Racial Violence and the Origins of Segregation in South Africa - Assignment Example

Ethics Assignment Question Why and how were “half-breeds” seen to be racially segregated in the various early settler colonies of British Columbia (the Canadian Pacific Coast)? According to Mawani (52), Canadian historians have been able to put forth a variety of reasons trying to explain why the “half-breeds” were racially segregated by the early settlers along the Canadian Pacific Coast. It is argued that the government fears and distrust of mixed-race insurgence essentially intensified after the red river rebellion leading to increased segregation of the “half-breeds”. Mixed-race people were also seen to straddle the divide between colonized and colonizer and there were fears by many whites that this growing class would only serve to destabilize the racial hierarchies as they were seen to not always be easily catalogued by race - but would greatly undermine European supremacy as a result of posing real geographical implications. It was also feared that mixed-race people would be able to claim land as easily as the it was possible for the white settlers could be able to do if they were assimilated into the the white population, this was in addition to the growing fears that the expanding “mixed-race” population would financially burden both the colony’s federal and provincial governments primarily by placing various additional calms on reserve lands. To segregating the mixed-race people, the white settler population used a variety of tools such as the enactment of legislation such as the Lands and Enfranchisement Act that was seen to have been formulated in 1869 in an attempt to try and effectively legislate Indian-ness. Other legislation such as the 1876 Indian Act also served o segregate the mixed-race people by excluding them from being categorized as Indians. Attempts were also made to try and displace the mixed-race communities by ejecting them from the reserves. Question 2: what are the seen to be the main differences between the racial apartheid system that was seen in South Africa between 1948 to 1994 and the Jim Crow system that served as its predecessor in the US from the 1870s through to the 1960s? While the Jim Crow system in the United States was seen to allow for both public and private lynchings, Public lynchings under the South African Apartheid system were generally unknown and all lynchings were essentially conducted in public (Evans 185-186). In conducting the public lynchings, the American Southerners were often seen to cite rape as being the main cause for the lynching. The lynching was also seen to often be accompanied by the mutilation of the black African American victim. This was despite of the fat that research had demonstrated that the perpetration of sexual attacks on white women by African American men was generally a rarity in the South (Evans 187). In contrast to this, allegation of rape in the South African Apartheid system were seen to set in motion by more less incendiary state machinery and there were never any recorded cases of rape being cited as the cause of any lynching. In the American Jim Crow system, there was constant hostility to any government intervention in the economy. The elites were seen to particularly be in virulent opposition to any measures that could potentially limit the control and authority of capitalistic government and especially so, in relation to any measures that would serve to curtail the employer’s power over labor irrespective of whether this labor was white or black. In contrast to this, under the South African Apartheid system, white’s the ideology of statism was seen to essentially celebrate the interventionist powers of the state. The country’s paternalist state was seen to be tasked with the responsibility of organizing white unity in South Africa by relying on various constitutional measure to aid in shaping the race relations. Another key differences is that while both countries essentially used a number of prohibitive laws in an attempt to try and keep their respective black populations mainly concentrated in the more impoverished regions, south Africa essentially stripped the Blacks of their inherent national citizenship and set up the Bantustans regions. While students in both countries were essentially forced to attend different schools with the black populations being seen to attend significantly more inferior institutions, that happened to lack the same resources that were made available to the white schools, the South African state is seen to have gone a step further and devised what was a complete set of separate education materials for the country’s black students. This ensured that the black students could only be able to work at the low-level jobs. Question 3: what are the differences and similarities seen to exist between what Michelle Alexander refers to as the “New Jim Crow” and the “Old Jim Crow”? There are a number key differences and similarities to be seen between the Old and the New Jim Crow. While the old Jim Crow essentially segregated and barred African-American individuals from exercising their various rights such as voting by denying them this right as a result of their slavery status, under the new Jim Crow, this suppression is also seen to still be existent as is evidenced by the repressive laws that bar African-American individuals who have been incarcerated from voting, in addition to their being legally allowed the right to employment, public benefits and employment much which is seen to be quite similar to the second-class citizenship that was forced on African Americans in the Jim Crow era (Alexander 1-16). While most people are seen to assume that the government’s War on Drugs was essentially launched as an effective response to crisis that was being caused by crack cocaine in some of the country’s inner-city neighborhoods, it has been perceived by some as perhaps being a government conspiracy aimed at attempting to try and put the country’s black population in their place similarly to how the old Jim Crow had done. This postulation is seen to be further supported by the fact that the when the War on Drugs was launched, the media