Essay I'M Black You'Re White Who's Innocent

Steeles’s use of historical allusions throughout the essay helps the audience relate better to his claim that minorities are unknowingly separating themselves. Everyone is familiar with the Civil Rights Movement especially when he references Martin Luther King, so when he alludes to it throughout his essay he connects his claim with an event that is well known so that they can grasp a better understanding of his point.

Jensen purposed that “…guilt is a way for white people to avoid taking action” (Jensen, 47). This prompts white individuals to believe it is enough to feel guilty about what happened with slavery rather than creating the urge to take action to fight existing racism. Though Jensen’s piece is mostly based off of an opinion, he succeeded in making a compelling argument by using personal life experiences in which his ideas were clearly

Throughout both “Was I Entitled or Should I Apologize? Affirmative Action Going Forward” by Anita Allen and “Affirmative Action as a Majoritarian Device: Or, Do You Really Want to be a Role Model?” By Richard Delgado, the themes of personal integrity, guilt, and the lack of white America’s consciousness is discussed in relation to affirmative action. Although both articles are written by minorities and hit on the negative effects that those benefitting from affirmative action deal with, Allen strongly supports the concept through the lens of guilt that she suffers, while Delgado believes it is an unhelpful process created by the government to ensure that minorities never truly get ahead. By comparing the two different opinions in these

The academic debate over affirmative action has become a bitter stalemate. Opponents consider affirmative action to be reverse discrimination, while supporters say that the relationship between blacks and whites is hardly symmetrical. The sterility of this debate suggests that it is time for a fresh perspective, and an analysis considers affirmative action in light of critical race theory (CRT). One of CRT’s tenets is that conventional civil rights scholarship has limited application to current racial problems. Because of the practical and political limits on affirmative action, disputes about its legitimacy are likely to fade as attention shifts to other problems and remedies.

The white suspects are being held in an isolation wing of the same jail: a four-storey fortified facility that sits next to a swampy river bend on the outskirts of Charleston, surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by police dogs.

What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coats, 2015, p.11-12) Officer Darrell Wilson is a twenty-eight-year-old white male, who asserted his authority and power to inflict fatal harm to Michael Brown. Coats was aware of the injustices that would arise from the case, but still allowed Samori to remain hopeful for a different verdict. Social groups are valued unequally, and power within the white race and black race is disparate. Early American history is an example of how the white race continually denied human rights to black people to maintain order and power.

The questionable existence of affirmative action continues to create a pervasive tug of war between proponents and opponents of affirmative action. The cornerstone of affirmative action policies initiated from the U.S. Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unequal—ultimately forever changing the system of education in America. This groundbreaking decision served as a gateway, with the goal of “leveling the playing field” and remedying the grotesque American past rooted in harsh racial discrimination against non-white individuals, primarily of African American descent. As a result of swift implementation of affirmative action policies, cultural and racial diversity quickly diversified

Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, discusses the preservation of racial subordination in the United States. While the abolition of slavery following the American Civil War freed all slaves, the institution left an enduring impact on society, especially the impression of white male supremacy. Consequently, the development of Jim Crow Laws preserved the racial segregation of former slaves under a more “civilized caste system.” After nearly a century of fighting against the new system of subordination, African Americans were freed again upon the lift of the Jim Crow Laws. Despite the hundred years since the abolition of slavery, white resentment and wrath still remained which helped

Today, we define affirmative action as “an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minatory groups and women.” However, this have not always held true throughout the American history. During the New Deal and Fair Deal eras, affirmative action was created to improve the standards of the American people; the white American people. These eras focused on expanding the welfare, labor, and military programs to boost the economy from the Great Depression. Through implementing these programs, the Democratic Party would make the “Faustian bargain” with its southern members in order to pass the legislation. Ira Katznelson’s novel, “When Affirmative Action was White”, reveals the truth about the key programs

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

Commencing with the straightforward, yet unethical act of introducing slaves, regardless of race, to America, racial tension wedged itself into America’s atmosphere in the past, its conscience in the present, and legacy in the future. As America’s racial history did not reflect the most pleasant aspects of the events and concepts in America’s history, its racial history, however, profoundly reflected the racial relations we, as individuals and a collective society experience today, with present events regarding racial issues able to be traced back to racial conflicts in history such as the civil rights movements, racist laws designed to maintain the social hierarchy, and white supremacist groups that exist to this very day.

Racial discrimination in the United States has been a radical issue plaguing African Americans from as early as slavery to the more liberal society we see today. Slavery is one of the oldest forms of oppression against African Americans. Slaves were brought in from Africa at increasingly high numbers to do the so-called dirty work or manual labor of their white owners. Many years later, after the abolishment of slavery came the Jim Crow era. In the 1880s, acts known as the Jim Crow laws were enacted by Southern states to keep oppression of African Americans alive. These laws helped to legalize segregation between blacks and whites. Slavery and Jim Crow were created to regulate how African Americans functioned in society. Slaves were refused the right to vote, refused citizenship, refused education, and labeled as incompetent as a way for whites to keep what Author Michelle Alexander of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness calls “social control”. Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the new modern “racial caste system” of social control. She further goes on to claim that this new system of mass incarceration has replaced the old social systems that were used to oppress African Americans such as slavery and Jim Crow. The system of mass incarceration fueled by the War on Drugs was established as a form of racial control. This new system puts people of color into an endless cycle of

During the 1960’s of American history violent acts were aimed at African Americans in the name of racism and segregation. In a case such as this one, many would seek refuge from the government, but to little surprise, cries for refuge went unanswered. Making matters worse was the fact that the Government allowed segregation to continue due to legal documents in many southern states. Acceptable forms of oppression were separated into four categories: racial segregation; voter suppression, in southern states; denial of economic opportunity; private acts of violence aimed at African Americans. At this time, many civil rights laws were

In today’s society, many have come to believe what they have been instructed over the years, whether it is fiction of facts. Living in a world, where only certain race can be seen as superior to others. Schomburg was a pioneer beyond his times. In the article “The Negro Digs up His Past”. The beginning of this essay revealed a powerful statement, “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future” (Arthur Schomburg). It is very clear, Schomburg realized the importance of being knowledgeable on your true history. “History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset”. Therefore, I acquiesce with such statement, it is up to the present generation to fight, and to aspire on restoring what was taken away. As we acquired more intelligence, today’s generation must continue on indoctrinating one another on our true history. However, let’s not forget, slavery was not the onset of the Negro history; when in fact, slavery interrupted the Negro history. Meanwhile, long ago, before slavery, Africans ruled the world, built nations, mastering in architectural ideas, philosophies, etc. Nonetheless, it is crucial for the Negro to dig up his past, for from it; today’s Africans shall conceive their true potential, and their ancestor’s greatest achievements. Just as Schomburg found his motivation after being told “Negroes has no history. On the other hand, he then stated “The Negro thinking

Yet, the most significant flaw in this essay can be seen through the author’s simplistic view of the scope of racial injustice. Remarkably, the author only refers to white privilege in terms of its impact on what she calls “the problems facing Black America.” She fails to acknowledge or perhaps has no insight that white privilege involves the preference for ‘whiteness’ over all persons of color. Every non-white group is impacted by individual and institutional racism. Every non-white group grows up with the knowledge that their white peers have certain automatic privileges. Every child of color has to learn to navigate through the floodwaters of racism