Since the 15th century they have been here. They have been treated horrifically and have endured much pain and suffering. Without them America as we know it would not exist. The history of America is the struggle of African Americans. In Native Son by Richard Wright, the ideals of systemic racism come into fruition. Institutionally and systematically, African American males have been victims of racism and discrimination in society because of their skin color.
No longer can one shout the “n” word in a derogatory way as they please. No longer can a young man be hanged by his neck for whistling at a white woman. No longer can one be out right, in their face, racist, but one can ensure that a group of people can never succeed in society. No matter
…show more content…
Racists figured that since they could no longer be publicly racist, they had to find some other way to put African American down, especially African American males. They placed barriers and walls up, things that people would not notice (Alexander 12). An example of this is mass incarceration. The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery in the United States, but slavery continued to be the basis of this economy. After the civil war ended, African Americans were continued to be discriminated against and arrested for petty crimes such as loitering. Thousands of African American males were arrested and sent to chain gangs to help rebuild the South. Slavery did not end with the conclusion of the Civil War, but merely took another …show more content…
The “War on Drugs” plays a big role in this. The “War on Drugs” started with the Nixon administration. Nixon wanted to crack down on crime and made that a strong point of his campaign and his presidency. During his presidency in 1970, the U.S prison population was 357,292 (13th). During this period crime stood in for race. Hundreds of thousands of people were sent to jail for for low level offenses, like possession of marijuana. An advisor to President Nixon even admitted that the “War on Drugs” was all about throwing African Americans behind bars. Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman stated, “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the anti war left and black people.” (13th). This is the ideal of systemic racism, the fact that our own government was against the support and social upbringing of African Americans in society. Ehrlichman went on to say, “We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities”(13th). One will never be aware of systemic racism unless they read in between the lines (Foster
From as early as the time of the early European settlers, Native Americans have suffered tremendously. Native Americans during the time of the early settlers where treated very badly. Europeans did what they wanted with the Native Americans, and when a group of Native Americans would stand up for themselves, the European would quickly put them down. The Native Americans bow and arrows where no match for the Europeans guns and cannon balls. When the Europeans guns didn’t work for the Europeans, the disease they bought killed the Native Americans even more effectively.
In 1982 the crack epidemic started, which shortly after Ronald Reagan expanded the war on drugs that Nixon started, one of his top aides admitted that the war on drugs was used to “target African Americans and hippies”. The number of incarcerations before the war on drugs was expanded in 1980 was four thousand seven hundred forty-nine for drug related crimes, in 1990 that number increased to twenty-four thousand two hundred ninety-seven, sixty percent of those incarcerations were African Americans (sentencingproject.org). If you were caught with one gram of crack you got the same sentencing as someone found with eighteen grams of cocaine, it was policies like these that targeted lower income black communities because crack was much cheaper than cocaine and was more likely for a white person to have cocaine.
Throughout history, the drug war has always targeted minority groups. “At the root of the drug-prohibition movement in the United States is race, which is the driving force behind the first laws criminalizing drug use, which first appeared as early as the 1870s (Cohen, 56)”. There were many drug laws that targeted minority groups such as the marijuana ban of 1930s that criminalized Mexican migrant farm workers and in the Jim Crow South, reformist wanted to wage war on the Negro cocaine feign so they used African Americans as a scapegoat while they overlooked southern white women who were a bigger problem for the drug epidemic (Cohen, 57). Instead of tackling the root of the drug problem they passed the blame to struggling minority groups within the United States.
After the arrival of the Spanish into the New World,the Native Americans lives changed drastically during the 15-16th hundreds. It brought major changes,politically,socially,and economically. The Natives were obviously vulnerable and submissive towards the Spanish.These events that I’m going to talk about shaped and changed the lives of many of Native Americans.It's the most unforgettable history of all times because it was the most unbelievable story.
Although seemingly outlawing slavery, the 13th amendment of the United States constitution allows for the instatement of slavery as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” ( US Constitution). This essentially granted the government the right to enslave prisoners as long as they have been “duly convicted.” With the advent of Reconstruction and millions of newly freed slaves in the South, white southerners felt threatened by the possibility of Black Americans entering their level of the social hierarchy, considering that for hundreds of years blacks were inherently lower in class than any white person, no matter how poor that person could be. This section of the 13th amendment provided white southerners with
One of the most significant policy developments that created a space for institutionalized racism following the slavery era was the War on Drugs, announced by President Ronald Reagan. This declaration was surprising because at the time, most Americans were hardly, if not at all, concerned about drug problems in their communities. Instead, President Reagan had created a tool in which race in the US could be controlled, specifically through a transition from traditional policing to military style policing. But this was not the only change in policing during this time. The Reagan administration, and following it, the Clinton administration, continued their racist-driven agendas by doing such things as making cash grants to those police authorities that made it a top priority to pursue drug offenders. Essentially bribing police officers into searching out anyone with drugs, it became legal for police officers to stop and search vehicles with minor traffic violations, as well as to confiscate any belongings of the individual charged with committing a drug crime, claiming that the object could have been a part of the felony act.
