Black And White : Social Divide

During the mid-twentieth century African Americans were at the lowermost tier of society's hierarchy. However within the black race, there was a further social division between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans. A black individual with more Caucasian features signified high status and beauty which was sought after by members of the African American community (Dibleck). In Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the author uses Janie Crawford to depict how colorism affected African Americans on both sides of the skin color spectrum. By demonstrating the attitude society (mostly men) had towards skin color, the author displays the realities of being an African American in the early 1900s and the deep

Until now reading the different laws associated with the separation of blacks and whites from years ago, I had no true idea the challenges African Americans face on a day to day basis. Truly, I still don’t since I do not live it, but reading them makes me sad thinking of how people treat other human beings. I am glad these laws are no longer valid and thankful for the people who took a stand fighting for the rights of all people, including white and black. All of the Jim Crow laws seek keeping the black population segregated disguised as “separate, but equal.” Determining which three I find most troubling is difficult due to the fact they are all so hard to imagine.

The First test I took was the Race (‘Black –White ’IAT). In my opinion, the test was unnecessary. The IAT fails to incorporate life experience, it is computer based which means it is error prone. You may have a preference towards white or black people, but that doesn’t make you racist. Your preference may stem from the way you were raised and demographic you are a part of. The results of my Race IAT stated “Your data suggest no automatic preference between Black people and White people”. The results were accurate with what I predicted. Growing up, I went to a predominantly white elementary school, so many of my peers were Caucasian. We moved when I was 11, so the middle school I attended was predominantly African American., and my high school

The black/white racial gap dates back about fifty years to the Civil War. This gap is an ongoing problem. As stated in a previous discussion, the best way to look at this is to place a white and black student in a race. Not only does the white student have a head start but they have less obstacles to overcome. While through no fault of their own, these black students could have obstacles such as: their parents not graduating high school or college themselves which in fact contributes to a lower success rate for them, improper education where the teachers shorten the curriculum or even outside factors such as family or neighborhood interfere with the quality of education they receive or even being unable to attend school all together to take

Racism today can be traced back to the greed of white business men who legitimized bigotry to fulfill their economic desires. Today, I believe that the root issue of racial discrimination, or exclusion, is the legitimization of imperialism in the 19th century and the praise of capitalism/ neoliberalism on the international stage today. These political ends encourage stratification of the classes on all fronts, split labor markets, and create false consciousness in regard to the elite public. In truth, I have a hard time recognizing prejudice in regard to the African American public in Colorado. I’ve grown up in a largely white or Latino population and been unfamiliar with the ails of the African American community. I am however, very familiar with the racial discrimination and cultural discrimination that is projected on poor “undeveloped” countries. I will first analyze the root of racism and discrimination as a consequence to politics of core nations, then analyze several observations of racism in the United States contrasted against Honduras, a country where I work in sustainable water aid.

Race has played an uncomfortably important role in History. From rich white land owning slave holders, producing mass amounts of

A comment was made in a blog post early on in the year about whiteness in American that bugged me. It’s a topic that came up a few times throughout the semester in and outside of class. Granted, this topic is based on a single blog post but a collection of comment and statements that were made on specific blogs and during class sessions. This topic I fin extremely important mainly because I felt as though there was some confusion around the topic being white. Understandably if you’re white in America I think it’s easy to forget exactly how privileged you are. Nonetheless, it forced me to want to talk about white privilege in America, explain the meaning of “paradox of privilege”,

Segregation between black and whites being around since the beginning of slavery era but segregation didn’t get legal until 1896 when the supreme court sanction legal separation between black and whites in the ruling H.A. Plessy v. J.H. Ferguson. The ruling stated that separation of black and whites was legal as long equal facilities did not violate the fourteenth amendment. The united states did indeed abolish slavery but did they not intend to make blacks first class citizen as white because after the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment was passed, the supreme court had pass three series of judgment making African Americans second class citizens. Blacks were forces via private action to separate themselves from white in areas of transportation, public accommodation, prison, school, recreational places and even armed forces. The supreme court did not make segregation illegal until 1954 during the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Black and White, two words that are immediately recognized as opposites. Black is wicked, white is virtuous. Black is evil, white is holy. Black is dark, white is light. Black represents the devil, white represents God. White is worn at weddings, black is worn at funerals. There is black magic and white magic. There are little white lies and there are blacker than night hearts. There are Black people and there are white people. There are Black Americans and there are White

