“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word”- Martin Luther King Jr. Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another; discrimination against an individual or group of people, based on racial background, usually colour.What can one do to make racism disappear before it destroys any other lives? Racism has impacted many lives; those most affected have been African Americans, Muslims, Jews, Asians, and Native Americans.
Robert Kennedy said,“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of
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It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction”- Tim Holden. So many lives were lost because of the hatred of one race. As one of the saddest events in history, the Holocaust intensified racism in the United States. The Holocaust was started after a man Adolf Hitler was named the Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 40,000 camps and other incarceration sites. The perpetrators used these sites for a range of purposes, including forced labor, detention of people thought to be enemies of the state, and mass murder. What did the jews do to deserve such discrimination? The Holocaust was a huge eye opener to the discrimination that seemed to grow under so much hatred that was not dealt with. In the early years of the Nazi regime, the National Socialist government established concentration camps to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS( Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party in Nazi Germany) and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate …show more content…
They are poles apart in many respects but, under the skin, are still brothers”. Native Americans faced the most racism for just being themselves. They faced many hardships with the biggest obstacle being the Trail of Tears. Discrimination against Native Americans is the longest held racism in the United States. It dates back to the arrival of the pilgrims and the subsequent invasion of the continent. In an effort to obtain much of North America as territory of the United States, a long series of wars and massacres forced displacements (including the well-known Trail of Tears), restriction of food rights, and the imposition of treaties. Ideologies justifying the context included stereotypes of Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages" and the quasi-religious doctrine of manifest destiny, which asserted divine blessing for U.S. conquest of all lands west of the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. Not everyone was included in the new Jacksonian Democracy. There was no initiative from Jacksonian Democrats to include women in political life or to combat slavery. But, it was the Native Americans who suffered most from Andrew Jackson's vision of America. Jackson, both as a military leader and as President, pursued a policy of removing Indian tribes from their ancestral lands. This relocation would make room for settlers and often for spectaculars who made large profits from the
The article “Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy: A Reassessment” for this assignment, written by F. P. Prucha, shows that even though most people believe that our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, was an Indian hater whose presidency was defined by an anti-Indian doctrine which allowed the “trail of tears”, a mass deportation of the Florida Indians to the West of the Mississippi River, Jackson did not bear personal hatred against Native Americans. The author claims that Jackson as a military man, he had a dominant goal in the decades before he became President to preserve the security and wellbeing of the United States and its Indian and white inhabitants. Jackson was genuinely concerned for the well-being of the Indians and for their civilization
Murders inflicted upon the Jewish population during the Holocaust are often considered the largest mass murders of innocent people, that some have yet to accept as true. The mentality of the Jewish prisoners as well as the officers during the early 1940’s transformed from an ordinary way of thinking to an abnormal twisted headache. In the books Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and Ordinary men by Christopher R. Browning we will examine the alterations that the Jewish prisoners as well as the police officers behaviors and qualities changed.
The United States government's relationship with the Native American population has been a rocky one for over 250 years. One instance of this relationship would be what is infamously known as, the Trail of Tears, a phrase describing a journey in which the Native Americans took after giving up their land from forced removal. As a part of then-President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, this policy has been put into place to control the natives that were attempting to reside peacefully in their stolen homeland. In the viewpoint of the Choctaw and Cherokee natives, removal had almost ultimately altered the culture and the traditional lifestyle of these people.
One of the greatest injustices of American history included, starvation, illness, and death. These hardships were undeservingly forced upon an innocent group of people – the Native Americans. One may think that the Trail of Tears was only a simple journey the Indians made to discover new frontiers. This is not the case. The Trail of Tears was the result of the white man’s selfishness, causing Indians to lose their homes and belongings. The act was full of unfair treatment, cruelty, and heartlessness. This tragic event took place in the nineteenth century, and was mostly initiated by President Andrew Jackson. In 1814, Jackson proposed an idea for a new act called the Indian Removal Act. (pbs) This act was not widely accepted throughout America, but was initiated because of some Americans wanting more land and gold – resources owned by Native Americans. The Trail of Tears caused much controversy and confusion, and many tears and heartache followed along the way.
