Research Korner: Racial Discrimination

Argumentative Essay on The Harlem Renaissance, Then and Now

It is widely believed that racism remains a major international problem at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The term is used in some countries and in some circles to describe hostility and discrimination directed against a group for virtually any reason. Racism survives even in the carefully delineated sense that has governed the study of its history. The Holocaust and decolonization may have permanently discredited what can be called as overtly racist regimes, but this good news should not be inflated into a belief that racism itself is dead or even dying (Fredrickson 2002). Group inequalities associated with what are taken to be indelible marks of inferior or unworthy ancestry can exist without having the full apparatus of the modern state to sustain them. The legacy of the past racism directed at blacks in the United States is more like a bacillus that people have failed to destroy, a live germ that not only continues to make some people ill but retains the capacity to generate new strains of a disease for which people have no certain cure. If racism is not dead, it is less intense and intellectually respectable than it was a century or even a half-century ago (Fredrickson 2002).   But human beings continue to mistreat other human beings on the basis of their ethnic identities. Although it takes much more than rational persuasion to overcome racism, the fact that its foundations are subject to empirical falsification does make it more fragile than the incontrovertible and unquestioning faith demanded by sectarian or fundamentalist religion. Along with the dissemination of the truth about human physical differences, the struggle against racism also requires that stigmatized groups have enforceable civil rights, political empowerment in proportion to their numbers, and equal opportunity in education and employment (Babbitt & Campbell 1999). In debates about racism within the United States, some take the position that black people cannot be racist and that only white people can be racist. Others hold a very different view. They say that racism is not confined to one group, which members of any ethnic or racial group can be racist against members of any other group, and that racism on the part of blacks is no better or worse than racism on the part of whites. All racism is equal, according to this second view. These two views are sometimes thought to correlate with particular members of racial groups. So, it is said, blacks tend to hold the view that only whites can be racist, whereas whites hold the view that all racism is equal. Both the historical legacy effect and the social disadvantage effect might well be somewhat different than the usual cases of dominant-group racism if the perpetrator is a member of a vulnerable group and the content of the racist message is less reminiscent of dominant group racism perhaps drawing on a racist content more specific to the ethnic culture of the vulnerable group perpetrator than to U.S. culture (Babbitt & Campbell 1999).    The content might then be less evocative of the particular tradition of historical oppression and of the particular racist ideology and imagery that are reflective and justificatory of current relations of advantage and disadvantage. If so, the historical legacy effect and the social disadvantage effect would likely be less powerful (Sue 2003). Racism has been the problem for the society since time immemorial. It has created human conflicts and it caused world wars. Measures have been used by society to counter such problems but it continues to exist in society and in every culture in the world. Racism involves not only the outcast of people not having the same color as the general public, it involves setting aside people with a different culture, tradition or birth place. Racism happens in private and public agencies, entertainment institutions and even in the media. Humans have a natural instinct of concern that another person not belonging to their race may surpass their achievements and steal their group from them. When they feel that the person is better than them, they set them aside. Humans also have the tendency to outcast any person not having the same race as them because they have fears that the other person may have better look than them. The poem We Return Fighting by W.E.B. Dubois talked about the goal for those oppressed to succeed in the color war brought by racists. It tells how they were forced into fighting and what will be the end result of the war.  The poem did not offer solutions to contemporary problems because it created a wider gap among races.  The visual art Topsy from the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin shows a black person and other black individuals enjoying themselves by one person dancing and the others watching or playing the musical instruments. The visual art did not offer solutions to contemporary problems because it created stereotypes against black people. In current times racial discrimination has been reduced in the US and most parts of the world. There are still some people who discriminate but the focus is not only on the color but on the nationality, sex or religion.   References Babbitt, SE & Campbell, S (eds.) 1999, Racism and philosophy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.   Fredrickson, GM 2002, Racism: a short history, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.   Sue, D 2003, Overcoming our racism: The journey to liberation, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Argumentative Essay on The Harlem Renaissance, Then and Now

It is widely believed that racism remains a major international problem at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The term is used in some...

