A Great Racial Commission Summary

The history of slavery in the United States divided people by the color of their skin. During the 16th thru 18th century, people of African ethnicity were automatically considered slaves. This not only created a parceling between races but also the demarcation of the northern and southern states of the America. The northern states had asseverated their opposition of slavery while the southern states upheld their concordance with it. Although there is now an overwhelming agreement that slavery was fallacious, Paul Finkelman’s composition of documents called Defending Slavery displays the opposite.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is a interracial American organization established by James Farmer in 1942 at University of chicago to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies through direct-action projects. Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the American branch of the pacifist group Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) but resigned over a dispute in policy; he founded CORE to make a nonviolent approach to stopping racial judgment that was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. CORE’s activities began with a sit-in at a coffee shop in Chicago in 1942 for the purpose of protesting segregation in public settings. The event was one of the first demonstrations in the U.S. and identified CORE as an influential force

There are five themes that persist throughout American history. The five themes are mission, manifest destiny, industrialization, imperialism, and race. Racism has been an issue throughout American history. Only in recent years has the problem been resolved, but even now there is still some issues. Some private groups are still against some races.

Michelle Alexander begins her story of “The New Jim Crow”, as she provides her thoughts and arguments on Chapter one of “the rebirth of caste”. The Chapter explains the myths provided towards slavery after the civil war, as black people weren’t exactly free. Whites were furious and felt the issue of the law was unnecessary, which led to a continuous fight to revert the law to their only source of income. African Americans were finally given a break; however the actions of white southern began to cause further issues towards the development in the United States. Chapter two “The Lockdown” than proceeded as racism began to grow towards the law enforcement, and the development of Southern whites creating the Ku Klux Klan. Alexander argues about the crackdown of unreasonable searches occurred under law enforcement, and how African Americans are targeted.

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

In sociology there are many methods that widely vary in style that are used in order to gather the data necessary to answer research questions. These methods include case studies that deal with and investigate a small group of people over a longer period of time, to using secondary analysis that uses historical and public data to facilitate in a research question, and many other styles in between. The methods that are used each have their own sets of pros and cons, and it is decided by the researcher which will function best when applied to their research. In this essay I will analyze the methods used in The Philadelphia Negro and The Diversity Bargain. Though both of the studies required the researchers to question and interact with the people

In the 17th century, white people were considered superior than other races since they viewed as being more civilized, educated, and Christian. Race is defined as a group of people that shares similar culture, language, and history, as well as physical characteristics. However, this term of race started to change mostly due to their physical appearance of individuals. During this time, colonization began in America from various European countries in the search of gold, God, and glory. These were the main motives for Europeans to establish colonies in America.

It is suggested by the author that for America to become as effective as it can, the people must give up on religion. The author believes that religion and Christian beliefs set up limitations for the potential growth of the nation (Baldwin, 1963). Baldwin also explains that Americans are forced to believe what they are taught and say or do nothing against it American society's indoctrinating culture. Whites and Blacks have been blinded to their own individual and societal truths, the truth being that they are all equal.

In the Wages of Whiteness (an edition revision) by David Roediger, an American labor historian, he examines the growth and social construction of race during the 1800s and its relations to white workers. Roediger states by labeling race based on its skin color and social status, white folks were“...seen as ‘naturally’ white, and Black workers become ‘intruders’ who are strongly suspected of being ‘loafers’ as well” (Roediger 19). The production of race formed once white workers accepted their class positions by accepting their identities as ‘not slaves’ and as ‘not Blacks’. In this case, there was a necessity for white workers to have its own sense of class and gender identity to determine who has power and who does not.

In The Racial Contract (1997) Charles W. Mills asserted that racism and white supremacy have been the real basis for the social, political and economic that has existed in the world over the last 400 years rather than the ideas of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau or even Thomas Hobbes. Few blacks have ever been social or political philosophers, and this fact alone explains why these disciplines tend to ignore racism, colonialism, slavery, genocide and segregation far more than history or political science. This Racial Contract is political, moral and economic in that it assumes that nonwhites are naturally inferior in all of these categories, and were even when they were living in a state of nature in Africa and the Americas. Contemporary social contract theories like John Rawls use this theory as a metaphor or normative standard, although Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau that state of nature was literally true. Indeed they believed it was historically valid because they could observe societies in their own time that they considered to be in a state of nature, such as those of the Native Americans and Pacific islanders. They had very different views about how human beings behaved in this condition, with Hobbes being the most pessimistic. He would have agreed with Mills that all human beings were equal in the state of nature, but all equally bad greedy, violent, vengeful and brutal. As described in Leviathan, though, this was a universal trait of humanity, not a

I think one major criticism Butler has of race relations is the ease in which blacks and whites can fall into old stereotypes and roles. This can be seen on page 97 when Dana mentions how well she and Kevin fell into their roles in this time period. She easily became domestic help and he easily became sociable slave owner. I think Butler is trying to say that while we are hundreds of years away from slavery the mindset still remains. There is still a tendency for white people to feel superior to black people. Another place where we see criticism on race relations is when Dana and Kevin decide to tell their families that they are getting married. Again, Butler is showing us how even though slavery no longer is a problem, racism still is. White

This “war on drugs,” which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities.1,2Since 1972, the number of people incarcerated has increased 5-fold without a comparable decrease in crime or drug use.1,3 In fact, the decreased costs of opiates and stimulants and the increased potency of cannabis might lead one to an opposing conclusion.4 Given the politics of the war on drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates are deemed a sign of success, not failure. I don’t totally agree with the book (I think linking crime and black struggle is even older than she does, for instance) but I think The New Jim Crow pursues the right line of questioning. “The prison boom is not the main cause of inequality between blacks and whites in America, but it did foreclose upward mobility

With scientific racism “scientist saw mental abilities and personality traits as racial characteristics.” With this, whites were seen to be “innately superior to other races.” They had science backing their superiority, and only gained from it, separating themselves from the rest of society. With these ideas put in place by imperialism, white Americans were able to rule the country, and all other races in it because they felt like they were superior, and more fit to govern the nation. By feeling superior to others, the whites segregated themselves from the rest of the community, and aided the division in the

In Charles W. Mills's work, The Racial Contract, he discusses how in this world, a thread has been woven throughout the fabric of society that allows race to dictate the social, political, and economic landscapes of our communities. He begins his work by simply defining what the racial contract is, how it differs from a typical “social contract” as discussed by philosophers, and how it finds itself in every aspect of society to benefit the white man while degrading the non-white. Per Mill’s, “The Racial Contract is that set of formal or informal agreements or meta-agreements...between the members of one subset of humans, henceforth designated...as “white,” and coextensive (making due allowance for gender differentiation) with the class of full

In The Racial Contract, it is argued that contemporary structures of white domination in the United States operate by means of an epistemology of ignorance for white people. White people inadvertently suffer from cognitive dysfunctions such that they cannot understand the racially (and racistly) structured world in which they live and, indeed, helped create. For Mills, while no person of any race is self-transparent, becoming a white person entails a particularly extreme form of self-opacity regarding issues of race that corresponds with a conspicuously bad or offensive misunderstanding of the world. Recently with the invasion of Iraq, the president has proven that white people believe that they are correct when that in any given conflict