How Much Longer Until Freedom? Imagine a time when racism is not only systematically practiced, but also socially present in the United States; this moment in time could easily be nineteen fifty five or two thousand fifteen. The importance of this era lies in the elements that help us differentiate the past from the present. By simply asking yourself, what’s changed, you unlock the answer to the larger picture? As America developed so did its literature. Literature in song, film writing and journalism was and still is used to share stories, perspective and insights. That’s exactly what authors throughout the civil rights movement did. Without past works, America as a whole, including its literature would be hindered in development. The civil …show more content…
Public and private acts of violence towards “coloreds” was not only the norm but justified. Langston Hughes addresses these issues in many of his works through the time period. Hughes’s poem, “Let America be America again” speaks volumes to the African American experience socially, economically and culturally; and his hope for America to transform. Langston Hughes writes, “O, let my land be a land where Liberty, is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, but opportunity is real, and life is free, equality is in the air we breathe (Hughes).” Throughout this piece of literature, Hughes’ continually confesses his desire for America to be as promised. In just two simple but profound lines he manages to capture the African American experience in to a tee; he writes “There’s never been equality for me, nor freedom in this "homeland of the free (Hughes).”The civil rights movement, also known as the “black power era;” was a success legislatively, but not so much socially. During this time, a series of amendments were passed to ensure all American citizens had access to the same freedoms. “Civil rights activists used nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring about change, and the federal government made …show more content…
It seems that slavery has merely transformed into the prison system, lynching into police brutality, and segregation into America’s everyday class systems. The very same laws crafted to protect the equal rights of American citizens, are the same laws that helped Mike Brown’s killer go un- prosecuted. The likelihood that an unarmed black person will be killed by police is twice as likely as a white person killed by police, according to the Guardian (Guardian). Unfortunately Mike Browns case was one of the few cases to reach national attention, similar to cases throughout nineteen fifty five and nineteen sixty five. The number of targeted and incarcerated African Americans continually grows. In America, “The prison population has increased from 300,000 to 2.3 million in the past 35 years, with blacks making up almost half that number (Reuters).” Langston Hughes’s dream of “equality in the air we breathe” hasn’t seemed to come true as of yet. “Public schools are more racially segregated now than 40 years ago; 39 percent of black students come from poor families (Reuters).” African Americans being profiled, targeted, killed, locked away and suffering from poverty isn’t new in the United States. This is America, The land of the free, home of the brave and a nation of anti- immigrant
“I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek.” In the poem “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes, the reader here’s from two different speakers, and how they both seperately want America to change. One of the speakers wants America to go back to what it was before, while the other responds in small comments, building up to say the quote you read at the beginning. In the poem “Let America Be America Again” the author has two separate speakers with contradicting thoughts, the author relates to problems that were happening in the real world, and how the author’s rhyme scheme is a vital component to how this poem reads.
Author’s argument #1 In her book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander uses a large-scale historical analysis to conceptualize the intractable failures of the American incarceration system. Central to her overall argument is the claim that the prison system was intentionally designed to perpetuate the discrimination and social death of Black people in an era where laws permit outright anti-Black legislation. In order to support her historical analysis of the motivation behind the carceral system, Alexander traces the fall of formally racist institutions to modern legislation that, she argues, accomplishes the same goal without using explicitly racist language. Alexander engages in a three-step investigation into the process that transformed
Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator for the gated community where Martin was living. Martin was, as in the case with Michael Brown, completely unarmed, and his executioner was released and didn’t face any criminal charges. Unfortunately, that just buttresses the fact that black people have an inferior role in the American community. It’s not simple to fix a problem that isn’t official, but rather known as a national benchmark. Ishmael Sistrunk considers how to patch up the bleeding wound between black men & the compelling policemen in his article titled “Walking while black: Michael Brown, black men and white police officers”.
African-Americans are disproportionately imprisoned by discriminatory laws and deprived of their civil rights by our supposed democracy. This country’s criminal justice system still has not escaped the influence of racial prejudice. The criminal injustice system has transformed enslavement and institutionalized the violence and horror of previous generations, as slaves are no longer held in captivity on plantations, but rather in
What is the American Dream? Many people have tried to explain the dream, or how they feel about the dream. Most try to be all patriotic and country loving like Walt Whitman... But others like Langston Hughes reveal a darker side of the dream. Whitman hears America Singing.
Michelle Alexander says in her book, “The New Jim Crow” that millions of African-Americans are arrested for minor crimes every day. These African-Americans remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever labeled them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become law-abiding citizens. Michelle Alexander also says that people are swept into the criminal justice system especially in poor communities of color for minor crimes. More than 108,000 New Yorkers are currently disenfranchised with the law. Eighty percent of those being African-Americans.
Imagine if you were black and you had to deal with police brutality and racial profiling. That’s what many people have to deal with now and in the past 80+ years. Have you ever heard of the Scottsboro 9? They were 9 boys who were accused of raping 2 white girls. The girls names were Ruby Bates and Victoria Price.
He notes, "America never was America to me / And yet I swear this oath— / America will be!" The promise that America would be a nation of freedom and opportunity has proven to be a hollow one for many descendants of African Americans who were held in slavery. Our society has been deeply impacted by the legacies of slavery and institutionalized racism, and seeking reparations is an essential first step in ending these persistent injustices. As Hughes expresses, "O, let America be America again— / The land that never has been yet— /
As our society has grown in a multitude of ways, it has remained the same concerning the systematic treatment of minority groups, especially African American people. Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, writes about how America has encouraged and allowed the rebirth of a new caste system through implementation of mass incarceration (2011). The creation of this new system, only backed the critical race theory that argues white racism is constructed socially and historically in America (Simba 2015). She outlines that slavery and Jim Crow laws have been redesigned into the war on drugs which has allowed the police to target communities of color and therefore keep blacks in a position of inferiority. Many factors come into play
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
The criminal system operates on a hierarchy of individual liability over the demand and societal pressure”. By routinization of unequal protection from the legal system, black people are more vulnerable to be victimized by
The poem “Let America Be America Again” is about an African American
African Americans are commonly referred to as oppressed by systematic, outright and sub-conscious racism that derives from slavery which continues to be manifested in the current age through mass-incarnation, police brutality, and discrimination experienced in the workplace as well as on college campuses. Our televisions are plagued by recent incidents such as the murdering of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, as well as overt racism on the campus of the University of Missouri, and the brutal beating of Freddie Gray while in police custody. It seems as if there is another police brutality incident every week. It has provoked people like Frank Wilkerson to say, “We don’t hate police brutality, we hate the police.” Looking on the outside in it
Synopsis In the introduction, Michelle Alexander (2010) introduces herself and expresses her passion about the topic of how the criminal justice system accomplishes racial hierarchy here in the United States. In chapter 1 of The New Jim Crow, Alexander (2010) suggests that the federal government can no longer be trusted to make any effort to enforce black civil rights legislation, especially when the Drug War is aimed at racial and ethnic minorities. In response to revolts formed between black slaves and white indentured servants, rich whites extended special privileges to their indentured servants that drove a wedge between them and the slaves that successfully stopped the revolts.
In the poem “I, Too”, the author Langston Hughes illustrates the key aspect of racial discrimination faces against the African Americans to further appeals the people to challenge white supremacy. He conveys the idea that black Americans are as important in the society. Frist, Hughes utilizes the shift of tones to indicate the thrive of African American power. In the first stanza, the speaker shows the sense of nation pride through the use of patriotic tone. The first line of the poem, “I, too, sing America” states the speaker’s state of mind.