was stereotypically saturated with images of black crack babies, crack whores and crack dealers (Alexander 5): Additional credence for this postulation is also seen by the fact that the CIA is on record as having admitted that some of the guerilla armies that it was actively supporting in Nicaragua were responsible for some of the illegal smuggling of drugs into the United States (Alexander 59-94). The American justice system is also seen to legalize discrimination similarly to the old Jim Crow. The mass incarceration of African Americans has served to physically segregate them in jails, prison’s and ghetto’s. The country’s federal system has also largely immunized the current system from being challenged on the grounds that it was perpetrating racial bias in a similar manner to which racial bias was protected and endorsed by the U.S. Supreme court under the Old Jim Crow (173-208). Question 4: According to Sharma, how are the nation-state borders ethnicized and racialized? The creation and maintenance of nation-state borders is seen to generally be a rather important part of the every day practices of power. Borders are designed to shape just how people can be able to move across the various spaces that have been marked as being national territory. According to Sharman (326), when ethnicizing, which is generally the organization of people into various ethnic groups, is tied to the ideologies of nationalism essentially becomes a process that serves to tie the various human cultures to certain particular places. Sharman further points out that it is our imagination of contemporary nations that has entailed the ethnicizing division of humanity along the various ethnic lines while arguing that each and every individual person essentially belong to only one of these groups. The ethnicization of borders is also seen to be based on the mythic narratives that have aided in the construction of the idea that “we” have a natural right to a given space that is due to us (Sharma 326). National-state borders are seen to be racialized by the name of attempting to preserve cultural integrity. Sharma (327), emphasizes the fact that most racial practices have mostly been seen to rely more on the nationalistic ideas that attempt to sanctify culture by preventing the immigration of foreigners, and less on those of race separation. The idea that terrorism is essentially a third world import that it carried by the non-whites has also served to greatly racialize the various nation-state boarders (Sharma 331). Question 5: The US government’s use of Guanatana Bay, in Cuba for the rather exceptional imprisonment and alleged torture of detainees that are deemed as being potential enemy combatants without its extending to any of them any constitutional protection. The united State has been able to use Guantanamo as a result of its claim that the area belongs to the Republic of Cuba which happens to have ultimate sovereignty over this territory and that it is generally not possible for the United States to be able extend any constitutional protection to any of the prisoners as they are not covered under its constitution or the United State’s obligations to international treaties and as such they essentially have no rights whatsoever (Kaplan 834). However, Kaplan (832), refutes the view that the United States cannot enforce its constitution at Guantanamo by pointing out that Guantanamo essentially lies at the American Empire’s heart. The Empire is a dominion that is seen to at once be rooted in specific locales in addition to its being dispersed in an uneven fashion across the world. He further points out that Guantanamo was first acquired by the country back in 1898 when it occupied Cuba during the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Ever since its acquisition Guantanamo is seen to have increasingly played a strategic role in the gradually changing exercise of the United States’ power in the entire region. Guantanamo is seen to at different times acted as a coaling station, a cold war outpost, a naval base a detention centre for refugees. As such the country’s use of this station as a detention centre for the potential terrorist threats and the subsequent failure to grant them any constitutional protection cannot be justified given the country’s long historic usage of Guantanamo (Kaplan 833). Part 2 Essay Questions: Essay Question 1: How does the softer and much more less visible form of contemporary immigration controltend to work and to what end? The US government’s cotemporary anti-terrorism and immigration policies and laws have been seen to tend to not just militarize the country’s physical boarder, but also to create an invisible membrane that essentially limits the ability of those that are termed as being unasimillable, racialized and dangerous from moving in and out of the country’s territory via the enactment of various immigration laws. According to Ngai, (57), in the 1880s and 1890s, the United States Supreme court allocated the county’s congress the power to regulate immigration well outside the country’s constitution in the view that this was in the nation’s sovereignty. Congress was seen to first legislate the first federal restriction on entry into the country in 1875 when it devised a law that essentially banned all persons that were found to have been convicted of crimes that involved moral turpitude and prostitutes from immigrating into the country. This move by congress was widely perceived as being a provision that was aimed at attempting to bar Chinese women from entry into the country. However, over the years, the list of excludable classes was seen to gradually grow and to eventually comprise of contract laborers, persons who were mentally retarded, polygamists, paupers, Chinese laborers, person that had contracted loathsome and dangerous diseases, as well as those persons that were insane or feeble minded (Ngai 59). In further building up the invisible membrane barring entry into the country Lubheid (ix) points out that until the 1990’s gay and lesbian immigrants into the United States were also seen to be excluded from gaining entry. Lubhied further points out that questions linger as pertaining to just