Racial Attitudes During The 1800's

Whites have always considered themselves superior to blacks, no matter if they were slave owners or not. Blacks were considered lower than humans, making them a main target of oppression of whites. So even when a small group of blacks were given their freedom, they weren’t truly liberated from the chains of slavery and oppression. Blacks were freed in the early 1800s, giving a limited amount of blacks the freedom they deserved. These blacks were usually rural, uneducated, and unskilled domestic servants who had to work hard to survive in the society that shunned them. Free blacks were still given restrictions and laws because of their status in society. In the early 1830s, a law in Virginia was made to prohibit all blacks from getting their education. They even took it to the level where free blacks who went out of state to educate themselves were not able to come back and return to their own state. The worst restriction was that blacks could not testify in court. When a slave owner claimed that a free black was their slave, they could not defend themselves, and would have to conform back to their slavery. Despite the terrible treatment given to blacks, some rose above the oppression and became successful, therefore achieving their goals and potentials of being a free black man, leaving a huge impact on society in the 1800s.

Examine the condition of African-Americans in the late nineteenth century and explain why the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which were enacted to aid the new freedmen, actually did little.

Winthrop D. Jordan author of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812, expresses two main arguments in explaining why Slavery became an institution. He also focuses attention on the initial discovery of Africans by English. How theories on why Africans had darker complexions and on the peculiarly savage behavior they exhibited. Through out the first two chapters Jordan supports his opinions, with both facts and assumptions. Jordan goes to great length in explaining how the English and early colonialist over centuries stripped the humanity from a people in order to enslave them and justify their actions in doing so. His focus is

Social Darwinism is the belief that people who were the fittest for survival were successful and rich and are superior to others. It was a popular theory in Europe during the nineteenth century used to justify racism and the Europeans’ treatment of other civilizations. They thought because other countries were not as advanced or wealthy as Europe they were inferior. In the poem The White Man’s Burden, Rudyard Kipling encourages Americans to “Take up the White Man’s burden/The savage wars of peace/Fill full the mouth of Famine,/And bid the sickness cease” (Document G). Americans and Europeans were believed to be superior to Africans and thought it was their duty to help and civilize them because superior people should help others become like them. They saw the Africans as people constantly at war and who were sick and the only way to help them was to take control of their civilization and reshape it to be like Europe’s. In a speech before the Royal Colonial Institute, Joseph Chamberlain said that British rule has “brought security and peace and comparative prosperity to countries that never knew these blessings before” (Document F). Africa never experienced peace and wealth and Europeans thought they would be incapable of experiencing it without European help because they inferior. Only through colonization Africa could become civilize and prosperous. Africa was colonized by Europe because Europe

Social Darwinism is the idea that white people are better fit to survive in the world. During imperialism, England controlled the majority of African countries. This encouraged social Darwinism by allowing English people to control and boss the Africans in their home lands. Social Darwinism was seen more in countries colonized by England. This would lead to modern day racism.

At the point when hostage Africans first set foot in North America, they ended up amidst a flourishing slave society. Amid the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth hundreds of years, subjection was the law in each one of the 13 provinces, North and South similar, and was utilized by its most conspicuous natives, including huge numbers of the authors of the new United States. The importation of slaves was accommodated in the U.S. Constitution, and kept on occurring on an expansive scale even after it was made illicit in 1808. The slave framework was one of the primary motors of the new country's monetary autonomy, and it developed consistently up to the minute it was annulled by war. In 1790 there were less that 700,000 slaves in the United States; in 1830 there were more than 2 million; on the eve of the Civil War, about 4 million.

Being taught that this land fought for equality, this book made me look at the bigger picture of the word “equality”. I read through this book and comprehended the different readings, and envisioned each story as a stepping stone to the major problem in this society. Reflecting off of the dehumanizing racial stereotypes stated throughout the passages, then to compare it the similar awful injustice society we live in today. Mostly also feeling uncomfortable reading a majority of the passages because I have witnessed many of these grueling encounters first hand from friends, families, and even myself. Did any of these people know when the joke was too far? Did they not notice that their jokes were not funny anymore?

Society in the United States has changed the way discrimination is from the 1800’s to the 2000’s and is a big impact to people all around the country. Many African-Americans have been discriminated for a long period of time and now, many athletes are taking a stand to show its physically and morally wrong and occurs in past history, sports, and even the police force. Discrimination is is immoral tell this day and is still a horrifying act.

During the 1900’s there was a lot of racism in the world that affected African Americans in many ways. Blacks were put down by society and not respected as human beings. Blacks were hung, beaten, and tortured, including. There were a few activist that did numerous things to prevent further problems but three in particular stood out. Malcolm X, Spike Lee and Angela Davis which all had their own way of expressing their anger for treatment of blacks in the United States.

Have race relations in the United States today improved since the 1930’s? Is it better, worse or the same?

1941, Japan hit the U.S. naval base in the pacific ocean with bombs, crippling the U.S. 20,000 U.S. citizens with Japanese ancestors were locked up for over 3 years. Children, parents, grandparents were put into internment camps, later relocated to Santa Anita Racetrack (Lewis 7). There were many causes that created this “grave injustice,” but along the way there were also opportunities to avert the abuse of rights.

Thirty years following the abolishment of slavery in American, life was still harsh for those of African descent. African Americans began searching for a way out of the South; thus the cause of the Great Migration, the largest exodus of people in American history. With them, African Americans carried their hopes, dreams, and culture in hope of finding their own self-realization. The Emancipation Proclamation did not live up to the expectations America had hoped for, people were not truly free. Freedom, identity, claiming one’s citizenship were all the goals hoped to be achieved through the migration. The migration led many to New York where African Americans could be the people they had always imagined themselves to be. Here, they sought opportunity that had never been available. This was one of the most artistically fertile periods in African American history, known as the Harlem Renaissance. Races could commingle in ways that were illegal in much of the country.

The three foreigners who visited America reacted to a variety of different sites and curiosities. One thing that they all seemed to agree on was the hustle and bustle of the cities and people who lived in them. “Wall-street presented a busy mart-like appearance.” (Benwell 12) “The Busy thong of people well accords with the vast accumulation of merchandise.” (Mackay 80) As Benwell points out, many of these merchant’s business practices were quite spurious. These scam artists are not just limited to merchants, but stock brokers too. “like spiders, waiting to catch some silly, inexperienced fly in their financial web of fine promises.” (Hardy 144) These cities have much to offer to the traveler but they must be weary or they could see easily their

The 1930’s was a decade filled with struggle. Racism had been at its peak because of the economic decline occurring at the time. It made such a notable impact that Steinbeck dedicated a whole chapter on racism. Even centuries later, racism is still a very serious issue that the black community faces, even with the advancements made in our society. Racism was a major problem in 1930’s America.

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, a scientific theory that supported the belief of evolution, was manipulated and applied to different areas of life, and thus it became the shaping force in European thought in the last half of the nineteenth century. Darwin, through observation of organisms, determined that a system of natural selection controlled the evolution of species. He found that the organisms that were most fit and assimilated to the environment would survive. They would also reproduce so that over time they would eventually dominate in numbers over the organisms with weaker characteristics. This new theory was radical and interesting to the scientific world but its effects reach far beyond this small institution of