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History Of Racism In America

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Racism is a very large topic that has a very long history; datingtiming back to the 1600s. Because of the large topic, being able to narrow down racism into subsections since the topic of racism being so huge. Personal racism is racism that is within individuals, which is also called institutional racism. Even though this is only a subsection of an larger topic, there still is not a correct answer for preventing racism on a individual level. There has not been much change since slavery started to the present day in the right direction. There are still many people today that are still being excluded because of their skin tone, getting brutally beaten by the police because of racism, as well as getting shot and killed because of being black. …show more content…

This all started with the slave trade during the 16th century to the 19th century where the British would go and take Africans into the Americas and sold them to white Americans. They would be put to work in plantations and other places with little to no money and would have to live and work under harsh conditions. These people would be stripped from their homes and lives in African in order to be put to work as slaves in America. Slavery was the act of naming a person as property, as well as owning and selling someone as property. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, slavery was used in order to build our economy in our nation. But an invention known as the cotton gin changed the economy in the US so that slave owners can make more money by doing less. Because of the cotton gin invented in 1793, it revolutionized slavery and made everyone dependent on slaves and slavery (Slavery in …show more content…

By 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified, making people born in the United States US citizens, and having equal protection under the law. Jim Crow Laws was a way to get around those amendments, but keeping it constitutional. Jim Crow Laws started with a court case called Plessy vs Ferguson which was a case taken place in 1896 where Homer Plessy rode on a “white only car” on a train and got arrested because of it since he wasn’t white. Plessy was ⅛ black and could pass off as white in the past, but it didn’t work in this case. The US Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional of segregation laws, creating the doctrine “separate but equal”. Because of this, blacks and whites were separated by laws known as Jim Crow

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The invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney changed the South for the better. It made the South a major world trader as well as a wealthy region. It did this by increasing cotton production and slave trade in the lower U.S. Almost as soon as the Cotton Gin was developed it produced major success. It allowed Planters and Yeomen’s alike, to produce cotton as a faster rate.

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The Jim Crow laws were a set of anti-Black laws that could be seen mostly in the southern and border states and demoted Blacks to second-class citizens (Pilgrim). The Whites thought they needed these laws because many people at high positions believed that Blacks’ mental capacity was inferior to Whites (Pilgrim). Whites

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A machine had to be invented first that would make the cotton profitable by easily separating the seeds from the fibers. This machine, the cotton gin, was patented in 1794 by Eli Whitney a man who lived on a cotton farm in Savannah Georgia (history.com staff). Before the invention was made popular throughout the South not many people grew cotton as in some states like Mississippi cotton was not widely grown until the 1830’s (Dattel). However, after the machine revolutionized the refining process of the cotton crop the supply of cotton rose to meet the growing demand, which only increased after the supply met it, and with the rising demand of cotton rose the demand for inexpensive labor. This demand for labor was increasingly supplied by slaves.

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The Cotton Gin In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine called a cotton gin. The cotton gin became very popular in the South. This machine made the South able to produce very large amounts of cotton, which made them lots of money. The only issue was that the cotton still needed to be picked by hand, so slavery soon became popular in the South.

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Every country on this beautiful sphere that we call earth has its own view on society. All countries around the world views America as being the land of the free and the land of being able to express yourself, but their just looking through a microscope .Whether those countries know it or not America has flaws. One of Americans biggest flaw is racial discrimination against people of color. When Jim Crow laws were introduced in the 1890’s it had a lasting effect on people of color socially, mentally, and their opportunities.

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It is weird that the country of freedom looks and minds at such actions, and it makes us think are they faking the freedom that they are always shouting for? It is true that what Colin Kaepernick did is disrespectful for his country firstly and himself secondly, but as a foreigner I have always heard that the United States of America is the only country where you freely do whatever you want. However, it seems that what I read in Ta-Nehisi Coates about the racism is so true; discrimination exists in the country of freedom. Moreover, what Donald Trump said about Colin Kaepernick when he didn’t stand while playing National Anthem, which is leaving the United States and finding another one is a shame for the country; as it always been the only country that welcomes all the people from different countries, races and religions.

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The United States was built on slavery; it is woven into America’s history. Right after the Revolutionary War, slavery was abolished in most of the northern states. But it was rampant in the South where most of the citizens were farmers working in agriculture. A large amount of workers was needed for the success of the crops. The South was desperate for people to work in the fields.

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As current time and social status are being challenged and pushed, the Jim Crow Laws were implemented. These state and local laws were just legislated this year, 1877. New implemented laws mandate segregation in all public facilities, with a “separate but equal” status for African Americans. This may lead to treatment and accommodations that are inferior to those provided to white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages.

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What is the purpose of racism? In Theorizing Nationalism, Day and Thompson discuss how racism and nationalism are precisely the same. Racism has the ability to help build nationalism, especially in our young country. LeMay and Barkan in U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Laws & Issues talk about how this racism is used during a specific time period, 1880 to 1920, in the United States of America. Both of these articles argue that when the United States was in a time of peril, they used racism as a unifying factor to bring the country together and as a way to put a group of people lower than themselves to bring their status to a higher point in society.

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5th Hour Cause and Effect Essay Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were unfair and unjust to all African-Americans by making them unequal. The Jim Crow laws are laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. It used the term separate but equal, even though conditions for African Americans were always worst than their white counterparts. They could not eat at the same restaurant as white people, they could not used the same restrooms, and they couldn't even use the same drinking fountain.

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In the essay, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”, the author Dr. Cornel West discusses racism in depth, while conveying why whites feel this sense of superiority. We learn through his discussion that whites have been forced to treat black harshly due to the knowledge that was given to them about the aesthetics of beauty and civility. This knowledge that was bestowed on the whites in the modern West, taught them that they were superior to all races tat did not emulate the norms of whites. According to Dr. West the very idea that blacks were even human beings is a concept that was a “relatively new discovery of the modern West”, and that equality of beauty, culture, and intellect in blacks remains problematic and controversial in intellectual circles

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The segregation started out as something called the Black Codes, which was similar to the Jim Crow Laws but was not as enforced. The Jim Crow Laws were later created and enforced throughout the United States, mostly in the south. The Black Laws made it easier for police to arrest blacks, but the Jim Crow Laws created segregation in everyday life. Blacks did not have the full privilege of an American citizen until a century after the civil war ended (Sharp). The Jim Crow laws kept African Americans from exercising their rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment through legal segregation, targeting and blaming blacks for

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The cotton gin was a simple machine with the sole purpose of separating cotton fibres from it’s seeds, drastically lowering the production costs of cotton. Previously workers were required to separate cotton fibres from it's seeds by hand, a process that required multiple hours to produce a single pound of fibres. Using the cotton gin however slaves could produce more than 50 pounds of cotton, in a single day. The vastly expensive cotton prices decreased simultaneously, leading to a growth in popularity of cotton clothing. This lead to South American farmers devoting more time and land to cotton plantations.

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Even now though they still aren’t treated equally. In Hidden Figures, the 20 black women who worked at NASA didn’t get the same rights as the white people but at least they were working there. Colored people also had to follow really strict rules. For example, every white person that worked with Katherine got mad when she used the coffee machine in their office. The coffee machine wasn’t labeled specifically for white people, it’s just that they never had a black person use their things before.

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The Jim Crow laws started in the 1880’s in the southern states. The name Jim Crow came from a man Thomas Dartmouth (Daddy) Rice. He blackened his face and danced to Jump Jim Crow. The laws targeted only the blacks. In the 1960’s the laws came to an end.

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