After a long history of slavery, declaration of independence and a civil war finally, on February 1, 1865, Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawing slavery throughout the United States. But even after the American Civil War, African Americans were still abused and some even used as slaves. They would be arrested by law men and sent to prison to be used as workers that would be sold to companies to
The 13th amendment was meant to abolish slavery. It was the beginning of racism being blown out proportion. Racism took over and unfortunately stopped the black people from being free, they passed black codes to degrade black people and basically strip them of their rights all over again. To this day racism is alive and it is very horrific to see how people degrade and dehumanize other because of their color/ethnicity. Sometimes people did not certainly believe in the emancipation because they thought it was not going to make a difference. So, racism was very well alive after the 13th amendment, it is just that people thought it was ok because there were laws passed that basically said that all blacks could not be somewhere. But the people thought it was ok because they were no longer slaves so they thought that why should they get even more after already being freed from slavery, so they created groups to go against the blacks. They created groups that favored white people and terrorized anyone who tried to get in their way or just did not agree with them.
The criminalization of African Americans was further developed into the increased rate of incarceration after the abolishment of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment in 1863 outlawed slavery in America, stating that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (U.S. Constitution. Amend. XIII, sec.1) However, the amendment leaves out the exception that if a person is a criminal, he or she can be possibly used as a slave. The South seized the chance by replacing slavery by black codes, and as a part of the black codes, the Vagrancy laws forced freedman to do hard labor, and “if so-called
This began in the 1970s, under President Nixon was the “tough on crime” campaign. Progressing into President Reagan’s term in the 1980s, began the “war on drugs”. This was a government organized, aggressive campaign to put a stop to the use and sale of illegal drugs in America. The focus was on punishment associated with drug arrest would be by the means of incarceration (Moore, 2014). Because of the aggressiveness of this campaign, it caused conviction rates of drug offenses to massively increase the prison population. From 1982 to 2007, in a 25 year span, incarcerations grew from 41,000 to half-million (The sentencing project, 2013). And up to present day, almost half of the incarcerated population is due to drug convictions. The war on drugs campaign was majorly focused on street-level surveillance, crime and patrol in areas that was mostly segregated in African American communities. Because of the concentrated focus on these neighborhoods, it resulted in an increase in arrest and convictions for African American males. Which
African Americans have always suffered to be put down or belittle by the opposite race, not knowing that blacks were actually the first to overcome many circumstances and changing the world. In today’s society not too many African Americans understand or know where they come from and how many of their ancestors pave the way for Blacks today. After reading the poem On the origins of things by Listervel middleton African Americans have fought with knowledge, overcame circumstances and changed history.
After the civil war, political changes affected African American lives significantly. African Americans were freed of slavery by the 13th amendment and the 14th amendment guaranteed their citizenship, “Everyone born or naturalized in the US were granted citizenship and were equal under the law” (Doc 1). After about 250 years of slavery, African Americans were finally free of slavery (Johnson, 2000). Though they were free, they had nowhere to go and no money to spend, “They were sent away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon” (Doc 2). Former owners used their power to place limitations on emancipation. The former slaves had to end up working for their former masters and borrowing land/money from them. As many people disagreed with the decision of the 13th amendment, many hate groups started to appear. Most commonly known group was the KKK founded Tennessee, 1865 ("Ku Klux Klan," n.d.). They took it upon themselves to hurt African Americans in various ways, “People have been driven
After the Civil War ended laws were passed making owning slaves illegal, but most people were not very happy about them. After these wars were passed many bitter Southern states still treated African Americans very poorly. Many actions were taken by the South to try and make African Americans seem less like human beings, and more like animals from laws to secret societies.
African-Americans have suffered the greatest indignity in the history of the humankind. Millions of African-Americans were enslaved throughout the United States from the Colonial Era until the end Civil War during which they were brutalized, murdered, kidnapped, raped, and deprived of their natural rights. Meanwhile, African-Americans have fought in every single war to secure America’s
In an article “A Brief History of the Drug War”, a top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman later admitted: “You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies the antiwar left and black people.” He goes on to say, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” He does not even finish there “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” This show that their real intention was politicly and racially fueled. His testimony shows blatant dissemination, in the article “The War on Drugs, Explained” in the question “Is the war on drugs racist” it stated that In the US, the war on drugs mostly impacts minority, particularly black, communities, with this disproportionate effect is why critics often call the war on drugs racist. Also states that although black communities aren't more likely to use or sell drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses (LOPEZ, MAY 8, 2016,). This statement show the intent to attack people of color