Racism During The Civil Rights Era

What is racism? Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to categorize it as inferior or superior to another race or races. Racism has changed a lot over the last century.

Social movements are one of the primary means through which the public is able to collectively express their concerns about the rights and wellbeing of themselves and others. Under the proper conditions, social movements not only shed light on issues and open large scale public discourse, but they can also serve as a means of eliciting expedited societal change and progress. Due to their potential impact, studying the characteristics of both failed and successful social movements is important in order to ensure that issues between the public and the government are resolved to limit injustices and maintain societal progress.

While the Civil Rights Movement is considered a success, there is still racism in the United States today, in which blacks are still viewed as overly aggressive and overtly dangerous compared to whites. The racism we are familiar with today is called “institutional racism” and is not only shown in workplaces, but in schools and courtrooms. Institutional racism is defined as a pattern of social institutions who give negative treatment to a group of people based on race. To elaborate on institutional racism, starting with pre-school, black children make up only 18 percent of the pre-school population, but make up almost half of out of school suspensions. In K-12 black children are three times as likely to be suspended than white children. Now moving to the court system, black children make up nearly 60 percent of children in prison and are more likely to be sentenced as adults than white children. These statistics show that black’s, even black children, are more likely to be viewed as dangerous and subject to worse sentences.

When it comes to court cases, every case that is heard in court is heard for one reason or another.

At the end of the Civil War, America faced the difficult task of uniting not only two separated territories of the United States, but also two races long separated by racism and culture. Devastated and embittered by the damage of the war, the South had a long way to go in order to achieve true equality between the former slave owners and former slaves. The majority of the South remained set in racist behavior, finding post-Civil War legal loopholes to diminish African American rights (Tindall & Shi, 2010, pp. 757-758). Southerners continued to marginalize Blacks in their behavior toward ex-slaves and the later African American generation,

Not only were adults affected by racism but the children were also affected.. During the time of segregation schools were separated as the white children went to a different school than the black children. In 1896 the supreme court

According to the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, blacks had the same legal protection as whites. The Supreme Court contradicted this when they allowed so called “restrictions” in the South against blacks. Those who supported Jim Crow generally lived in the South. They believed that whites were above the blacks, in things ranging from intelligence to morality. They thought sexual relations between the two races would ruin the nation, and violence could be used on blacks if needed. So, hospitals, beaches, parks, prisons, public restrooms and even water fountains were separated by color of skin. In certain areas, there weren’t even facilities for colored people (Pilgrim). African Americans also had to treat whites with respect, whereas whites did not have to, and most of the time would not treat the blacks the same. Blacks had to use titles when speaking to whites, they could not eat with the whites, and black men could not offer to shake a white mans hand. Preachers did not help with the problem, but in some situations made it worse. They would preach that God supported segregation, “the whites were the chosen people, and Blacks were servants” (Pilgrim).

DR. King touches on the possibility of black children growing up with an inferiority complex that stem from the mistreatment of blacks in his letter. King explains that children growing up being told their not allowed to do fun things that children of another race is able to do, can cause the child to feel a false sense of inferiority and bitterness towards the other race, like the example of the six-year old girl who couldn’t go to the public amusement park because it was white’s only. Beverly writes something similar when she states “simply as a function of being socialized in a Eurocentric culture, some black children may begin to value the role models, lifestyles and images

This article was one of the most if not the most shocking of all. I have never even considered the differences that African Americans must experience every day in an environment designed to grow and feed their self-image but this article proves that this may be destructing what was intended to flourish a child. It changed the way I think of fairness in discipline, as it does make perfect sense to consider the person’s race, culture, socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity when applying any type of intervention with them, in any type of service. This would include educating yourself on their history as well. You must seek out understanding when engaging with someone whose background will be quite a different shade than what yours is painted. It has really made me curious about school policies and if they were constructed out of a historical root of racism and applied to transform the unaccepted into either a more acceptable, white American behavior or facilitate their path to their thought of place in society overall, such as prison or a homeless shelter. There is obviously a crisis in modern times and the impact it has may be one of the most of influential as the power of the educational institution on a child must be largely one holding the most

It is clear that the reasoning behind the color-blind parenting approach can be argued and in this case proven to be unrealistic expectations that do no match reality. But why does this matter? Is it really that big of a deal if white children learn about race from social media and believe that race does not affect them? Yes, because in our current day and age, race issues have not gone away, and do not seem to be going away anytime soon. The book “The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide” is written entirely about how even after hundreds of year, America still has an astonishing racial wealth divide, this book even states “for every dollar owned by the average white family in the United States, the average family

Racism and discrimination are still heavy in America. The Civil Rights movement was a mixture of failure and success because all though some problems are fixed there are many more that still need to be addressed. Desegregation was for the most part a success and a positive step in the right direction. Discrimination however was a failure because it never left. I think in the future racial discrimination and racism in general will begin to decrease. The Civil Rights movement is so important for children to learn in school and understand. Children should be educated on what African Americans had to go through to get to the place they are in today, and how wrong that is. African Americans should've been given these rights to begin with but they had to fight for them, children should know that, because its an important part of history. Children should educated on what happened in this country for it to be where it is at

Oppression of minorities has had a detrimental aspect in the associated individual’s lives. History has demonstrated that as a western society, we devalue minorities’ rights and values through legislation and societal views. Today, this remains to be an issue for many individuals of many stigmatized groups. Although efforts to reach a more unified community have been taken, many minorities still fight oppression. Through activism, social and political movements, the LGBTQIA community have progressed immensely throughout the past few decades. History has demonstrated a slow, yet vast amount of success in this marginalized group. Activists endured a long journey toward gaining rights for the community which lead to a modern day civil rights movement for the LGBTQIA community. Although there has been a great amount of successes, non-heterosexual individuals still do not have full equal rights as their heterosexual counterparts. There are still adversities that are being faced in this population that hinder these individuals from thriving. The issue is even greater when the individual has an additional identity that is also marginalized. Specifically, individuals who identify as people of color (POC) and LGBTQIA still encounter prejudice from society.

Today, racism and racial discrimination is something you see everyday. Whether it be in a news story, an article on social media, or something that you personally witness, but what is racism? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. This means that one race will discriminate another because they believe that their race is better. Some people think that the only people that can be racist are white people. Their definition of racism is summed up to white people discriminating against the minority including African Americans and Latinos. Their definition of racism is not true. Racism does go both ways. Anyone is capable of saying, “Hey, my race is better than yours for this reason.” This is called reverse racism. The term reverse racism is referred to as discrimination against racial majorities inflicted by racial minorities. Reverse racism does exist and it is just as common as racism (“Racism”).

The conclusion of the Civil War in favor of the north was supposed to mean an end to slavery and equal rights for the former slaves. Although laws and amendments were passed to uphold this assumption, the United States Government fell short. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were proposed and passed within five years of the Civil War’s conclusion. These amendments were to create equality throughout the United States, especially in the south where slavery had been most abundant. Making equality a realization would not be an easy task. This is because many problems were not perceived before and during the war. The reunification of the country would prove to be harder than expected, and entry into a new lifestyle would be

In the past racism was something of the norm, from being treated like animals to also being taken as a joke. We as African Americans have gone through it all, and today I as a proud African American will talk about the uprising and the downfalls of my people. Anyhow during the uproar of segregation African Americans encountered degrading acts towards them as bad as seeing their moms, dads, brothers, and sisters being lynched. However such terrifying acts came to a minor halt when the murder of Emmett Till arose.