US History 1865 to Present - Essay Example

April 24, Essay rise of segregation) Race relations in the U.S. are based on the historical identification of racial characteristics and stereotyping ethnic backgrounds. Physical characteristics had become central to racial and ethnic definitions, particularly during the slave era. Skin color, shape of eyes, size of nose, and texture of hair, for instance, largely defined one’s race and ethnicity. While race is a collection of physical characteristics, ethnicity is a cultural definition according to cultural background. People are born into their race, while ethnicity is culturally-based. For illustration, not all Scottish are whites, but as part of their ethnicity, Scots have a Scottish accent and use Scottish costumes and musical instruments (ethnic stereotypes). Ethnicity and race merge when the dominant racial group makes assumptions about ethnicity, using perceived racial characteristics. Colonial America entails the adaptation of European racial and ethnic definitions, even after the Civil War. European definitions go back to the times when Spain and Portugal generally “ruled the world.” During this time, white racial features were defined in contrast to darker skin populations and their religious differences, specifically through the difference between white Christian groups and Black Muslim people. The Spanish inquisition forced many black Muslims to convert, but the Spaniards continued to preserve racial bias against colored people. An example was that having a white parent, or being a mulatto, gave more rights to half-blacks, half-whites than pure blacks who had two black parents. Having greater white blood in one’s lineage also provided more rights to colored people. Such perceptions were continued during slave era paternalism. Throughout this time, the idea of race affected one’s citizenship. To be white was to be an assured citizen, but to be darker entailed second-class citizenship. Aside from heritage, the use of racial labels affected racial and ethnic identities in the U.S. To be called an “oriental” was another way of creating racial lines. The idea of the oriental then was to be from the Pacific realm or to be from the East. To be an oriental was to be the “Other” or foreigner, who, like the blacks, were was not seen as American citizens. Many Orientals had adapted American language and culture, but they were continued to be seen as unacceptable in American society. As for the word “negro,” it describes dark people who were not accepted as equals of whites. Negroes were like Orientals who did not fit the white mainstream society. These racial labels reveal who defines who- the white majority had the power to define colored minorities and their citizenship status. Concepts of colonial definitions of race and ethnicity also depended on countries of origin. During the nineteenth century, racism was explained through the importation of racism. Colonization is one of the lenses of racism importation. An example was differentiating the Japanese from the Chinese. During this time, China was economically weak, especially as Western forces exploited China. China was weak, so the Chinese people were considered as weak by whites, a form of Social Darwinist thinking. The Japanese, on the contrary, was a conquering power and an emerging colonial power. Japan was exploiting China and Russia, among others. Japan was dominant as a colonial power; therefore the Japanese must be strong people. Another explanation of racial discrimination came from class identities. The Irish were seen as drunkards and poor in contrast to Germans. In nineteenth-century U.S., Irish stereotyping was so strong that people who were poor were considered Irish. This stereotyping was accurate to some extent; many Irish migrated to the U.S., since they were already poor to begin with. Germans, on the opposite, were seen as successful, rigid, and clean, which were all characteristics of the upper class. Millions of Germans who made it to the U.S. had more resources and had college education. Migrating to the U.S. itself was expensive, so it meant that these Germans had money and professional background. Apart from countries of origin, another explanation for colonial definitions of race and ethnicity is through internal racism. Social Darwinism was again evident because the concept of “Sambo” supported the idea that black slaves were naturally inferior, so they were culturally, socially, and intellectually inferior too. Their “natural inferiority” became the white’s solid basis for justifying enslaving them because they were fit to be slaves. The government behaved as the paternalistic structure that controlled the working-class and slaves. When blacks were free or affluent, they were highly controlled because whites were suspicious of them. The precedent was that they did not fit the social mold for them, which supported notions of anti-Semitism. The racist precedent was based on an ethnic definition, where Jews did not fit the Medieval European identity of Christianity. Jews did not own properties in the same way that white Americans did, for instance. Figure 1 shows Charles Darwin as an old bearded man selling wax figures of racial minorities to white Americans who were ready to exploit these people. 