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Journal Comparison               On the essays on “The Special Plight and Role of Black” and “A Red Record,” the main issue that was talked about is on the Blacks in America. It has talked about the plight and the role of the Blacks in the eyes of the Whites. Slavery of the blacks has been the case many years ago and even in the recent years there is still race discrimination on the Black people. From north down to the south, discrimination and slavery are the major issues in these essays. There are also discussions on how these issues have changed slowly over time. They provided a critical exploration of African American history that encompassed the global implications for past and contemporary black liberation struggles.             Black in America is continuously plagued with various race-related problems of extremely escalating severity. For example, many black males are considered as less desirable employees and are less likely hired in most jobs. There is a notion that blacks should be separated and accorded different treatment from the rest of the population because of their racial inferiority (1989;, 1988). Black Americans have forever labored under binary oppositions: slavery vs. freedom, equality vs. inequality, accommodation vs. agitation.             Historical stories about African Americans typically cover only the period immediately before the Civil War when the Underground Railroad was firmly established and freedom was getting closer. Most stories about slavery take place in the South. The long fight for equality for African Americans is not over yet until the present time.             In the past, the White Americans has owned the Black Americans, their body and their soul. They had the blacks as their slaves and even give them physical punishment, and even treating them inhumanly. Moreover, they referred the Blacks as objects that can be owned.             In December 1865, the American states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, formally emancipating over 4 million blacks in former slaveholding states (1970).             The deinstitutionalization of slavery and its effects have been studied by a number of intellectuals since the late nineteenth century, ranging from (1935) inquiry into the political potential for greater race and class equality in southern reconstruction to the large-scale quantitative analyses conducted under the impetus of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1930; 1927).             Despite this early flurry of scholarship, however, more recent efforts in social history have often focused on the institution of slavery itself rather than its legacy (2003; 1989), while examinations of slavery's consequences have emphasized aggregate, macro level effects (2001). Lacking longitudinal analysis at the micro level, the legacy of American slavery remains poorly understood for individual blacks emancipated from this peculiar institution (1956).             After emancipation happen and the ownership of the White Americans on the Black has ended. But either way the mistreatment of the whites to the blacks continues. In the time that they can own a Black as their slaves, they tried not to go beyond there anger in order to not to kill their slaves because they thought it would be a great loss to them like an asset that is lost.             But when emancipation happened, the Blacks are not only injured and treated inhumanly but rather even brutally murder them. Their excuse is that the necessity of the white man to repress and stamp out alleged race riots. The second excuse happens during the reconstruction. Moreover, Negroes had to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women. They accused black men raped the white women.             With the two essays it has discussed about the meaning of slavery as owning the Negro’s body and soul. Both has also emphasizes the unchanged treatment of the whites to the blacks. Brutality is present and the whites are likely to dominate over.             Moreover, discrimination was still widely happening over the whites and the blacks. With the ratification of the constitution which has formally emancipated the blacks, blacks have been given the right to vote and their votes have largely affect elections. But that has not been long because the blacks has given the right to vote but still had denied them with the right of protection. Murders on blacks are spreading but there were no murderers that have been convicted. The rights of the Black people were taken for granted by the law. This is because the Black people have thought that they are born to be slaves. They have low education and they are ignorant of the laws. Many of them are poor.             However, emancipation meant a tremendous increase in the degree to which freedmen and freedwomen controlled their private lives, but, at least for the majority employed in sharecropping arrangements, there was not always a commensurate increase in economic autonomy. The reasons were twofold. First, the debt load imposed by unscrupulous merchants often forced ex-slaves into material penury that placed them in a tier of socioeconomic status similar to that which they had experienced as field hands (1992). Even those who were fortunate or talented enough to escape low-status occupations usually spent a period as unskilled laborers accumulating cultural or economic capital. Second, the authority exercised by merchants and landlords and effective serfdom of many ex-slaves meant that the cultural distinction between chattel slavery and "free" wage labor was likely to seem ambiguous to some. Clearly the frequency of physical coercion was reduced under freedom, but even this crucial improvement in the lives of ex-slaves was far from universal (1976; 1979). Other examples of practices descendent from slavery institutions included the enforcement of black codes by police and the harassment of blacks by white patrols and vigilante groups convened to regulate African American behavior.     References:   Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

Journal Comparison On the essays on “The Special Plight and Role of Black” and “A Red Record,” the main issue that was ...

