Race Relations in America - Research Paper Example

Race Relations in America Introduction It was the fifteenth century in the Christian world, aka the Age of Discovery, when the relative isolation, inwhich human societies had originated and developed, came to an end. In their book, A People and A Nation: A History of the United States, Norton at al. write that the differences in those societies’ cultural traditions, including religious beliefs, political structures, economic systems and kinship customs, apart from the initial shock of discovering that not all people were the same as oneself, had become the focal point for the interactions that occurred thereafter (2). Thus, the eventful history of race relations in the Western Hemisphere, and in North America in particular, appears not only an important part of a larger trend worldwide, but also the genuine article of such relationships, insofar as three major human races – Europeans, Native Americans (or Indians, which appellation became much more familiar, albeit entirely wrong), and Africans – ‘met and mingled’ in the New World (Norton at al. 2). The centuries following the first Spanish campaigns in the Valley of Mexico, the marshlands of Florida and along the coast of California, have witnessed, according to Arthur Mann, both territorial expansion and massive influx of immigrants from almost all over the world (68). Having left their countries of origin for particular reasons – whether economic, religious or political, as well as in different manner – warlike, peaceful, group or individual – these immigrants inevitably got entangled in the canvas of what would slowly and obscurely evolve into the present-day multi-faceted society of the United States. First Encounters – Models of Colonization, Motives and Consequences In the name of God and the Holy Roman Catholic Church (to say nothing of gold) A bit weird combination of two prima facie incompatible with one another motives – the aspiration of spreading Christianity around the world and a desire for the wealth of the East – appears to have driven the fifteenth-century European explorers of the New World, who, by the way, had obviously seen no conflict between the two (Norton at al. 10); just as their predecessors from the time of the Crusade. Not less bizarre notion of what the world’s size might be indeed brought Columbus to a Caribbean island on October 12, 1492, which he named San Salvador (Holy Savior), and made him to claim success in the goal of reaching the Indies. Quite understandably, the native inhabitants had been called ‘Indians’. Three more voyages to the west failed to dispel this delusion and till his death in 1506, Columbus remained blissfully unaware that he had actually discovered a new continent, whose virgin soil was about to become not only a scene of vehement struggles for political domination and liberty, but also the birthplace of a new nation, or as Charles W. Chesnutt call it ‘the future American race’ (17). The Spanish explorers that followed Columbus’s path, however, not only had a better idea of their bearings, but also had brought their task – claiming new possessions for the king and queen of Spain – to a massive scale. Having conquered the Aztec empire, Hernán Cortés first showed the newly discovered land’s enormous potential for delivering wealth and prosperity to both nations and individuals. On the other hand, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who explored the California coast, the Mississippi River basin, and the southwestern part of the present-day United States respectively, found not that much value as Cortés, but their efforts significantly contributed to Spain’s control over the richest and largest empire Europe had seen since Roman times (Norton at al. 11-12). Broadly speaking, the Spanish colonization model had imposed political and economic subordination on the local inhabitants, combined with cultural and religious assimilation. In 1542, the Spanish crown made an attempt to reform the existing economic system (encomienda) by the so-called ‘New laws’ forbidding Spaniards to enslave Indians (in fact limiting the power of the large landowners). The promulgation of these laws resulted in two actions with markedly differing impact on the future generations - a rebellion against the crown, which ignominiously ended with the execution of the rebels’ leader Gonzalo Pizarro, and importation of Africans intended to fill the gaps in the labor force since thousands of Indian slaves had been freed (Crow 171). The latter set the beginnings of centuries-lasting practice, which, along with the fact that the vast majority of the Spanish colonists were males who married local and later black women, has become ‘a rich soil for the production of a mixed race’ and thus irreversibly changed the ethnic pattern of the Americas (Chesnutt 22; Norton at al. 12). Long Live the Trade The other European nations got in on the American venture somehow cautiously, in a sense, insofar as their explorers, being mariners and traders as well, were interested not that much in conquering territories