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The founding fathers: the age of realism
History of racism in the u.s
The founding fathers: the age of realism
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Reading this chapter really made me realize how much of history I didn’t know and had come to assume happened just based on my judgements of America's past. The idea of the Founding Fathers being racist slaveholders or the whitewashing that happens in history weren’t new to me but the hard facts about how bad it is and the things they said and did stopped me in my reading. Multiple times I covered my mouth with my hand in shock and reread or read aloud a sentence I couldn’t believe was true. I just can't imagine being so ignorant and thinking you're better than someone simply because of what they look like. I’m really happy I got to read this so I have a better understanding of what exactly minorities, particularly Black and African American people, had to go through. …show more content…
Even though I’m aware of how unfair white people have treated minorities in America it still shocks me when I find out people believed that African Americans wanted to be slaves or that simply the color of your skin decided how smart you could be. The moment in the text that made me the most sad was reading about young Black and African American students who had been lied to about they race's role in government during the Reconstruction period. As stated in the text it can bring them to “doubt their own capability, since their race had “messed up.”” (Loewen, 1995) History has so much weight in how we think about ourselves and those around us so seeing students be presented with whitewashed lies that tell them that white people are some how superior, is not only disgusting but clearly a huge factor in today's racisms. I’ve never had a history textbook so I can’t say for sure what they are like but I hope in the future we can implement laws so that you can’t beat around the bush when it comes to the treatment of minorities in our
These details help many who may have trouble understanding his hardships, be able to relate. The use of real world examples from his life and history are very convincing and supportive of his theory on blacks lives. Coates talks about how “black blood was spilled in the North colonies, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War [...] and most of all during segregation and the time of JIm Crow Laws. [...] Why is it still being spilt today over the same reasons?” Coates use of history relates to the issues today. It represents how serious the problems were back then, and how serious they still are in the modern society. History is factual, this creates and accurate support to his claim and also allows reader to relate to the past and compare it to today 's society. The rhetorical question causes the audience to think and catches eye. Asking this question emphasizes the issue because it still is a problem that does not have a solution even still today. The author also uses statistics to support the unfair lives of black people. “60 percent of all young black people who drop out of high school will go to jail.” This claim is factual and convincing to his claim about the rigged schooling system in many black communities. The communities are shoved in corner and neglected. This problem results in the thousands of dropouts that later result in jailing. If our schooling systems were
America have a long history of black’s relationship with their fellow white citizens, there’s two authors that dedicated their whole life, fighting for equality for blacks in America. – Audre Lorde and Brent Staples. They both devoted their professional careers outlying their opinions, on how to reduce the hatred towards blacks and other colored. From their contributions they left a huge impression on many academic studies and Americans about the lack of awareness, on race issues that are towards African-American. There’s been countless, of critical evidence that these two prolific writers will always be synonymous to writing great academic papers, after reading and learning about their life experience, from their memoirs.
Reconstruction(1865-1877) was the time period in which the US rebuilt after the Civil War. During this time, the question the rights of freed slaves in the United States were highly debated. Freedom, in my terms, is the privilege of doing as you please without restriction as long as it stays within the law. However, in this sense, black Americans during the Reconstruction period were not truly free despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. While legally free, black Americans were still viewed through the lens of racism and deeply-rooted social biases/stigmas that prevented them from exercising their legal rights as citizens of the United States. For example, black Americans were unable to wholly participate in the government as a
Carter G. Woodson, author of The Mis-Education of the Negro” wrote his novel on the main issue that the education system had failed to educate the Negro about African history. His intention was to inform the audience about the mis-education of the African American race. Mr. Woodson supported his scholarly work with his investigations from a wide spectrum of races for 40 years by studying students from different levels.
The Mis-education of the Negro came off to me as a very interesting and meaningful book. It was written by Mr. Carter Woodson. The craziest but yet so realistic thing about this book is that it was wrote many years ago but it speaks on the truth of our society today. I guess it is true what people say, that history does repeat itself. I was responsible for reading the first four chapters of this book. In the first four chapters of this book a lot of truth is revealed. From the background of the Negro to the educational abuse of the Negro. Mr. Woodson started this book off by basically telling how the oppressor looked down and ridiculed us as African Americans. He started off by saying that Negro were taught to admire other ethicality groups
The author presented the information in a very solid way and sectioned it out very well. I understood what he was trying to explain. It was somewhat a long book but very much full of knowledge and history that in spirit is still alive today. We may not have slavery like it was then, but we still deal with racism and prejudice daily.
that a majority of the South would have to take an iron clad oath that
Prior to the Civil War, African Americans were treated as second class individuals. They lacked the freedom and equality they sought for. To the African Americans, the Civil War was a war of liberation. Contrary to what African Americans perceived, Southerners viewed the war as an episode of their journey to salvation. Southern lands may have been destroyed and depleted, but the South was persistent that their racial order would not be disrupted. To most, the goals of the Reconstruction era were to fully restore the Union, and to some, grant emancipation and liberty to former slaves. Although the newly freedmen gained various rights and liberties, their naïve dreams of complete equality and liberation collapsed due to the immense resistance of the South.