how the country’s Immigration and Naturalization service was able to determine whether certain individuals happened to be gay if the concerned potential immigrants did not themselves point out this fact. As opposed to attempting to erase this perceived invisible membrane that is barring entry into the United States for persons that are wrongly perceived as being unasimillable and dangerous, the United States is seen to be further strengthening and enlarging this perceived membrane, this fact is clearly demonstrated by the USA Patriot Act that was passed in (2001). According to Michaelsen (92), it is perhaps what is considered to be an open secret that the Act, which was hastily passed by Congress after the events of 9/11 partially operates much like the earlier “secret evidence” laws in that the Patriot Act is seen to selectively subject most of the potential Arab immigrants to what is essentially a Star Chamber treatment. This is despite the fact that the Act is racially neutral in that it makes not particular reference to race as such. The stark contrast the detainment of prisoners of prisoners of war and armed assailants drawn from countries such as Afghanistan who are imprisoned by the United States in Guantanamo and offered no rights or constitutional rights whatsoever (Kaplan 834), and the manner in which John Lindh, a young American who happened to be captured within the Taliban on the battle fields of Afghanistan but was tried in a criminal civil court for his conspiring to kill America is an aspect that is seen to further clearly distinguish this invisible barrier (953-954). Essay question II: What Hurricane Katrina taught us about how racism and racial segregation continue to make it harder to live healthy, secure, long and free lives for those that happen to have been marked as racially “other”. Hurricane Katrina was a devastating hurricane that pounded the United State’s Gulf South towards the end of August 2005. Not only did Katrina rage and devastate numerous lives, it also raised numerous questions pertaining as to just how class and race essentially influenced not only human lives and society, but also the various institutional responses to disaster. Similarly to other disaster before it, Hurricane Katrina was seen to offer a unique laboratory that helped study the social infrastructure of the particular affected region. In the case of the New Orleans region, the region, it was seen to essentially be a region that happened to be cross-cut by a number of complex and deep divisions of both class and race that had seemingly hardened over time without any excessive or direct interference from any outsiders. In light of Katrina, the various media images that were streamed from the region to the American public and the world kicked off a public debate pertaining to the relative importance of both race and class in the shaping of an individual, this is in addition to causing widespread debate on the institutional responses to disaster. As the television stations continuously televised hours of images of the region’s black Americans who were desperate for assistance after the devastating and raging storm, numerous viewers across the country could not help but to see the blatant racism that was evidently at work in the region (Giroux 173), however, according to Elliott (317), there were also a number of people who were seen to choose not to see what was evidently at work but chose to lie to themselves that what looked like race was actually class in disguise. Findings by Elliot (317), show that the black population of New Orleans were found to be less inclined as compared to the whites to evacuate their homes before the storm primarily because they did not believe that the hurricane would eventually be devastating as it proved to be. The emotional support system also showed stark differences between the African American population and the Whites in that while the blacks were more likely to report their leaning on the Lord for support, the whites were found to be more likely to report their reliance on both friends and family. This difference might actually be a matter of network support where the whites are found to be able to rely and receive institutional aid and support from friends and family while the African Americans are mostly left to their own devices for help. Hurricane Katrina also helped to show that it was difficult for the segregated communities to live secure lives as a result of findings that indicated that the black workers from new Orleans were an approximated four times more likely as compared to their white counterparts to eventually lose their jobs after the storm. When income differences are factored into the equation, the alarming results indicate that the average black workers from New Orleans were approximately more likely by about seven times to have lost their jobs as compared to the average white worker. Works Cited Alexander, Michelle, Feb 09, 2010, The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, The, New York. Cole David. 2002. Enemy Aliens. Georgetown Law Library, 54 Stan. L. Rev.953-1004 (2002) Elliot James and Pais Jeremy. 2006. Race, class, and Hurricane Katrina: Social differences in human responses to disaster. Evans, Ivan. nd. Racial violence and the Origins of Segregation in South Africa. in. "Settler colonialism in the Twentieth Century". Routledge, NewYork and London. Giroux Henry. 2006. Reading Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of disposability. College Literature, 33.3, Summer 2006, pp. 171-196 (Article). Kaplan Amy. 2005. where is Guantanamo? American Quarterly, Volume 57, Number 3, September 2005, pp. 831-858 (Article). Luibheid Eithne. 2002. Entry Denied, Controlling Sexuality at the Border. University of Minesota Press, 111 third Avenue south, Suite 290. Michaelsen Scott. 2005.Between Japanese American Internment and USA PATRIOT Act: The Borderlands and the Permanent State of Racial Exception. University of California, Regents. Nandita Sharma. 2011. Nation States, Borders, citizenship, and the Making of "National" differences. University of Hawaii, Manoa. Ngai Mae. 2004. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press. Read More