The Stereotypes Of African-Americans And African Americans In The United States

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Power is the ability to make laws and govern a certain area. Power is usually held by the government who determines how citizens should or should not act and also what rights people have. Power can also give the government the ability to discriminate against a certain race or group of people. For example, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created Executive Order 9066 which ordered Japanese Americans to relocate to internment camps to “protect against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material.”[1] Since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Americans were stereotyped as dangerous and disloyal to the United States. Another example of power was when the southern states passed literacy tests and poll taxes to prevent African Americans from voting in the late 1900s. …show more content…

The government’s power allowed them to create laws that restricted uneducated and poor blacks from voting simply because of their skin color and the stereotypes that said they were “savage” and “uncivilized.”[2] These examples show how the stereotypes given to Japanese Americans and African Americans at the time influenced the government to use their power to limit the rights and liberties of the two

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