanity. Joe Haldeman's novel Forever Peace certainly fits within this conventional masculine narrative in science fiction, since the story is related by a male narrator named Sergeant Julian Class, an alienated soldier of the First World who opposes his own government and society. He is a class type of alienated and disillusioned male hero who nevertheless hopes that the world can achieve peace and prosperity through better use of technology. Even though it was written thirty years before, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is a radical departure from these types of themes and characters, since it takes place on an underdeveloped planet called Gethen far in the future.

Paper Doctorate

Secret the Power by Rhonda Byrne

Rhonda Byrne's The Secret: The Power (2010) is truly an incredibly bad book, simplistic, repetitive and divorced from real history, politics or economics, yet it has sold 19 million copies. A cynic might say that the real secret to wealth is writing a bestselling book that millions will buy. Her 2006 book The Secret sold more over 19 million copies and was translated into 46 languages, and she was also a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show and many others on the daytime TV chat circuit. Like all self-help writers, she has a talent for publishing the same advice repeatedly in new books that claim to offer even greater insights than past philosophers and religious teachers and in 2007 Byrne wrote The Secret Gratitude Book, followed a year later by The Secret: Daily Teachings. Her latest offering is about 250 pages long and quickly appeared on the bestseller lists, which indicates the type of strong cult following that all publishers desire. Byrne's central thesis is that human beings can change their entire lives and have everything they want simply by wishing for it, including money, wealth, happiness, careers, and romantic relationships.

Paper High School

Bloodlines and race: historical perspectives and scientific critique

How does Firmin attempt to reconstruct races as existing along a level playing field rather than being arrayed hierarchically?

Paper Undergraduate

Racial categories and their social construction

The concept of race has had a profound impact upon human history. However, it is also a scientific fiction. Genetically speaking, members of one 'race' can have many genetic dissimilarities. As a species, different 'races' share more in common than they differ as human beings. This paper argues that race is no longer a useful construct with which to analyze human society.

Research Paper Doctorate

Sense of realism in literature and art

Keepin' it real -- Real-ism, that is: Today's 'take' on John Singleton's 1991 film, "Boyz in the Hood"

Research Paper Doctorate

Ralph Ellison\'s Short Story Battle Royal

short analysis of the major theme found in Ellison's Battle Royal, supported by a literary criticism dealing with the tone and style of the story.

Paper Doctorate

Immigration: Mexico and Impact on Women Like

Like many of the issues discussed in this course it is difficult to see a clear path to equal rights for female immigrants. This issue is particularly troubling because of the fact that there are layers of complex…

Research Paper Doctorate

Annotated lesson plan design and implementation

Multiculturalism is a response to changing demographics in the United States. Banks (cited in Hanley, 2002) states that 46% of students in public schools will be children of color by the year 2020.

Research Paper Doctorate

Japanese American\'s Psychological Problems Resulted From Internment

Psychological & Cultural Experience of the Victims of Japanese Internment

Thesis Undergraduate

Issues and Advocacy Framework Development on Education

Massive institutional racism and structural inequalities still exist in the United States, especially in housing, public education and the criminal justice system in inner city areas. In every urban area, the quality of education available to poor and minority students is demonstrably worse by any measure than that of their white peers in the suburbs. This type of institutional discrimination is not caused by genetic or cultural deprivation but by the fact that the U.S. has always been and remains a highly segregated and unequal society based on race and social class. Of course, this violates the liberal, egalitarian and meritocratic ideals on which the nation was (supposedly), but after all, the U.S. managed to survive with slavery for almost a hundred years after its founding, and with legal segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks for a hundred years after that. Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, Camden, New Jersey all have crumbling public school systems serving mostly black and Hispanic students funded at levels far below those of white suburban districts.

← Prev 1 2 3 … 161 260 Next →