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by bertknot

Question by Jane: How do I put humour into a speech on racism?
Next Thursday, my school’s having a speech competition, and I decided to participate. My speech is about racism. Racism is an interesting topic, but how can I get the audiences attention? Maybe a bit of humour? Here’s my speech (if you’re too lazy to read everything, just answer it):

Racism, what is it really? These days the word racism is used in different matters but what does it really mean? Racism works against the principle of being equal and the right of all people to be treated fairly.

In this day, any age, anyone who is black, white or yellow, from different cultures and backgrounds can be discriminated especially the aboriginals who suffered an extremely racist history. Many have fought for change such as Mabo who fought for land right, Martin Luther King who had a dream where black and white people could get along and Rosa Parks who had sat in the front seat of the bus and then got arrested for it.

Now I know the majority of you aren't racist, but most teenagers today are disrespecting the hard work of great people like Mabo etc. They all say racist things to Asians for no reason, just to make themselves laugh and may do it to other cultures. But even though we may get told not to we still do especially when we hang around with our own race with the same background, like the Asians hang with the Asians, same with Indians, Egyptians, Lebanese etc. We get told to go hang with other cultures and try to be friends with them. what I think is adults have a more understanding so therefore would mix and make friends, but as you can see teenagers pretty much hang with our own type and may not think to go make friends with kinds of people.

We need to make the effort to embrace and accept other cultures and this can start with the simple act of friendship. In order to stop racism, we should be friends with everyone. We have to treat everyone with respect, so that we will be treated with respect back. If someone doesn't want to be your friend, you should be okay with that. Anyone can understand if you don't like someone who is mean to you. Even with so many different cultures, and races at our school, we should be able to accept and respect all of them into our community.
Racism is not only a bad thing, but it can also be very hurtful. If you are excluded in some activities just because of your culture, then you would be very upset that people are treating you like that. If someone is being excluded, you should put yourself in their position. Nobody wants to be excluded from anything because we are all God's children and we should all be accepted and treated the same. I believe if just one person speaks out about racism, then another one will and another and sooner or later the problem of racism will be out there, and hopefully with everyone acting and speaking against it, racism will be stopped.
With all of the negative impacts of racism, it is hard to understand why it has not been eliminated from our society. One person alone cannot put an end to racism; it would take the commitment of everyone in the world. Racism happens in many situations every day through actions and voice. A racist action has the ability of lowering a persons self esteem and making one feel as if they have been striped of their dignity. Putting an end to racism is like making soup. In order to make soup a variety of ingredients are needed. The ingredients, representing people, on their own would not be able to end racism or make a good pot of soup. Once all of the ingredients are put into the pot and have mixed together, a powerful and fulfilling bowl of soup can be enjoyed. This group of committed and dedicated people is large enough to stand up to racism. If we as humans could open our eyes to other races and see the person that they are on the inside and stop judging them on colour, our world would be one step closer to perfect.

Thank you! x

Best answer:

Answer by Emma
I’m too lazy to read all of it… but it sounds good.
There is nothing funny about this topic and I don’t think you should use humor because it might make the audience think that this subject can be taken lightly when it definitely can not be. It is a serious subject and if you start making jokes about it it’ll make you sound immature and that you don’t really care about the meaning of your speech.
I advice you to do as much research possible and find facts, info or things that have happened in history that people will not necessarily know about. Use chilling facts that will make people disturbed because that always gets people’s attention. Sadly it’s the truth. So in other words, tell a flippen horror story.

(I am currently working on a presentation on racism)

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!