as in exploitation of the natural wealth of the region (Norton at al. 13). Those who went to fish in the rich waters off Newfoundland and along St Lawrence River, for example, found that there had been another way of gaining profit, namely by exchanging items of metal, clothing, and etc. for furs offered by the local inhabitants. The trade from ships sailing along the coast was soon replaced by such conducted via permanent outposts on the mainland, most successful of which had been the French posts at Quebec established in 1608, Montreal – in 1642, the Swedish Fort Christina (1638) and the Dutch forts of New Amsterdam and Fort Orange (Norton at al. 13). These trading activities are thought to have exerted considerable influence on the native societies, to the degree that some tribes abandoned their traditional ways of subsistence being mostly concentrated on hunting for the fur trade with Europeans; while others intensified their production of food in order to trade with the fur trappers in exchange for European commodities (Norton at al. 13). Although the French and Dutch models of colonization (and to a degree the English one as well) seemingly resembled that of Spain, with its three major elements – centralized control by the mother country, mixed marriages and exploitation of the indigenous population, along with slaves imported from Africa (Norton at al. 12) – there were much more differences rather than similarities. Such a distinction appears first and foremost the colonial powers’ approach to the religious and cultural traditions, as well as modes of existence of Native Americans. With the exception of France’s initial efforts to convert the Indians to Catholicism (the Jesuit missions in New France), and to force them to adopt European lifestyle, no significant attempts at assimilating the indigenous people of North America had been made. It might have been either a result of each nation’s social and economic peculiarities or due to the different conditions in comparison with Latin America – a total of approximately 1 million Indians, described by Crow as ‘still tribal and nomadic savages’ (148), thinly spread over the whole territory of Canada and the US, as against another 15 million, already organized in social and economic units and concentrated in just two regions, Mexico and the Andean highlands (Crow 148). After the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke Colony in 1590, England tried to imitate the Spanish colonization model, but the success had actually come when that model was abandoned and large numbers of people were sent to establish permanent settlements based on farming, and more or less reproducing the lifestyle and social structure of mother country. During the seventeenth century some 200 000 men and women from the British Isles moved to the New World, being strongly encouraged by the government and driven by two major developments – the English Reformation, and the dramatic social and economic change caused by England’s ‘surplus population’ (Norton at al. 15-16). The Great American Cauldron Race differences and interaction As was mentioned earlier, three major human racial groups met on the large, land-rich western continent, bringing their lifestyle, cultural and religious traditions, as well as social and economic structure (including sexual division of labor and level of technological progress) into juxtaposition (Chesnutt 22). The European society model was being characterized by the traditional hierarchical structure, with predominant role of men in the social and economic life, political consolidation - unification of England under Henry VII and France under the successors of Charles VII, not to mention Spain under Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile – and a powerful monotheistic religion, whose well-ordered institutions for the most part encroached upon their secular counterparts. This model had largely been reproduced in the New World and albeit to a degree similar to some models of Africa and Mesoamerica, it greatly differed from that of the egalitarian, consensus-based native societies found north of Mexico (Norton at al. 10). As for the forced migrants from West Africa, they slowly and steadily become the second largest group, especially after the American War of Independence, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total population as shown by the first census of 1790 (Mann 72). Norton at al. wrote that extended-kin ties among African-American families living on the same plantation for several generations were characteristic of the colonial and post-colonial period (60). In regard to the sexual division of labor, the West Africans brought to America were accustomed to communal work alongside members of their own sex and relatively egalitarian relationship between sexes (Norton at al. 9). While their indigenous polytheistic religious cults and traditions gradually succumbed to Christianity (Methodist and Baptist faiths), isolated beliefs, songs and rhythms did survive into the next centuries; in some regions of the US – Chesapeake and