Sample Essay Restrictions on Blacks

Restrictions on Blacks Black, as stated in the Wikipedia, referred to as negro , which is generally considered offensive. It is a color-defined term used as a form of ethno-racial classification. Black people were the most common victims of this classification as well as of racial discrimination and slavery during the colonial era. They suffered a lot during this time. Since slavery was an integral part of the economy, it spread in all directions.  Then, it became an institution. Since blacks were usually the slaves, they formed the core of the early labor force.             More and more Africans were shipped to America. Blacks became the prime servants. Because they were known as servants, several state governments felt that they should not have the same equal rights as other citizens.  (Smedley 1999)             These states felt that blacks were there to do work, not to be a part of the society. So, states such as Virginia and Maryland legally and systematically enclosed blacks. Other states such as North and South Carolina did the same.  (Smedley 1999)             On 1723, blacks were not allowed to vote in all southern colonies. This was a major reason for permanent African slavery. Thus, more and more blacks became servants. On the other hand, the other servants were freed. (Smedley 1999)              Blacks were forced to do the hardest and harshest jobs. Legal restrictions on blacks continued, and by the mid- 1700’s, blacks had almost no rights. (Smedley 99).             At this point, there were hundreds of thousands of African slaves all across the nation. They were now full time servants and obeyed their master; they were whipped if they did not.             By 1783, an anti-slavery movement begun. Political movements and groups known as abolitionist that sought to abolish the practice of slavery and the slave trade were formed. The Slave Trade Act 1807 and Slavery Abolition Act 1833 gave black people a hope to be freed from being a slave and from being traded. (Wikipedia) Freedom for Free Blacks In the first three decades of the 1800s, the lives of formerly enslaved black men, women and children changed drastically. The Revolutionary War helped lead to new attitudes about slavery, especially among whites in the North. The war inspired a spirit of liberty and an appreciation for the service of the black soldiers. Partly for this reason, some Northern legislatures adopted laws that provided for the immediate or gradual end of slavery. Most Northern states took steps to end slavery. After the Revolutionary War, numerous free blacks found jobs in tobacco plants, textile mills, and other factories. Some worked in shipyards, on ships, and later in railroad construction. Many of them became skilled in carpentry and others  in trades. Some became merchants and editors. Many of them came together to form communities and founded black churches. Many others, however, became outcasts, gathering in bleak shantytown poverty, depending on charity to survive. Many ex-slaves found themselves unable to do anything but stay right where they were, on white men's farms. Thus, they continued to work in their former owners, probably doing the same jobs, for minimal pay. (DeWan 2006). A. Freedom in Texas Freedom for free blacks was established through four different governments: Spanish, Mexican, the Republic of Texas, and Texas. The Spanish and Mexican governments considered free blacks as citizens. With the equality blacks received from the Spanish and Mexican governments, numerous of blacks bought their freedom along with their families and moved to Texas. (Barr 1973) Free blacks could own land and practiced any trade or skilled they wanted to. Some of them become weavers, buglers, freighters, innkeepers, land speculators, blacksmiths, ranchers, and farmers. They could also owned houses and town lots, raised sugar, cotton, and vegetables as a way of living. Texas at that time was a place for free blacks to acquire land to become wealthy and improve their life. (Barr 1973) Interracial couples came to Texas. Texas also allowed them to avoid the social pressure of more populated areas. In the Texas Revolution, many free blacks fought against the Mexican government because the free blacks hoped to improve their status through the eyes of the Anglos. (Barr 1973)     B. Freedom in  Mississippi Between 1820 and 1860, southwest Mississippi, principally the Natchez District, was the most settled and developed part of the state. It was home to a majority of the state’s free black population. In 1840, when Mississippi had its largest free black population of almost 1,400, nearly a third lived in just two of the state's fifty-six counties – Adams and Warren counties, both river counties. The majority of the free blacks in each county were urban dwellers. Blacks in Mississippi, and elsewhere in the South, became free in several ways. Prior to 1825, it was common and legal for slaves to become free either by purchasing their freedom or by slaveholders freeing them. (Davis n.d.)             