Human racial inequality from early colonization to Civil War - Essay Example

The act of enslaving other people, highlights on the paradox of the great American history, founded based on the ideals of fostering freedom and equality. In essence, the ramification of such paradox lingers in the American society, even at the present (Dempsey 129). Race as a term, defines a social category classified in terms of social conventions and in this light, racial boundaries, are often drawn to mean different things. In the United States, one may be categorized as “Black” incase that person belong to a lineage of African ancestry.

In essence, such categorization or classification denotes an extreme type of binary racial categorization and reflects on the trend on how individuals were classified in the United States, after the end of the Civil War. In America, the act of propagating inequality during the period of colonies to the end of the Civil War did not affect only one group, the African Americans, but also, other minority groups as well. Racism, has a profound impact in the American society and continues to impacts on the lives of all American citizens including, the Whites (Seligman 78).

The Whites, during this period, were oppressed in two different ways that includes a repeated division of political and social movements that undermines individual’s capacity to oppose the existing types of inequality and power. In this sense, the elite and those in power continue to capitalize on the race issue as a tool to divide people while, amassing more power for purpose of protecting the interests of their class. Around 1880s, there existed a political movement consisting of subsistence farmers and workers in the Midwest and the south.

This movement appeared as though making some inroads in their quest against the elites in the south and other large landowners. This populist group, posed a challenge to the political elites of the time however, racial conflict, ended up disintegrating the unity among the agrarian populists thus contributing to the fall of the movement (Seligman 80). On the other hand, the second manner in which the existence of inequality affect the lives of the disadvantaged Whites of that period, involved, undermining the universalistic aspects related to the welfare state.

This programs, are supposed to benefit everyone in the society, however, such programs, are contrasted with the identified programs meant only to benefit a designated group. At the period the welfare program was implemented in the United States, opposition emerged from the Democrats in the South concerning universalistic policies since, such policies may benefit both the White, as well as the African Americans. These in essence, are ideals propagated because of advancing racist notions as evident from the conservative Southern Democrats (Young 20).

On another note, when the European settlers migrated to America, there was already an indigenous population residing in that region of the world and had control over their economic resource, which, was land. In order to amass this resource, the British colony engaged in acts of displacement to confiscate the land from the Native community. The government of the United States later used this practice as the saying