The Difference Of Race By Jared Gardner

After reading the assigned literature, I have now cast a light on several issues that are currently causing problems today. The article titled, “Let’s Make A Slave,” was depressing because it almost forced one to go back in time and feel the plight of Africans Americans before slavery was outlawed. William Lynch traveled a great ways to inform the people of the Virginia Colony about slavery and how it should truly be done. As I was reading, it seemed as though William Lynch was reading the instructions for a product (and not a human being) but he actually was talking about people (African Americans). The speech that he prepared was delivered was so much conviction that it made it very hard to believe that African Americans could have been treated any other way. The Europeans (during slavery) did not respect Black people and regarded to them as “uncivilized niggers” (The Black Arcade Liberation Library, 1970,p2) and sought nothing more than to treat them like the “money making machines” they were.

Traditionally history of the Americas and American population has been taught in a direction heading west from Europe to the California frontier. In Recovering History, Constructing Race, Martha Mencahca locates the origins of the history of the Americas in a floral pattern where migration from Asia, Europe, and Africa both voluntary and forced converge magnetically in Mexico then spreads out again to the north and northeast. By creating this patters she complicates the idea of race, history, and nationality. The term Mexican, which today refers to a specific nationality

    A main idea in the first chapter is about the history of slavery and freedom in the U.S. Firstly slavery had existed during the American Revolution. Despite the fact that the founding fathers wanted freedom as a right to all men, then African Americans should also rightfully be allowed freedom. Foner quotes Lemuel Haynes, “ If liberty were truly ‘an innate principle” for all mankind’ Haynes wrote, ‘ even an African [had] as equally good a right to his liberty in common with Englishmen.’(Foner 9). Slavery was a problem in the United States history from the beginning.

Humans define race by how they conceive and categorize different social realities. Thus, race is often referred to as a social construct. The differences in skin color and facial characteristics have led most of society to classify humans into groups instead of individuals. These constructs affect us all, and they often result in situations where majority racial groups cause undue suffering to those that are part of the minority. The understanding of race as a social construct is best illustrated by the examination of racial issues within our own culture, specifically those that have plagued the history of the United States.

In “The Social Construction of Race’’, Ian Lopez states that race is constructed relationally, against one another rather than in isolation on (p.54); we cannot define what whiteness is or is not without making comparison to other entities such as blackness. Therefore, the creation of racial identities by Anglo-Saxons or white Europeans was justification for their offensive activities against other races; including rape, murder, genocide, causing famines, and taking land. Lopez states in his article that human interaction creates social construction of race and that races are constructed in comparison to one another rather than alone (p.54). We cannot define what it means to be black compared to what it means to be white; we say what whiteness

In my opinion I found it crucial to break away from this way of thinking, by trying to understand race as and social meanings that were constantly being distorted and misrepresented. After completing this reading, I really wanted to understand why some felt that they should be free and that others should be enslaved. Why some people should have rights to land, voting privileges, and employment while others did not. Race and the understanding of racial differences were fundamental influences in the worldview.

In the article “The Central Theme of Southern Slavery” Ulrich B. Phillips asserts that among several other motives that served as a drive for white Southerners to support slavery, the predominant one was their desire to preserve white supremacy in the South. He claims that all of the states in the US are similar except for the opinion about slavery. Phillips emphasizes that the idea of slavery in the South was important and perceived by southerners as heritage and a tradition. He also claims that the institution wasn’t merely economic, but also a system of social order. In addition, the white southerners saw abolition as a major threat to their economic freedom. According to Phillips, some Southerners saw deportation of african-american citizens as another solution to the slavery crisis in the United States. However,

The Changing Concept of Race in the South Throughout the years, the concept of race has changed in the South.

In recent years, there has been increased discussion about the treatment of minorities in the U.S. While there have been numerous laws passed that protect their freedoms, many Americans maintain a negative mindset toward other ethnicities. Due to people’s reservations, our country has been unable to make substantial progress toward equality. In The Nation’s article, “The Truth About Race in America: It’s Getting Worse, Not Better,” by Gary Younge, the author utilizes factual information, historical allusions, and related quotes to effectively contend that race relations are worsening within the United States.

In society, race clearly affects one’s life chances. These are the chances of getting opportunities and gaining experience for progression. The social construction of race is based on privileges and availability of resources. Looking at society and the formation of race in a historical context, whites have always held some sort of delusional belief of a “white-skin privilege.” This advantage grants whites an advantage in society whether one desires it or not. This notion is often commonly referred to as reality.

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).

There is an extricable relationship between race, capitalism, and property and how it perpetuates the notion of whiteness through the exploitation of “others”. Property is a relationship of a person and an object; slaves were considered as objects. Race is constructed from white workers’ ideology of whiteness and labor wage. Racism has been long constructed through the production of race and its relations to property, and we can see it through the notion of capitalism and the idea of whiteness.

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 “American Slavery 1619-1877” is a book on slavery unlike anything I have ever read. Most books on slavery look at it through extremely common perspectives and have flooded the nonfiction genre. However, the author, Peter Kolchin, decides to show the reader that his studies on slavery are different from any previous study done. He brings up a lot of arguments that were actually thought to be unarguable, and shuts them down. It is miraculous to think that someone finally got to the very root of American slavery and can finally give Americans of today a real feel for the reasons behind slavery.

A dilemma with race discrimination is mainly against a person who has distinct disadvantages regarding to their ethnic background. A victim of race discrimination is more likely to be affected in a negative way instead of a positive beneficial way. According to Scott Marshall, author of The Fight Against Racism Today states,“ For black and Brown people, racism means shorter, less healthy, less-valued lives” this limits the potential an individual has in order to show society what they are initially capable of achieving. Racial discrimination is also known to be both verbal and nonverbal, which leads to physical and emotional pain in a person.