The rising number of free blacks alarmed many white. This led to further restrictions on their activities. Political, economic and social restrictions were imposed on them. A. Texas When the Republic of Texas won its independence, the government changed the immigration laws. The Texas government set limits on immigration by free blacks to Texas and on the status of the free blacks already in Texas.             The whites in Texas begun to differentiate themselves from the free blacks in dress, manners, religion, and architecture. Moreover, the whites defined the word “black” as being evil and filth. (Barr 1973) The Republic of Texas set laws that did not allow free person of one-eight Negro blood to vote, own property, testify in court against whites, or intermarry with whites. After Texas separated from the republic, more laws were developed that restricted free blacks. (Barr 1973) Free blacks were whipped for insulting, abusive, or threatening language to whites.  They could not have firearms, gamble, hire slaves, dispense medicine, or preach without two slave holders present. The number of free blacks in Texas began to decrease because of the limitations they had to encounter to reside in Texas. (Barr 1973) With all the laws to restrict free blacks to acquire status as free people, free blacks was not that much different from slaves. B. Mississippi Mississippi’s laws required every black of free status to appear before the local court to give evidence of his or her freedom. If the court was provided  of satisfactory proof, the applicants received certificates of free status, or freedom papers. The certificate indicated the bearer’s name, color, physical stature, and any distinguishing features, such as scars. Every three years the certificate had to be renewed at a fee of . In 1831 the fee was increased to .3. (Davis n.d.) Free blacks in Mississippi may placed themselves at great risk if they failed to have in their possession a certificate of registration. They could ran the risk of seizure and even jail. If blacks were unable to establish their free status within a specified period of time, they could, as allowed by law, be sold into slavery at public auction. Free blacks’ certificates of registration were their single most important source of documentation. (Davis n.d.) Free blacks faced extensive limitations and restraints. The required certificate of registration, rather than ensuring for physical mobility of free persons of color, hampered their movement instead. They were frequently treated as vagrants and arrested when traveling outside their county of residency, especially if proof of “honest employment” was not provided. Furthermore, all firearms and weapons of free blacks had to be licensed. If engaged in commerce, they could sell their goods and wares only in an incorporated town. They were not allowed to sell grocery items or liquor to the public. Laws in Mississippi further prohibited free persons of color from operating a house of entertainment or a printing establishment. (Davis n.d.) C. COLUMBUS, OHIO In Columbus, Ohio, restricted laws were enforced and used to harass and intimidate Blacks by those inclined and to discourage their influx into the state. (Burns & Jefferson 1997) Blacks could not settle in the country unless a bond of 0 be paid within twenty days and the signatures of two white men must be secured guaranteeing his good behavior. They were also excluded from serving in the militia. They could not attend common schools, and were exempted from paying taxes which raised funds for public schools. (Burns & Jefferson 1997) Blacks must present a certificate of freedom in order to work for more than one hour. A fine of to was imposed on any person hiring a Black without a certificate, and even higher fines if the Black was an escaped slave. They also could not testify against a white person no matter what the circumstances.             Furthermore, they were not allowed on juries, nor allowed to vote or hold public office. These Black Laws reflect the contradictions inherent in the prohibition of slavery and the imposition of legal, social, political, and economic restrictions that denied Blacks equality of opportunity. (Burns & Jefferson 1997) Other Forms of Restrictions             White society was clearly not congenial towards free blacks. Restrictions were put on free blacks. Free blacks were barred from some professions. They were refused the right to assemble. Blacks were also required to register in the free black registry. (Farnam 1938)             This registry, though probably primarily intended to control the free black, may have also served to protect. In a society where the majority of one's race is in servitude, it was useful, even necessary, to be able to prove one's freedom. This is seen by the type of people who registered as free. (Farnam 1938)             The middle class urban free black was much more likely to register than the country day- laborer. With this, it is seen that the people that were most likely to register were the ones who had the most to lose if it was thought that they were runaway slaves. (Farnam 1938)             Free blacks were certainly oppressed by these laws, but these laws do not paint a complete picture. Clearly there is much more to be told than what is written in textbooks or what laws were on the books. Restrictions in North States             The northern States pioneered viciously discriminatory black codes long before they existed in any Southern State.  