ABSTRACT
Employing ‘race’ as real, whether in the news media, in government politics or in entertainment is to contribute to racialization and to reproduce race thinking. In this chapter, the authors utilizes the terms ‘race’ and ‘racial’ in inverted commas to emphasize that races do not exist biologically, but are merely ‘social constructions based on the common-sense perceptions of superficial differences of appearance'. Although racism is often directed against immigrants and other minorities, it is important to note that racism and racist discourses are not necessarily about skin colour and nor are they confined to minorities. In Western societies where there has been an awareness of ‘race issues’ for some time, blatant expressions of racism and racist language and images have become relatively rare. Institutional racism is a form of racism that occurs specifically in corporations, educational and other public institutions such as the police, or organizations with the power to influence the lives of many people.
