Rebecca Walker Identity

The diversity between Americans has always been evident, and not just by the skin tone or religion, but also by their backgrounds, as well as how their lives are like today. Especially in African Americans and those who wanted to change the ways of religion, and the prejudice against them continues to stick, even today.

The article “The Negro Digs Up His Past’’ by Arthur schomburg on 1925, elaborates more on the struggles of slavery as well as how history tend to be in great need of restoration through mindfully exploring on the past. The article, however started with an interesting sentence which caught my attention, especially when the writer says ‘’The American Negro must remark his past in order to make his future’’ (670). This statement according the writer, explains how slavery took away the great deal freedom from people of African descendant, through emancipation and also increase in diversity. The writer (Arthur Schomburg) however, asserts that “the negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advancement” (670).

Similarly to hooks, Walker tells his life story through his eyes, the point of view of an African-American male. Walker gives anecdotes that inform us of key themes in his upbringing. From a young age Walker saw humanity divided by color. Seemingly unable to let go of past racism in society, Walker’s girlfriend claimed that he was “the first person she has ever known who has taught

During the Civil Rights Era, many black power movements strived to prevent the New Jim Crow from happening. The black man was being oppressed during segregation and treated like animals. The white supremacy, only visualize African Americans as slaves, people who should not be a part of the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X drove men and women to fight for his or her rights. However, that was not enough to stop the white supremacy from oppressing African Americans. The Civil Rights movement did put an end to public segregation. It did not put not put an end to the laws being made by the government, which is dominated by the white race. In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander discussed how the Civil Rights and black power movements helped African Americans gain their equal rights, but did not help to gain political power. Mass Incarceration is where the African Americans’ lives end because of the social structure created by the government. Blacks are mostly in the lower class because after the Great Depression, Roosevelt only created laws for whites. This allowed the white community to build and move out the cities into better neighborhoods. Leaving the black community behind. The government placed businesses and built big buildings to keep all the blacks in one place. Base on how the black community was viewed as a race and social status, gives this race a higher chance of being behind bars.

Michelle Alexander’s the new Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness examine the Jim Crow practices post slavery and the mass incarceration of African-American. The creation of Jim Crows laws were used as a tool to promote segregation among the minority and white American. Michelle Alexander’s the new Jim Crow Mass takes a look at Jim Crow laws and policies were put into place to block the social progression African-American from the post-slavery to the civil rights movement. Fast-forward to 2008 the election of Barack Obama certified that African-Americans were no longer viewed as second-class citizens instead African-Americans are equal to their white counterparts. However, Michelle Alexander

Before using her Facebook as a means to connect young minds about civil rights movements and issues that still plagues the nation today, Sandra Bland used her social media like every other citizen. That is until just after Christmas of 2014 when she made the decision to speak up about “the economic crisis burdening young African Americans,” trying to, in her words, inform her readers about black history, or American history as she liked to describe it (Nathan). Sandra Bland, a 28 year old African American, had just received a job interview from her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. Her life seemed to be going smoothly, just received a job offering, rekindled her relationship with her mother, and seemed optimistic about the future to

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander tries to advance intellectual dialogue regarding mass incarceration in the United States. Alexander does this by carrying out a historical analysis of the process in which the correctional system controls African Americans through intentionally selected, and systematically sanctioned legal limits. In fact, the United States incarceration rate is not at peak by coincidence. Moreover, it is not coincidental that Black men and women make up the majority of this number. According to Alexander, this problem is a consequence of the “New Jim Crow” rules, which use racial stratification to eliminate black individuals in the legal sense. Black people and a small number of the Hispanic community face racial stratified laws when they face the justice system. This paper will support the claims that race is a major factor in the incarceration of black men in the United States, which includes the Jim Crow system, the slave system and the drag war. This process will also involve analyzing of some of the arguments presented within the book.

“The History of White People”, is a book written by Nell Irvin Painter. My first impression was very wrong. From the title, I expected a documentary type video about white culture; honestly, I expected the video to concentrate mostly on the historical time period when slavery existed. However, the video is Nell Irvin Painter reading from the beginning, and ends of her book. Rather than the video being about a certain historical time period, it is a literal adaptation of the title. The book is about how the “white race” came about; it discusses how certain ethnicities, and races came to be considered white, or Caucasian. I believe the book probably contains a lot more history, however she skipped over most of that and touched on the main points.

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

White privilege is the societal privileges that specifically benefit white people. White privilege is why white people can get pulled over by the police and escape a ticket with just a smile and apology. White privilege is also why whites are in charge of a company and they see a black person, they bypass the application. Whites carry a certain privilege not available to people of color. Marilyn Frye describes how whiteness is a form social and political power.

Racism is dislike a person, or it is a fast judgment for the way that person 's looks, and without known anything about the person, indeed, the main reason behind racism is the lack of education. Racism is a true problem, existed hundred years ago in America, in fact, Americans showed hatred against other people especially immigrants. Some citizens of the United States of America believe the racism’s issue is resolved and it is over, also they think we all live in an equal rights era, while others believe the opposite, they believe the racism is still exists but in different forms and ways. In the book “The Heart of Whiteness”, published in 2005, by Robert Jensen, who was raised in a privileged community, he expressed himself as a white person, and the feeling of living in white supremacy. In all honesty, Jensen’s book is the most honest book I had ever read, it brought up the race problem genuinely, and the difference in treatment between the white people and the African-American people, also Jensen included some of his personal stories and experience. In the book “ The Heart of Whiteness”, Jensen aimed at white people, also he cited many points on how it is like to live in white supremacy, and the feeling of mixed emotions about the past, then what is the action white people should make. Me personally thinks the main three points that i experienced with my white friends are: White privilege. Second point is the guilt feeling towards the racism, and finally, the feeling of

The book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the criminal justice system. It depicts individuals who were arrested on drug crimes. Because these individuals are labeled as criminals, it becomes difficult for them to find work, housing, and public assistance. (Alexander, 2010) The themes in this book include denial and ignorance, racism and violence, and drugs.

One of the most, if not the most, controversial and heated debates following the United States independence was regarding the institution of slavery. In the introduction to his book Half Slave and Half Free, Bruce Levine quotes Carl Schurzs’ observation as the “slave question not being a mere occasional quarrel between two sections of the country divided by a geographic line, but a great struggle between two antagonistic systems of social organization (p.15)”. The Nouthern states that allowed slavery benefited from the agricultural labor that those slaves provided. The Northern states that prohibited slavery did so for moral and pragmatic reasons; they felt it was morally wrong to deny another human any form of rights, and did not like the economic advantage it gave to the Southern states. With the use of slavery largely concentrated in the South, the movement against it came from the North and was led by abolitionists; those who were committed to bringing an end to the practice. In this course we have defined “Practice” as the conduct of policy, such as opinion, election, parties and law-making (Lecture). We define Policy as the goals of politics, those being sovereignty, defense, and a collective well-being (Lecture). The following analytical essay will examine antislavery sentiment and practices in the Northern states and the reaction of Southern states. Additionally how the pressures from both sides influenced the Policy of the United States following independence then

Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American folklorist, novelist and anthropologist. She was born in 1891 and lived in the first all-black town in the United States, Eatonville, Florida. Her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God and played a vital role in the literacy movement the Harlem Renaissance is what she is best known for. Zora Neale Hurston depicts racism in her writings and has contributed greatly to African-American literature. Her work became more popular posthumously.