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The effects of cultural assimilation
The effects of racism
The effect of racism
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In Ronald Takaki’s book “A Different Mirror” it appeared that anytime race relations changed for the better can be traced back to a historical event. Whether it was war or economics the only time policy changed for the minority groups was because it benefitted the people in power or white society. Ta-Nehisi Coates has also stated that changes for minorities will only come when absolutely necessary for those who are in power. Why does it take war or a cataclysmic economic downturn before people see the appalling way minorities are treated? Is it the “It ain’t broke, so don’t fix it” mentality or do people in this day and age still believe that people of color are inferior to white people? In my experience, the people in my world actually …show more content…
We see more and more people in inter-racial relationships and more mixed race children as a product of those unions. We are also experiencing a decline in white births and an increase with Hispanic and Asian births, as well as, a rise in Hispanic and Asian immigration. Conversely, I looked up the ethnic origin percentages in the U.S. using the census.gov website and it still shows that white people are 77% of the entire U.S. population and, fun fact, Wisconsin is at 87% white people. Domenico Montanaro from NPR reported that in 2044, there will not be a majority racial group, which is only 28 years away. I’m excited to see what kind of changes will happen to America when there is no longer one racial group deciding …show more content…
The government may need to rethink which “God” are they going to refer to or will God become a generic term? Some ethnic groups have a more traditional home life, where the mother does not work out of the home. Will we see a downward trend of women in the work force? How will that effect the economy? Will companies feel the need to change their policies for working parents? Will they provide onsite day care, will companies offer more sick days, or offer more flexible schedules, or offer more opportunities to work from home? I also, imagine that the retail market will change dramatically to incorporate every ethnic group. It won’t be just be Christmas decorations going up in October. I imagine it will become even more important for every child to learn more than one language, as people from different countries emigrate to the U.S.
Teaching an inclusive American history to the next generation is going to be even more critical, as the country has to learn to adapt to the changing racial demographic. Ensuring that future generations learn to treat everyone as an individual and not as part of a group will help to make these upcoming changes more seamless. I’m sure it will be another historical event that will taught for generations to
Any notable person with medical expertise will testify that racial identities bear no scientific weight and one’s race is only as significant as the person--or culture the said person is submerged in--makes it out to be. When dissected sociologically, “race prejudice [is] an irrational manifestation of individual pathologies” (Racial Fault Lines, 17)... “[that] represent attempts by one group of people to secure for themselves a privileged position in the social structure at the expense of stigmatized and subordinated social groups,” (Racial Fault Lines, 18). And, while the privileged groups’ “superiority” and other groups’ “inferiority” is arbitrary and holds no ethical legitimacy, the damage caused to the “inferior” groups is undeniable and enormously detrimental. Tomás Almaguer, in his insightful book, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California, explores the various ways in which the Mexican, Native American, and Asian populations in the late nineteenth century
represented a turning point in black American history. It, presented an opportunity to improve race relations at home despite the fighting abroad. How could you be racist against people whom are fighting to stabilize your freedom and the freedom of others was the mentality in the minds of black soldiers.
Few things have impacted the United States throughout its history like the fight for racial equality. It has caused divisions between the American people, and many name it as the root of the Civil War. This issue also sparked the Civil Rights Movement, leading to advancements towards true equality among all Americans. When speaking of racial inequality and America’s struggle against it, people forget some of the key turning points in it’s history. Some of the more obvious ones are the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the North, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington D.C. in 1963. However, people fail to recount a prominent legal matter that paved the way for further strides towards equality.
The future of multiracial groups, I predict will become more accepting and considering. For instance, the census allowing people to choose more than one racial categories has become a start. With more and more groups entering the U.S and the increasing interracial marriages it is only predicted that multiracial groups will soon become a much larger statistics. In the 2000 census 2.4% of the population classified with two or more races and this number is predicted to increase. ( ) How long before multiracial groups of all kinds will be full accepted into society is left unknown, however in today society race regardless if you are half white, black, Hispanic or Asian still matters in society.
Alexis de Tocqueville discussed how he believed that majority rules in the United States. He writes about how the majority in America has control over the opinions of the masses and how people do not think for themselves. The latter part of that is true. The masses do not form many of their own opinions but these opinions are not given to them, like Tocqueville says, by the majority. These "ready made opinions" (Tocqueville 11) are given to American people by a powerful few. Tocquville's writing does not apply to the US today because several kinds of minorities wield inordinate amounts of power in modern American society.