President Jackson singlehandedly led the destruction of the Native Americans with his aggressive actions and hostile decisions. President Jackson shirked his responsibility to protect the Native Americans of the United States by ignoring the Supreme Court’s decision, promoting legislation to bring about the separation of Native Americans and whites, and his decision to involve the United States Armed Forces against Indian Tribes. If it was not for President Jackson’s actions, the future of the Native Americans would have been different, or at least the American settlers wanted Indian land for many reasons. These reasons include geography and terrain, location, resources, and old grudges. First, the geography was perfect for farmers with fertile land.
All around the news today we hear about polices killing innocent African Americans because of their own personal prejudice against them. Thousands of African Americans have died because of this prejudice and most were innocent and unarmed. Some people might ask how racism still exists after the Civil Wars? Or how can we do something about this and make racism go away?
Though racism seems to be a thing of the past, there is still room for progression in the United States. Having been a country that was widely accepting of the enslavement of African Americans over a century ago, many Americans have not evolved nor turned the page on the subject. Despite the many movements, trials, and acts developed by our society to ensure civil rights to all African Americans, America remains a principally racist country. The only effective way to defeat racism is to not practice or teach what was once taught one hundred years ago. Author Alex Haley is quoted, “Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.” If we do not teach our youth of prejudice or hatred towards human beings for something as trivial as differing skin color I believe racism, not only concentrated in the United States, but globally, will diminish.
As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940s, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines. An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event never took place.
From the first settlement of colonist in America, the relationship between Native Americans and white Americans has ranged from respectable friends to sworn enemies. Until the Indian Removal Act, Americans were in competition with the Indians for American soil from the first day they arrived. Settlers saw Indians as barbaric savages and that view did not change much as time passed. Americans recognized these tribes as separate nations who were entitled to the land they acquired, this land could only be obtained by creating a treaty. But more often than not, treaties would be broken by Americans after a few years. When America gained its independence from Britain, the pressures of expansion grew. Andrew Jackson was president at the height of this growing need for land. Andrew Jackson was a rugged man, a gambler, he never missed a fight and whatever he said was true no matter what. Jackson was known for being a populist, a people’s man. The Indians were settled on fertile land that white Americans wanted, by removing the Indians Jackson created a way win more votes and gain more territory for growing cotton. His main concern was not protecting the Indian culture; it was to protect his presidency and get more
Six million innocent Jews died “simply because they were Jewish” (Whitcock, 30). The author Whitlock was referring to the Holocaust in the previous quote. The Holocaust, one of the most tragic events in the world, would have not been possible with anti- Semitic beliefs. Anti-Semitism has a deep history all the way back to the beginning of the Christian era and was spread with biased Nazi propaganda (“Nazi Propaganda”). The worst part of anti-Semitism was its effects.
All the Jews had to wear all the same clothing so that they could be
In the world today, racism and discrimination is one of the major issues being faced with. Racism has existed throughout the world for centuries and has been the primary reasons for wars, conflicts, and other human calamities all over the planet. It has been a part of America since the European colonization of North America beginning in the 17th century. Many people are not aware of how much racism still exist in our schools, workforces, and anywhere else that social lives are occurring. It started from slavery in America to caste partiality in India, down to the Holocaust in Europe during World War II.
To answer this question we must first understand the definition of racism. “Racism is an act where a person or group of people are discriminated against because of a particular characteristic, or a set of characteristics, they have such as race, color, religion, etc.”- Catherine. Now, not everyone thinks in a racist way, so these individuals are the ones that must stand up to start a movement against racism. When everyone is against one thing, that one thing would come to an end. Some things that have to change in order for racism to end are you have to stand up for your beliefs while respecting the beliefs of others and not taking part in hurtful acts. However, the main thing that has to change in order for racism to stop is us. We’ve got to require certain steps for this massive change to happen.
To end racism, we need to teach our children how to respect themselves first. Then we should teach them how to love others, not for the color of their skin, or where they live, but for who the person is on the inside. If we live by these teachings racism would slowly cease. The world would be more peaceful with less fighting.
Racism is a worldwide problem that will never be eradicated and there are no simple solutions to it.