1881 shows the Jews, below it is 1880, who were blacks, and below it further were the Orientals, and then Muslims. The image is a powerful summarization of how Social Darwinism categorized people’s inferiority based on racial and ethnic markers. Another image is Figure 2 from Harper’s Weekly. It shows that the North and South were balanced by equal population of blacks in the South, who were the Sambos and had ill-fitting clothing, lacking footwear and had stupid grins, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, white Irishmen were decently dressed, but they were represented as violent, monkey-looking hoodlums. Their boots and clothing did not fit them too. Ethnic Notions is a documentary on the images and beliefs that explained the causes and perpetrators of deep-seated racism. An example was film portrayals of dancing, happy darkies, who delighted in serving whites and relished their inferiority. These definitions of race shifted after the Civil War. Figure 1: Charles Darwin and Non-Whites Stereotypes Figure 2: Harper’s Weekly: Balance between Sambo of the South and Irish Working-Class After the Civil War, the Reconstruction period gave rise to Jim Crow laws and segregation laws that legalized restrictions according to stiff racial and ethnic lines. The Civil War was fought for racial equality, and afterwards, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments reflected the demands of a free and equal society for all races. Many Republican leaders believed that blacks could lead and become American citizens, such as Frederick Douglass who gained tremendous influence in the Republican Party. Benjamin Wade and Charles Sumner respected Douglass’ ideals. They believed that Douglass was not unique to his race, but a representation of what his race could become, given the right social, economic, and political opportunities. The Reconstruction tried to maintain that equality was achievable. The Reconstruction Congress even protected blacks through civil rights acts, including protection from private discrimination. Two of the hindrances to the equality goals of Reconstruction were: the southern states governments who became more dominant after Reconstruction ended, and Federal Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Brooke Taney was followed by Melville Fuller who either cancelled civil rights acts, or ruled in favor of segregation or the blocking of civil rights. A good example of segregation by court ruling is Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) that justified segregation at all levels of the U.S. In 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy, who was seven-eighths Caucasian, sat at the "whites only" car of a Louisiana train. He did not move to the car reserved for blacks and so he was arrested. He argued that Louisianas law that mandated racial segregation on its trains is an unconstitutional infringement on both the privileges and the equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Henry Billings Brown granted that the 14th amendment intended to ascertain absolute equality for the races before the law. But, he stressed that “in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either.” He judged that Plessy was guilty of breaking the law which meant that Plessy was legally defined as colored, following the One Drop Rule. The rule asserted that a drop of black blood made one colored. Segregation was then consecutively argued as not enforcing unlawful discrimination, but a form of equality. Segregation was articulated as an opportunity for colored people to access the same opportunities as whites. Jim Crow laws rose when the South regained political control through various segregation laws. Since then, Southern states conducted step-by-step disenfranchisement of the black population. Southern lawmakers created new laws that affected access to basic rights and freedoms by not using the language of race. An example was the literacy test, where people must pass a literacy test to be able to vote. It had nothing to do with race, but it was applied unfairly by targeting black voters only or making blacks read difficult text, although the test disenfranchised poor whites too. Other Jim Crow laws imposed segregation across public institutions. Florida had an education policy, which stated that “[t]he schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately.” Health care services were also segregated. In Alabama, the law stated that “[n]o person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed.” Even private decisions were affected by Jim Crow laws. In Mississippi, “[t]he marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.” Freedom of speech was also curtailed, as shown in a Mississippi Jim Crow law: “Any person guilty of printing, publishing or circulating matter urging or presenting arguments in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” These were only a few examples of constitutional disenfranchisement that took basic rights and freedoms from blacks. Apart from Jim Crow laws, sharecropping intensified racial inequality. Sharecropping was held as the natural occupation for inferior blacks. The whites used racial identity to promote race-based job segregation. Sharecropping enabled the whites to also control the work and residence of blacks. Those who were not sharecroppers were punished. Vagrancy laws were vague, for example, as they were defined as not having permanent residence. Blacks who were traveling as businessmen or were passing through town and did not fit the social mold of black sharecroppers were imprisoned for vagrancy. The idea of the vagrancy laws was controlling racial identity through delimiting their economic opportunities. One more way of imposing racial segregation was through the prison system. The penitentiary system was based on ideas that criminals were those who are genetically defunct and were behaving outside social norms. An example was the establishment of state prison farms in Mississippi. The Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP) was also called the Parchman Farm, where criminals were isolated and given productive work to do everyday all day (i.e. making flags). During the early twentieth century, Parchman Farms were made to grow sugar, tobacco, rice and other products, so that they could be sold for profit and would not come from taxes. The system was then used to put populations where they belong, such as imprisoning blacks caught for vagrancy, so that they could be retrained for their proper farming places. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Jim Crow became standard in the South and legalized through Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) which meant that the Federal government allowed the states to create segregation laws. The North avoided these kinds of laws, however. They did not engage in active segregation, but they still practiced it. The migration of colored people to the North because of job opportunities after the war increased their population in the North. Mechanisms of racial segregation were enforced through communities and policies, not through explicit laws. Some examples were private social clubs that maintained the order of segregation, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The new KKK emerged in 1915 as a national organization with national chapters all over the U.S. It emerged after the successful showing of the silent film, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. The film showed the KKK as the modern defender of true, white, Christian Americans. The KKK was formed in Indiana, which was not in the South and not a slavery state. The North needed the KKK more than the South because it wanted a different extra-legal means for controlling the blacks. KKK argued for the natural superiority of the white class and often used violence to enforce it. However, it went beyond hatred and violence, because the Klan presented an image of pro-American, specifically pro-Christian American. The Klan aimed to protect Americans from immigrants and Catholics, among other groups who were not seen as true white Americans. Thus, the Klan played an important role in creating a racist American identity by focusing on white supremacy. Different groups, including private individual, supported strong racial lines through legal and extra-legal means. Essay 2 (fall of segregation) Some notable black leaders accepted aspects of racism and segregation. During Progressivism, the government saw segregation as a form of social control. It reasoned that separating whites from blacks allowed blacks to access equal opportunities without having them in the way of opportunities for the whites. Black activist leaders believed in segregation, such as Booker T. Washington. He was born as a slave until the implementation of the 13th Amendment. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institution, an all-black college based on segregation. On September 18, 1895, Washington made an address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, which was called as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech.” In this speech, he accepted the racial identity of blacks as servants or supporters of whites. He asked whites to help blacks with whatever they could. In return, the whites would reap benefits too: “While doing this you can be sure in the future, as you have been in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.” Washington embraced racial inequality, as long as it allowed blacks to develop on their own, so they could catch up with the whites. He used segregations as means to the end of racial inequality. W.E. Dubois also supported segregation, not because it would eventually result to better conditions for blacks, but because it allowed blacks to continue being successful without the need or desire for the approval or acceptance of white America. He founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a political activist organization, which also provided legal defense for oppressed blacks. Dubois seemed to accept racism, but this time, against whites. Washington argued for accommodation, while Dubois supported segregation for the benefit of blacks. Eldridge Cleaver attacked white-supremacy ideology in America by calling for international unity against all forms of discrimination against minorities and freedoms across the globe and the creation of an organized national movement. He did this by connecting the racial equality struggle in America to the actions of the U.S. government against national liberation movements in other parts of the world. He believes in freedom and democracy in all nations, which he articulates in his essay “Soul on Ice”: “If the nations of Asia, Latin America, and Africa are strong and free, the black man in America will be safe and secure and free to live in dignity and self-respect” (Cleaver). He is saying that African Americans could never be free if the rest of the world was in “colonial bondage” (Cleaver). Furthermore, Cleaver suggests the creation of a single, powerful organization that promotes the interests of blacks in America. He stresses organized action against racial inequality because it is an urgent need and desire of African Americans: “The need for one organization that will give one voice to the black man’s common interest is felt in every bone and fiber of black America” (Cleaver). The organization is envisioned to “change the foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. government” (Cleaver). It is an organization that emphasizes the voice of black people and what they stand for regarding national and international issues. One of these organizations that fight for African American interests is the Black Panther Party or BPP. BPP is a progressive socialist organization that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded in 1966. Since it started, the Black Panther Party created a Ten Point Program that stimulated African American community development projects and to form alliances with progressive white radicals and other organizations of colored people. These ten points addressed access to basic needs of food, housing, education, justice, and peace, as well as the eradication of unjust social and legal policies, structures, and practices, including the removal of white capitalism. Resistance to racial barriers was not entirely white-versus-black, but also included other races. The interwar period, for instance, showed anti-foreigner sentiments against Orientals, Hispanics, and immigrant Europeans. By the 1920s, another group was called the invading group that affected the status quo- the Mexican population. The Mexican Revolution resulted to Mexicans