Similarities Between Salem Witch Trials And Racial Profiling

The Salem Witch Trials and the Holocaust are very similar and in many ways. During both of the terrible happenings, there were a lot of murders over nonsense. Innocent people were accused, disliked, mistreated, and killed.

The Salem Witch Trials began in the late 1600’s and is widely known to this day as one of the darkest periods in American history. In this essay, I will be analyzing the context and origins of the trials, the hysteria that dramatically spread through Massachusetts, and the legacy that we’ve come to know today. (thesis statement will go here I just can NOT think of one and I’m tired of wasting my time trying. Help .)

Salem, Massachusetts became famously known for the witch trials that took place in the late 1600’s. For the men and women residing in Salem, Massachusetts it was a time in which they lived in fear of allegations and deceit. Twenty men and women lost their lives during what is known as the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria. Socioeconomic tensions within the community are to blame for the witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts during the late 1600’s. Factors such as politics, religion, and social status all played a role in the deadly and devastating era.

Fear often dictates how people’s mindsets are set up and how they behave during day to day trials and tribulations. Fear is something that can be beautiful and accepting when the fearful allows it to not overcome them but also dangerous and ugly when a concoction of fear and lies is made. We can see this during the 1950’s when The Red Scare took place and in the past with The Salem Witch Trials, both of which black listed people and ruined reputations while also, sadly, taking lives. The two subjects have many similarities, as they allowed history to repeat itself but also many differences, nevertheless they are often put in the same boat, and the question is… Why?

In 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts was the setting for an infamous American witchcraft. It was the years when people are plagued with superstitions and monstrous fears that spawned witch-hunts on both sides of the Atlantic. That also maintains a wide witch panic that was a product of a community undergoing severe religious and cultural change. Besides, the Puritans had lost the royal charter that had allowed them to govern their colony free from interference by the mother country. The result was that many leaders and citizens began to see satanic conspiracies at work that eroded the cherished institutions of their already shaky society.

During the time period of 1691 to 1692 the town of Salem, a small thriving community within the Puritan Massachusetts Bay colony, was struck by widespread hysteria in the form of witch trials. The way these trials and accusations played out are historically unlike any other witch trials found in European and American history. Historians have pointed to a number of economic, political, and social changes of the then existing institutions throughout the Massachusetts Bay area to be the cause of the Salem witch trials, along with the direction they took. If studied closely however, it becomes apparent that the main cause for the Salem witch trials can be found in the way the people of Salem viewed and

The Salem Witch trials are a very known event in history. Groups of people were accused as being witches by the church and its followers. The murders of the West Memphis is another very similar situation of the West Memphis police blaming three teenage boys because they stood out from other citizens. There are many similarities between these two events of mass hysteria and false accusations.

In 1692, in the small village of Salem, Massachusetts, 20 people were hanged for offenses they did not commit. But what was the charge against the 20? The answer would be witchcraft. The charges deeply affected the small community. Neighbor turned on neighbor. Every act that a person made would be carefully scrutinized, dissected, and repeated to others. This would lead to the question. What caused the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria of 1692? The 3 main factors that would cause widespread panic in the town of Salem were gender, marital status, and age, actors and attention seekers, and neighbor conflicts within the village of Salem.

History is known for having ways to replay itself, for example, the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Trials. The Salem Witch Trials were a sequence of hearings and accusations that took place between 1692 and 1693. In these trials over 200 people were accused of having contact with the Devil and around 20 were victims of false accusations and death. The McCarthy trials, extremely similar, a series of hearing were Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the U.S. of allowing communist to have a seat in their government causing over 2,000 government members to lose their employment. Both the McCarthy Trials and Salem Witch Trials display history’s repetitions with the similarities of mass hysteria, the absence of proper evidence, and accused outcasts.

The Salem Witch Trials brought havoc among the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts starting in 1692. Many of the people within the town continued to have strong loyalties to their new Puritan religion and their old king back home. The church of England had moved away from the Catholic religion with the help of King Henry VIII and the Puritans were a new group of people who accepted the split from Catholicism but still believed that the church of England had a lot of aspects that remained with the Catholic religion. Despite this, loyalty to the king remained strong because the Puritans were not looking to break off from the Church of England instead they wanted to reform the religion and make it their own. These loyalties stretched to such an extent that any sin committed was also considered an act of treason and thus punished. The Salem community was constantly searching for evil within their town to prove their righteousness to God which lead to high rates of fear and paranoia in their daily lives. The strict Puritan religion soon became the root cause of the monstrous imagination that started to form within the community of Salem. Many people still feared the presence of Catholic ideas within their communities and in response were willing to go to any extent to irradiate these views. Some historians also account the beginning of the trials to divisions within the two towns of Salem that lead to tensions and turmoil between the townsmen. But without the increased belief in their new religion, women around town wouldn’t have been persecuted. The strict belief in the Puritan religion and culture was the root cause of fear and paranoia that led to the mass execution of many women and townspeople during the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trials fits into the conflict because of the accusations of witchcraft. The accusations of witches drove Salem, Massachusetts into a state of hysteria causing the Salem Witch Trials to commence in 1692 and end with the governor requiring spectral evidence to illustrate people as guilty. The compromise concludes that the governor ended the trials and required spectral evidence to illustrate people as quilty. This project has been valuable to us because we were able to learn about the Salem Witch Trials and how it helped formed our court system

During the late 1600s, Salem, Massachusetts faced a period of witch trials due to panic stirring among the Puritans in the area. Because of these

the accused behalves were frequently in turn accused of being a witch. The Salem Witch Trials

Clearly identifying and acknowledging the existence of racial profiling is critical to understand its value or lack thereof in society. Racial profiling is not a new practice or term, the origins of racial profiling can be traced back to the days of slavery in America. African-American slaves were viewed as subservient and therefore inferior to whites. This view of African-Americans came with stereotypes such as laziness, ill-mannered, uncontrollable and predisposed to crime and violence. In 1693, Philadelphia courts enacted laws which allowed constables to stop and detain any “negro” seen walking around without their master (Maclin, 1998). The historical context of laws such as those passed in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the United States have a clear nexus to the subject of racial profiling.

“Racial profiling punishes the innocent individuals for the past actions of those who look and sound like them. It misdirects crucial resources and undercuts the trust needed between law enforcement and the communities they serve. It has no place in our national discourse, and no place in our nation’s police departments.” - Benjamin Todd Jealous (an American venture capitalist, civic leader, and former president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). The definition of racial profiling, another form or racism, according to the ACLU is “the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin,” and also includes “discriminatory omissions on the part of law enforcement as well.” In simpler words, this means that law enforcement might “turn the other cheek” when crime is being committed by a certain group of people. Though racial profiling happens amongst all races and ethnicities, it mostly happens to minorities within the country, according to the multitude of examples of racial profiling of minorities in the United States compared to the majority. One example of discriminatory omissions provided by the ACLU is the idleness of southern sheriffs to help black suspects during times of lynching. A more common day example would be giving one person a ticket