In the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome written by Dr.Joy DeGruy she explains how the past events in American history has lead to post traumatic slave syndrome. She explains that the way African Americans were treated during the slave era and after has had an everlasting effect on African Americans. The book goes on to describe how America has been denying its past and has not helped to integrated and level all the playing fields for African Americans. The book brings to light how we can try to contribute in making America a fair and equal place for all as most claim it to be. Through the book DeGruy talks about the four major contributing factors for the reason why America is the way it is.
White privilege negatively impacts social justice which can lead to irreversible actions. Hillary Clinton once said, “If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.” We are all equals, whether we are woman, have a disability or are coloured. We all deserve the same rights. Without social injustice, life would be made fair.
If there had not been such a strong divide between negroes and whites since the beginning of the development of the colony, the issues that arose later in history may not have existed at all or at least not as been nearly as severe. For example, rebellions would likely have not occurred as often as negroes would have felt more like part of society than the outsiders that whites typically treated them as. Or if negroes had not had the extensive knowledge of rice, the economy could have easily tanked or it would have taken significantly longer to find a product that would support the economy in the way that rice did. It seems that throughout history, negroes and slaves are not given near enough credit for the parts they play in society, particularly in periods of critical development like this
Author and Lecturer Deborah Gray White is a professor at Rutgers University who currently serves on the Board of Governors Professor of History and lectures over the Women’s and Gender Studies. She was also the co-director of “The Black Atlantic: Race, Nation and Gender” project at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis in the 90s (Web). White has authored numerous works throughout her educational career, and continues to do so, however, it is the extraordinary work she did on her Ph.D. dissertation that later turned into a much anticipated manuscript she is most known for. Ar 'n 't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South gave the world insight into the considerable marginalized plight of the enslaved women of color in the
It is painful for me to think that I have a part in the oppression of African Americans in the USA. I read books about Reconstruction, The Civil War, lynching, and the Jim Crow laws, and think, “thank god, we don’t live in that world anymore.” Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that we do live in a world where there in still slavery, it is just more subverted then in the 1900’s. Not all people are lawyers and can commit themselves to legal battles. There needs to be a way that white people, and the working class, can stand to change the ways this country oppresses minorities.
Although the extent is far less, we still see some of this ideology today. many still hold the inhumane sexualized view of women of color. There should be more of a push to recognize the emotional needs and the intellectual beauty of African American women- and less of a normalized fetishized fantasy that has been created by men. We have come along way, but there won 't be justice until there is global understanding that there is no shame in loving a black
Early American social hierarchies differed markedly for women of color—whether free or enslaved—whose relationships to the white regimes of early America were manifold and complex. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women in the colonies of the English West Indies and Carolinas, particularly women of color, were seen as subordinate by white male slave owners because of race and shared oppression of the female gender. However, these women were a means of economic gain for white slave owners. Taken from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, white slave owners valued these women for their ability in domestic work and fieldwork where they performed primarily unskilled agricultural tasks, as well as their potential to bear children. White slave owners of the Early Americas, driven by greed and opportunism, used political laws, physical characteristics of women, and social constructs of gender roles to appropriate
Nevertheless, slaves put them through intolerable actions slave owners and white people put African Americans through
No one should be ashamed for the way they are born, but people bully people into believing it’s their fault for being a certain race, sexuality, gender, or something else others label human beings. Though there are many subjects of conversation on the topics of equality, race is one of the most influential disagreements in history. From the beginning of time African Americans have been discriminated against by being forced into labor, not having equal rights as white males, and not even being considered citizens of the United States. This is truly one of the darkest times in American history. Now, how were African Americans affected by the acts of society throughout the Colonial Period through Reconstruction?
This ignorance, eventually led up to the rise of the Klu Klux Klan, Blackface “comedy” and outrageously racist characterchures of black people in cinema such as: The Birth of a Nation, A Patch of Blue, Mammy, and etc. I think as a nation, we are gradually recovering from the choices made during reconstruction. In conclusion, I think modern day America would not be segregated if during reconstruction, Black people were treated and viewed as
That [she’d] never seed no real meaning in birds going south till Harker pointed it out to me” (207). She consequently says, “this is what I hold against slavery. May a time come when I forgive, cause I don’t think I’m set up to forget--the beatings, the selling, the killings, but I don’t think I ever forgive the ignorance they kept us in” (208). Knowledge is a basic human right and keeping black people uneducated suggests that white people consider slaves to be less than human. The lack of knowledge about the world further ensured that black people will never try to overpower their
Throughout history of the United States of America from as early back as it is available African American have suffered terribly at the hands of their white counterpart. According to history.com website “the continent of Africa was deprived of its most valuable resource – its healthiest and ablest men and women.” Unfortunately for them their status changes as they now take on a name role – Slaves”. (history.com) Marcus Mosiah Garvey a Jamaican born and Jamaica first National Hero stated that "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.
There is no true color blindness when it comes to the social effects of the transracial adopted family (Steinberg). Transracial adoptions have a lot of missing pieces because the adoptive parents are not fully prepared to take on the social challenges of raising a racially different
Black feminism issued as a theoretical and practical effort demonstrating that race, gender, and class are inseparable in the social worlds we inhabit. We need to understand the interconnections between the black and women’s
White women in slaveholding families in the south were one of the main forces behind the oppression of African American men and women. In society these white women held no real power but in the comfort of their domestic domains they were granted more power; so, these women took power where they could and became mistress to a slave. At a young age, they were taught how to manage slaves as well as being their master. In one case, a mistress had full power over the estate and managed it on her own without her husband’s help . Consequently, she held the power that she would not have had outside of the home.
