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Native Son Research Paper

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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

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