There were many factors that led to the construction of the “white race”, many of these were cultural and structural. As we know, race is not a biological term, it is a social construct that the population gives meaning to. In the begging, when English colonists arrived to what is now the United States, they saw that they had no physical resemblance to the Native Americans and therefore they characterized the indigenous population as “savage” while they characterized themselves as “civilized” (which is kind of ironic taking into account that they are responsible for the genocide of an entire population). When they came across this new country, one of their main concerns was to preserve it and to have it reach its full potential, in their eyes,

According to the Institute on Race and Poverty (IRP) in 2000 a white individual making the same income annually as any other race has a seventy-eight percent chance of owning a home, and only a twenty-two percent chance of having their credit denied on a loan, however, minorities like Blacks and Hispanics have a significantly lower chance of both. (Lawrence, and Keleher 3). In fact, Blacks with those same specifications only have a forty-eight percent chance to own a home, and an astounding forty-five percent chance to have their credit denied on a loan. Meanwhile, Hispanics have a forty-six percent chance to own a home, and a thirty-percent percent chance of having their credit denied. While this may seem overtly discriminatory with just a glance, one must first delve into what those numbers actually mean, and the details went into creating those numbers, as well as take a peek into the institution that created those numbers before jumping to the conclusion that it is empirically racist. Recently, racism has exploded into the spotlight worldwide, and especially in the United States of America with stories of racially motivated police brutality and a supposed “race war” taking center stage. All this coming forty-seven years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sought to end racial tension and racist government

In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois defines the problem of the Twentieth Century to be the color-line. The color line is a metaphor for the segregation within the African-American and Caucasian community The Veil refers to the community of African-American’s in the past (during slavery), present (post emancipation), and future. The color-line is used to describe the racial segregation between African-American’s and Caucasian’s post-emancipation, and because of this divide in the United States the African-American Community cannot therefore strive to become equal with Caucasian society. The great divide includes physical separation through mediums such as slavery, the Jim Crow laws, economic equality, and educational inequality

Ayres, Ian. "When Whites Get a Free Pass." The New York Times. The New York Times, 23 Feb.

The term “The Negro Problem" was used throughout the 1950 's and 60 's as a slang description of the racial tension between black and white Americans. The two essays in "The Fire Next Time" talk about the problem that the African American community faced, but from different perspectives. The author is writing to his nephew and is trying to make him understand that the situation is intolerable and not likely to change. He suggests that instead of reacting from a place of anger and hate, that the nephew should fight and strive to change the situation rather than confronting it violently. That his nephew and even the community as a whole should try to almost outsmart the whites by being the opposite of what they think of them. To prove them wrong and hopefully change the way they are looked at. He suggests a change of attitudes on both sides, to spread love and understanding instead of hate and animosity.

Pan-Africanism signifies the difficulties of black social, intellectual, and political notions over a two hundred year span. What establishes Pan-Africanism, on the basic level, is the unity of Africans worldwide. Pan-Africanists believe that the African people in its entirety, which includes the Diaspora and the African continent, does not just share common beginnings but also a common destiny. (Asante, 1976, p. 97) This ideology of an intertwined past and future of all the African people has however took many forms, as different thinkers feel that there are different methods in achieving African unity. Three great thinkers, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, were all leaders of their own Pan-African movement which each contained their own element in achieving Pan-Africanism. DuBois took a more academic stance which included the utilization of the elites, whereas Garvey and Malcolm X were more so grassroots organizers as they believed in the bottom-up decision making rather than top-down.