who migrated to the U.S. These Mexicans suffered the same discrimination as the Irish because they arrived with nothing as war refugees. Stereotypes alleged that Mexicans introduced marijuana and alcohol into the U.S. and these stereotypes led to racial tensions between whites and Hispanic Americans. The tension between white service men and young Zoot Suit Hispanics started because of racial animosities. Zoot suits were identity markers of wealth and against fashion trends of America. The racial tension escalated after a street fight between sailors and Mexican American boys who started the fighting in June of 1943, called the Zoot Suit Riots. These riots showed that minorities rebelled against racial discrimination through their cultural ethnicity and violence. The Civil Rights Movement started from the 1950s and continued to the 1960s and 1970s. World War II affected the image on American racial identity with the increase of middle-class among colored people. It was the period wherein black Americans lived in major cities where they could vote. Here they became powerful voting blocks. The Federal government also expressed the message of strong racial unity. During the war, racism against enemies were accepted to promote racial unity, as can be seen from the “Popeye The Sailor 110 - Youre a Sap, Mr. Jap.” This episode shows the Japanese as people pretending to want peace, only to betray those who trusted them. The cartoon is filled with racial and ethnic stereotypes, showing the Japanese in their national costume and looking alike. The unity was continued as a fight against communism and socialism after the war. Individual experiences also differed, which broke racial lines. In World War I, military segregation was present, but was erased come World War II. Black soldiers began fighting alongside white soldiers, such as the fight in the Pacific and movement of front lines. The film The Negro Soldier (1944) was even produced to celebrate the contribution of African American soldiers to the war. Other breakdowns of racial stereotypes were experiences abroad. Black soldiers who served abroad experienced racial equality. These soldiers no longer accepted going back to segregation law. The Federal government also changed its policies and image. Franklin Roosevelt used policies to win black votes. Truman was not as popular as FDR but knew how to court the black vote through desegregation policies, such as desegregation in the military during the Korean War. It was an important step in changing American race relations. Another example is the active Supreme Court under Earl Warren. The Supreme Court consistently sided with desegregating society. The success of the Civil Rights Movement also mainly came from the grassroots movement, which called for social change through bottom-top approaches. The grassroots movement, like the NAACP and Nation of Islam, became active in the streets in breaking down racial segregation. The 1950s attacked laws, but as laws changed, racial hostility did not change. This showed that race policies were not enough. 1965 was a major turning point. The late 1960s and 1970s showed militant action through Black Power and racial militancy. The result was angry form of the black movement. The key figures of the Civil Rights Movement were Elijah Muhammad, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Irene Morgan, and Jackie Robinson. These people were part of the grassroots movement that demanded the application and expansion of civil rights laws. Most of the initial grassroots movement were peaceful and conducted non-violent direct action approaches. Some of their activities included NAACP-led boycotts and sit-ins, the Birmingham Campaign, and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The Federal response was through the Occupation and Civil Rights Act in 1964. However, later civil rights actions became violent with the rise of Malcolm X and Black Panther. They attacked racial ideology by defending themselves violently against their white oppressors. At present, many African American are emphasizing responsibility and family relationships, since several equality legislation and structures are already in place. In May 2004, Dr. Bill Cosby gave an address during an NAACP awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. In this speech, he criticized African Americans who are imprisoned because of faulty life decisions. He poses powerful questions to blacks in prisons and poverty: “Im telling you Christians, whats wrong with you? Why cant you hit the streets? ... Its our time now…What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?” (Cosby). Cosby is asking people to be responsible for their destinies and stop blaming whites. Moreover, Cosby renews the role of families in improving the socio-economic conditions of African Americans. He disdains African American Vernacular English: “[Black children] doesnt want to speak English...And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk (laughter). Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house” (Cosby). He believes that families have obligations to teach their children the proper language. Furthermore, Cosby urges families to raise their children properly, so that they will not end up in prison or having daughters who are single mothers. He underlines what proper parenting is: “Grandmother, mother, and great grandmother in the same room, raising children, and the child knows nothing about love or respect of any one of the three of them (clapping). [Children only know] “gimme, gimme” (Cosby). Cosby is saying that African Americans should take their parenting roles seriously by raising children who know responsibility and independence as strong values, not materialistic and sex-centered beliefs and practices. Hence, at present, the Civil Rights Movement have given way to racial awakening, not because of racial division, but for purposes of racial improvement through self-reliance and social relationships. Read More