Anti-Black Discrimination

In his commencement address at Howard University one year after signing into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson raised a question regarding the growing inequality between white and black Americans after World War II despite the country’s prosperity. Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White posits that the vast programs such as the New Deal and G.I. Bill of Rights of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, seen as progressive, were inherently racist. Katznelson discusses these programs and how they affected black Americans in their various political, economic, and social spheres. He examines these problematic and discriminatory areas under four scopes: welfare, the workplace, military service, and education.

In the article “Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-racialism” the author Lawrence Bobo reflects on the racial justice struggle from the mid 1960’s in the South. Post-racialism in America was hoped to collapse after the election of the first African-American President Barack Obama of the United States in 2008. Post-racialism is defined to signal signs of racial change of a hopeful trajectory for events and social trends (Bobo, 2006, p.93). Three key questions discussed were racial boundaries, the degree of racial economic inequality, and what is known about changes in racial attitudes from the 1960’s in the United States to 2017.

Despite this claim about the direction of race relations in this country, there seems to be a disconnection. Obama’s campaign tended to focus on symbolic capital of “hope” that Obama’s presidency constitutes for the Black community, this article reveals the thinking of the African American population that I believe is substantial to my research. This article also offers the idea of post racial thinking in America before and after the 2012 presidential

The election of Barack Obama as the president of the United States surprised Americans as much as it did the world. The first African American and non-white to be in the White House, Barack Obama symbolized a major historical event, another step-forward toward racial equality in the history of America. Civil rights activists, experts in the racial conflict of the U.S., and many liberal citizens believed that Obama’s election means the realization of the ideas of black civil rights leaders, the completion of the Civil Rights Movement, the beginning of a post-racial society, and the downfall of

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive. The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis- a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.

The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States has generated a lot of discussions and debate on the current racial affairs in the United States. Many assume that Obama's presidency ushers a new era post-racial America. So, I decided to read a few recent articles on the topic. The first was by Time Wise where he reflects on "denial and reality" in response to the question "what is post-racial?" (Wise, 2012). Wise's article is depressing because not only because he leaves no doubt, by bringing up strong qualitative and quantitative arguments, that the whole idea of post-racial America is a chimera, but because he makes it hard to believe post-racial America can be achieved at all.

There is no doubt that the United States has gone through serious transformation in as far as racial relations is concerned. So far, the country has seen a reduction in racial prejudices and discrimination , yet such changes have never be a one-off event, rather, it has been a process that has seen so many fighting so hard for this course. Talking of racism and racial discrimination, African-Americans would always be taken as the greatest victims to such discrimination. Whereas African-Americans have played victim to racial discrimination over the years, there has been a great level of transformation within the American society over the years to see to it that institutionalized racial discrimination amongst blacks is kept at the bare minimal

The position of Black Americans from 1945-1955 changed a lot throughout these years, and mainly for the better, particularly in social and economical areas. Although there were occasional setbacks in some areas, such as politically, overall their position was vastly improved. In this essay I’ll be discussing the different areas in which Black Americans improved their position in and some areas in which they continued to struggle in.

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

By far the most important piece of civil rights legislation ever passed in the history of the United States was the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which finally ended the system of dual public schools in the Southern states and abolished Jim Crow segregation is hospitals, transportation and public facilities. Only the 1965 Voting Rights Act was of equal importance, and no legislation since that time has had as much of an effect on politics, economics and society in America. It benefitted not only blacks but women, the handicapped, Hispanics, Native Americans and members of other minority groups, who have managed to hold onto most of their gains in spite of the conservative backlash of the last thirty years. Unlike the First Reconstruction of 1867-77, the Second was never completely repealed by the reactionary and racist forces in the U.S., although they have certainly tried. Although violence against civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan continued, especially in Alabama and Mississippi, this type of federal intervention soon undermined the institutions and organizations in the South that had kept blacks as second-class citizens since the end of the First Reconstruction in 1877. Therefore the civil rights revolution was very successful as far as it went, but by no means a complete revolution, especially in social and economic life. Martin Luther King recognized fully this at the time, and even Barack Obama is well aware that structural and institutional racism is

In addition to the black codes various discriminatory practices were stablished to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to be equal in elections. Blacks attempting to vote were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or voting place wrong.(Citation(Example: Muniz, 56)) also many white officials conducted insufficient literacy test, designed to target the illiterate African Americans(examples of the places that did it and Citation). Some states made citizens pay a poll tax before they voted (Citation). The voting taxes kept poor citizen especially the low income African American families from voting. In addition many whites use threat of violence to keep blacks from the voting polls. Despite the resistance

Over the course of American history, it is no question that other races have been disadvantaged because of their heritage and minority status. Slavery and discrimination have led to severe drawbacks for African American society, to give an example, which is unfair and unfortunate to those that have worked so hard and lose just because of their race. Luckily though, racism is coming to a much tighter close as time goes on, and people of color are much less discriminated than they once were. Privilege exists within every American due to the great freedom the country offers. Cultures are not structured to hate or isolate another culture; things like this happen because the people within those cultures have different viewpoints, which may cause

As overt discrimination was becoming less commonplace, the seedlings of covert, institutionalized racism were being planted. George Lipsitz identifies this maintenance of subtle hegemonic power that unfairly withholds political, economic, and social advantages from people of color as the “possessive investment in whiteness” (2-3). This process of domination is precisely what occurred in the post-Civil Rights Era. Despite the alleged progress believed to have been made, by the mid-1970s “the overall conditions of the African American population were worse than before the movement,” precisely because of the hegemonic power structure’s effort to restore power (Morant 75). The result was an economic, social, and political maelstrom that marginalized African Americans and benefited whites. Phenomena such as the White Flight resulted in the economic and political disenfranchisement of black communities; simultaneously, job discrimination and a biased legal system left many African Americans unemployed or in prison. Housing discrimination and astronomically high rent increased homelessness and made starkly visible the effects of poverty. Infrastructure was left to crumble as the government put taxpayer money and resources away from black communities and towards white ones. Because of the lack of economic opportunity and education, poverty, crime and violence skyrocketed. Contrasting heavily

The 2008 election was documented as a vital landmark in the history of the United States (Verney, 2014: vii). President Barack Obama was elected as the first (self-identifying) Black American/African-American person to call the White House home. The occasion sparked huge popular and scholarly interest, not limited only to America but academic conversations throughout the world. His election instigated a fast spreading ideology that the United States had become ‘post-racial’ as a Black man now occupied the highest office in the country. His reelection in 2012 further sustained this idea of a ‘post-racial America’ (Banerjee, 2013:1). The Economist called the triumph post-racial and wrote that Obama would come to embody the hope that America needed

In our society, today there are various privileges given to everyone but one I chose to talk about was one dealing with a person’s name. Names are the beginning of discrimination against the African-American population because of the stereotypical so-called “black names”. This is a problem in today’s society because businesses that are hiring applicants can look at a name and automatically make the decision on if they want to give this person chance at an interview or not. For example, there are two applicants one with the name of Bethany and the Shaniqwa, they both have all the same credentials and the same abilities to be able to get the job done thoroughly, but the person hiring will hire Bethany based on her name. That is what it is like African-Americans in the workforce, whether people want to believe it or not. Discrimination can happen in many forms, and because corporations rather not be blatant with discrimination, they find other ways like this to discriminate. What do we go through to try and avoid discrimination? What can be done to stop the discrimination? These are some of the questions I hope to find answers to as I