A big part of our history is the challenges different races had to face when fighting for their rights. There are groups in today’s society that are still battling oppression, even though they were granted rights by our government. It seems like when one door opens, another closes right in their face. One race that had to deal with oppression, and is still dealing with it today, is African Americans. Africans Americans were brought over to the United States to be slaves for Caucasian people. All African Americans had to endure torture, losing family members, punishment, and much more. They had no freedom whatsoever and if they tried to fight for it, they were punished for it dearly. African Americans had to face so much to gain their freedom, and even when they did some people did not agree with the ruling. Even in today’s culture there are still people who see African Americans as less and judge them harshly based off of the past. It pains me to think that our society used Africans Americans for …show more content…
One of the readings for week three talked about the complete destruction of the Native American race because of Christopher Columbus. Many believe Christopher Columbus was a hero, and in a way they are right. However, our history books do not talk about him killing off an entire race because of his own greed. Columbus took the Arawak Indians hostage because he believed that they would lead him to gold. When that did not turn out as planned, Columbus decided to go on a slave raid and bring five hundred Indians back Spain. Two hundred Indians ended up dying while the survivors were put up for sale. The Spaniards did barbaric acts to the Arawak such as cutting off their hands, hunting them down with dogs, hanging them, and burning them alive.This scenario shows the oppression that Arawak Indians had to face when an outsider took over their land (Zinn,