South Carolina, for instance – Africans’ modes of time usage (working early and late in the day and resting in the heat of midday) were largely adopted by the white residents (Norton at al. 36). On the other hand, the English and their descendants had been the largest and most influential population component which constituted ‘just under the half of the total population’, with the remaining part being comprised of Scots, Irish, French, Dutch, German, Spanish and other origins (Mann 72). The relations between them and the Afro-American ethnic group, as well as the large Asian (Chinese) diaspora that became reality following the California Gold Rush and the building of Central Pacific Railroad, might as well be described as discrimination on the grounds of color, which, according to Chesnutt, denote the foundations of social structure of the United States by that time (18). Having originated in collective societies and mainly working as laborers on the transcontinental railroad, and in the mining industry, the Asian immigrants formed large, mostly endogamous conjugal communities at first residing military-like camps in the wilderness. Later on, these communities had been reproduced in the larger American cities – San Francisco China Town, for instance – more or less preserving their endogamous character. According to the author of this research, several major factors might have accounted for their formation, as well as that of the later Italian, Latino or other Asian communities. First, it’s the common language, lifestyle, and (to some degree) shared religious beliefs, combined with ‘native-country sentiment’ among the immigrants (Weber 55); on the other hand, the so-called ‘tendency to conscious monopolistic closure’ (Weber 55) might have been responsible for the infamous treatment of the Chinese, which had been defined as ‘a race of people whom nature has marked as inferior’ (Supreme Court of the State of California n.pag.). The Discord Years Arthur Mann writes that in moments of crisis, the United States appeared usually thorn by ethnic and religious discord (73). Mann presses further his observations, quoting the anti-Catholic flare-up in the eve of the Civil War, the anti-German-American hysteria of the First World War and the precautions against Japanese-Americans during WWII, as well as the Ku Klux Klan obscenities and outrages in the 1920s and afterward (73). Broadly speaking, the Anglo-Saxon superiority doctrine, being strongly backed up by the Congress – Jonson-Reed Act of 1924, not only had reduced the migration to a trickle for over two decades, but is also considered responsible for the creation of social system named by the President Lyndon Johnson ‘un-American in the highest sense’ (qtd. in Mann 75). Quite understandably, this has led to the emergence of civil right movements, like African-American Civil Rights Movement and more conspicuously – the Black Power Movement, which is thought to have given birth to black nationalism and separatism and even pan-Africanism and black supremacy, as well as the infamous Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Almost a decade of peaceful protests, civil disobedience and outbursts of violence followed before four acts – the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – to finally admit the minorities’ political integration of into American national system. Conclusions The slavery abolishment in 1865 and the laws that have come into force between 1964 and 1968 appear just different stages of a long and uneven process which is thought to have started in the distant past when the first Europeans and Africans stepped on the American continent. A long and thorny way has been walked since that time, abundantly soaked by the sweat and blood of numerous people which originated in virtually every existing human race, whose types/modes of relationship – whether forced, voluntary, warlike, or coexistence and cooperation – slowly and steadily forged both present-day urban landscape of North America and the modern society of the United States. References 1. Chesnutt, Charles W. “The Future American.” Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader. Ed. Werner Sollors. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 17, 18, 22. Print. 2. Crow, John Armstrong. The Epic of Latin America, 3rd ed. Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1980. 148, 171. Print. 3. Mann, Arthur. “From Immigration to Acculturation.” Making America: The Society and Culture of the United States. Ed. Luther S. Luedtke. Washington, D.C.: United States Information Agency, 1990. 68, 72, 73, 75. Print. 4. Norton, Mary Beth, at al. A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. 2, 10, 11-12, 15-16, 36, 60. Print. 5. Supreme Court of the State of California. The People Vs. Hall, 1854. Ancestors in the Americas. Center for Educational Telecommunications Inc. n.d. n. pag. Web. 23 Oct. 2011. 6. Weber, Max. “Ethnic Groups.” Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader. Ed. Werner Sollors. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 55. Print 7. Read More