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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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