Many people try to think “back to the good old days,” when really they were not that good for most people who had no rights. With the advancement in technology, we were forced to open our eyes to what is going on in the world around us and the disadvantaged people face throughout the world. As a society once we start to working on damage control to clean up the mess we got into we can finally have true change. The damage control will take time and effort from all people involved on either end of the situation. One major move I feel we can make is by giving honest history lessons that cover every part of our history in schools. I feel that American History and World History should be more emphasized on in our school systems and curriculum. If the students get the full education of our history and how we got to where we are, then moving on will become easier. We expect for children to lead us into a bigger and better future, but how can we expect that without the truth coming to light for our diverse culture. We cannot expect to make this country better without knowing their full history and the mistakes we have made in our past. Looking for another way to move forward, Essence asked Dr. Joy DeGruy on what we could do moving forward, her answer was, “…more research, support, and assistance are needed to produce vital healing…that exceeds the injury
We have a long history of racism in America that has been structured to favor White people. Structural racism can be defined as, “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies the dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time”(Structural Racism, 2004,p. 11). Overt racism became illegal during The Civil Rights Movement that took place between 1954-1968 (Tuck, 2015). Although society seemed to be heading toward a more socially acceptable society, the movement enabled white people to blame the struggles black face as a character flaw. White people will believe that black people have a lot of problems because their culture is bad or they have bad values. The message they are reinforcing is that being black is inferior, and this is an example of structural racism operates. Structural racism is a system of forces that keeps people of color in a permanent second-class status, and it is the foundation of racism in our society. Society is structured in a way where the hierarchy of white people oppresses Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, etc and has
Race is so much more than just a physical characteristic. It defines how people interact, see each other, and treat each other. It was Karl Marx that popularized the idea that there is a struggle between two social groups in which one prospers from the the exploitation of the other. This idea alone reveals much about our society and human nature: we are inherently competitive, even when it means we may have to do it at someone else’s expense. And we seem to be okay with this for we have done little to change it. However, when it is at the expense of an entire race, are we still able to so easily turn a blind eye? Race and the establishment of social hierarchy have a linkage that, although so engrained in our society to the point where it seems
Discrimination has always been there between blacks and whites. Since the 1800s where racial issues and differences started flourishing till today, we can still find people of different colors treated unequally. “[R]acial differences are more in the mind than in the genes. Thus we conclude superiority and inferiority associated with racial differences are often socially constructed to satisfy the socio-political agenda of the dominant group”(Heewon Chang,Timothy Dodd;2001;1).
The connection of race and race relations in the United States was an ongoing issue, and while much progress was made, there are still people who revert back to old and ignorant takes on different races as the white man. This clearly relates to my own history based on the fact that various races are still being discriminated and treated unfairly and looked at as unequal. I can only hope that one day the whole population of the world can do the right thing and look at everyone as equals.
With their new theory of racial formation within the United States, Omi and Winant encourage society to stray away from thinking of race on a purely biological or purely sociological scale and view it more on perpetually shifting spectrum that will forever change as society changes. Race and racism, while progressively getting better, is still prevalent in the United States today. With this new model of race relations, Omi and Winant present a progressive way of viewing the role of race within America that may lead to the elimination of oppression and the advancement of minority groups and Americans as a whole.
Oppression in America originally was just due to someone’s race or color but now it has
Because we are only human, our history is a crazy bumbling mess “filled with ironies and unintended consequences, paths not taken and opportunities missed” (Cottrol, 2013). Historically white people have oppressed people of color from the moment we first ran into them during European exploration. It was not until a few hundred years later that African Americans were able to have a common enemy in The Jim Crow Legislation of the American South. This is the first time we see large masses of people of color coming together to fight for their rights (Cottrol, 2013). A direct effect of this fight was Affirmative Action, legislation that allowed some equality in education and the work place. This scared white people because it made the job market more competitive. This in turn caused white Americans to claim that “their” jobs were being “stolen” simply because they were white (Fine, Weis, Powell Pruitt, Burns, 2012). There is a long history of anger and mistrust between white Americans and Americans of color, some justified and some
Diversity, we define this term today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America; in fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race. It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s during the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place yet, it is the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools. Integration in white schools played a major role in the battle for Civil Rights in the South, upon the coming of independence for all African American people in the United States after a series of tribulations and loss of hope.
For example, say that in a perfect society everyone was treated the same, no racial differences or inappropriate name calling being used. But then a black kid starts acting “ghetto” and all cool as if he is more superior than someone else. How do we respond to this? It is annoying, offensive, and can hurt different people. From here, we create different opinions on this one person who decided that no one is better than him/herself. Now this one expectation that we have towards this one person is pointed towards other people that have nothing to do with this situation. The act of one person can change the whole perspective of not just a family, but of a race too. To me, this is where all of this name calling and separation of race begins, because one situation in our past defined someone else 's legacy. So with these different stereotypes occurring in our community, we can see that different biases effect the way people see and treat other people, for instance, in a court of