American History is a topic taught in very small detail during all levels of education. From elementary school to college, educators educated students with the facts and theories regarding the transformation of this country from the 1600s to today. While there are many events and time periods in this nation’s history that have shaped its culture and society, one of the most thoroughly studied eras in American History is that of slavery in the antebellum south. Every student in school has taken at least one class in which the teacher shows facts and figures about the horrors of slavery, or shows pictures of the squalor of slave quarters with the intention of shocking and upsetting the inhabitants of the classroom. Most students, however, are never taught the “whole story”. They never learn about the lives behind the numbers or the events behind the pictures. The realness was cover up by white supremacy. The book, “Kindred” show some struggles blacks had to face in the early days.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, a big question was left: what does the future look like for freed slaves in America? For so long - 246 years, since the first African slave arrived in Virginia in 1619 - Southern African Americans were forced into slavery. However, in 1856, as a result of the Union’s win in the American Civil War and the determination of many, they were finally free - at least legally. The Civil War left a big dent on the South and tension was rising between whites and blacks. In the meantime, African Americans needed help, or else they would fall into the trenches of the American society once again. This was a time of crucial social change for Southern blacks, and the effects of Reconstruction on white and black race relations in America are still apparent and alive today.
As I read this article I found myself feeling guilty as I have on many occasions during the course of this class. Growing up as a white kid in Kahuku I always felt I was not one of the haole people who were ignorant and foolish in their understanding of "native issues" I thought that I was instilled with the values of respecting our aina and my desire to understand olelo Hawaii was a characteristic that set me apart from my peers. As a teenager, I always had more respect for local people and minorities, infact, to me, white people never helped at all in my growth into an adult. The people that hurt me the worst were my white parents and the people that did not help me when I needed it most were my stuck-up, rich white family. The people that were there for me as I struggled through not just adolescence, but abusive parents and drug addiction in every facet of my nuclear and extended family were families who were Hawaiian and Filipino. They were people who descended from a community that relied on sugar cane plantations in Kahuku. My family was not my mom and dad, my family was a community of people that were there for me and treated me as their own. I never liked being white. What pride is their in that, to be part of a culture which has conquered and destroyed almost all other civilizations on the face of earth in the name of an unforgiving God. I felt set apart from my ethnicity and always wished I could be dark, be anything other than what I am and I succeeded in feeling this way for a long time.
Paul Buck once said, “If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday” (Buck, P.). Considering that the relationship between America and minorities is entrench with bias, prejudice, and oppression it isn’t difficult to see why the public education system is over flowing with policies that promote institutional racism. The novel, The Shame of a nation by Jonathan Kozol and the short film, Eyes on the prize aim to educate the masses about the history of oppression in America’s educational system and the residual effects of the oppression on the present. Although many of the overt struggles outlined in these two pieces of work are no longer seen in schools today there residual effects are still covertly visible
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
In From Slavery to Freedom (2007), it was said that “the transition from slavery to freedom represents one of the major themes in the history of African Diaspora in the Americas” (para. 1). African American history plays an important role in American history not only because the Civil Rights Movement, but because of the strength and courage of Afro-Americans struggling to live a good life in America. Afro-Americans have been present in this country since the early 1600’s, and have been making history since. We as Americans have studied American history all throughout school, and took one Month out of the year to studied African American history. Of course we learn some things about the important people and events in African American history, but some of the most important things remain untold which will take more than a month to learn about.
This quote is symbolic of the expressed opinions and ideology of the founding fathers of America. History, especially the history of the American educational system, paints a contradictory portrait. Idealistic visions of equity and cultural integration are constantly bantered about; however, they are rarely implemented and materialized. All men are indeed created equal, but not all men are treated equally. For years, educators and society as a whole have performed a great disservice to minorities in the public school sector. If each student is of equal value, worth, and merit, then each student should have equal access and exposure to culturally reflective learning opportunities. In the past, minorities have had a muted voice because of the attitude of the majority. Maxine Greene summarizes a scene from E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, after which she poses questions that many minorities have no doubt asked silently or loud. “Why is he unseen? Why were there no Negroes, no immigrants? More than likely because of the condition of the minds of those in power, minds that bestowed upon many others the same invisibility that Ellison’s narrator encounters” (Greene,1995, p. 159). Multicultural education is needed because it seeks to eradicate “invisibility” and give voice, power, and validation to the contributions and achievements of people with varied hues, backgrounds, and experiences.