The Revised Code of Indiana stated in 1862 that “Negroes and mulattos are not allowed to come into the State”, forbade the consummation of legal contracts with the same, imposed a 0 fine on anyone who employed a black person, forbade interracial marriage and forbade blacks from testifying in court against a white person. (Greene 1942)             In Illinois, the land of Lincoln, added almost identical restrictions in 1848 as did Oregon in 1857.  Most northern States in the 1860’s did not permit immigration by blacks or, if they did, required them to post a 00 bond that would be confiscated if they behaved improperly. (Farman 1938)             Free blacks were required to work on roads a certain number of days a year in Massachusetts, at the discretion of the local selectmen. They could only use ferries under certain conditions in New England. In South Kingstown, Rhode Island, they could not own horses or sheep. In Boston, they could not carry a cane unless they were unable to walk without one. (Greene 1942)             Pennsylvania colony's “Act for the better Regulation of Negroes” set penalties for free blacks who harbored runaway slaves or received property stolen from masters that were potentially much higher than those applied to whites. If the considerable fines could not be paid, the justices had the power to order a free black person put into servitude. (Litwack 1961)             Under other provisions of the act, free Negroes who married whites were to be sold into slavery for life; for mere fornication or adultery involving blacks and whites, the penalty for the black person was to be sold as a servant for seven years. Whites in such cases faced different or lighter punishment. (Greene 1942)             All in all, the "free" blacks of colonial Pennsylvania led severely limited lives; they had no control even over their own family arrangements, and they could be put back into servitude for "laziness" or petty crimes, at the mercy of the local authorities. (Greene 1942)             Having set controls on their black residents, the Northern states busied themselves in passing laws to make sure no more blacks moved within their boundaries. These were not elitist actions. The pressure for total exclusion came from the working class whites, struggling for a little bargaining power with the shop owners and fearful of inexpensive black competition that could drive down wages. (Tocqueville 1966)             Like the black codes of the South and Midwest in the 19th century, enforcement of Northern colonial race laws was selective, and their real value lay in harassment and discouragement of further settlement, and in being a constant reminder to free blacks that their existence was precarious and dependent on white toleration. Across the North, such laws were the sword hung above the heads of a whole black population. (Tocqueville 1966) Restrictions in the South In the South, free blacks could be enslaved if caught without proof that they were free. Fears that they would lead slave revolts almost all states were encouraged to pass laws severely limiting the right of free blacks to own weapons.  (Rothman n.d.) Free blacks met many challenges. They paid a high and continuing price for their free status. They paid heavily as their group’s numbers were kept low and their dreams and aspirations went unrealized. Their lives were bleak, and their blackness continued to be equated with servitude. (Rothman n.d.) Free blacks were generally brutally treated by whites, and they faced prejudice and discrimination at nearly every turn. Colonization sentiment -- proposals to remove blacks from the United States altogether was especially popular in Virginia. Free blacks often lived in dire economic conditions as well. Many lived in poverty at the very bottom of the socioeconomic order. In rural areas, free blacks worked largely as agricultural laborers, or as tenant farmers living in a perpetual cycle of debt that prefigured the postwar status of many freedmen. In cities, they often worked at unskilled or menial jobs. (Rothman n.d.) They had no right to a jury trial in most cases and faced criminal penalties as severe as those designed for crimes committed by slaves. It was illegal to educate free blacks, who also were forbidden to preach or meet in churches outside the presence of whites. Political or legal struggle for free blacks was futile; they could not vote, hold political office, sit on juries, or testify against whites in court. (Rothman n.d.) Conclusion In general, blacks were just freed to be restricted. These restrictions are the keys to appreciating and understanding the challenge and the world filled of free blacks. Clearly, it was a world between slavery and freedom. Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com

Sample Essay Restrictions on Blacks

Restrictions on Blacks Black, as stated in the Wikipedia, referred to as negro , which is generally considered offensive. It is a colo...

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