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Inequality in the united states
Frederick douglass the narrative of the life of frederick douglass
Frederick Douglass journey as a slave
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In every culture, there are the strong and there are the weak, the oppressor and the oppressed. Sometimes they are of the same race and sometimes not, but they all rely on a difference in power. Socrates, Frederick Douglass, and W.E.B. Du Bois each experience this power differential through the course of their lives. Socrates experiences this through his experience with the jury of Athens and his trial; Douglass through his life as a slave and his eventual escape. Du Bois experiences it through being a black man in the time of Reconstruction and being well off in comparison to other African-Americans at the time. Each man’s unique perspective on equality can illuminate why authority is so instrumental in the development of equality. Certain …show more content…
groups or individuals have the power of authority often because the larger populace has chosen them. Because of this, the authoritative figures rely on the general population as their source of power. We see this in the democratic societies such as the one Socrates lived in. The council that tried Socrates has the power to do so because the people elected them to those positions. Thus, they must uphold the law as best they can. Socrates tells the jury that it is “not the purpose of a juryman’s office to give justice as a favor to whoever seems good to him, but to judge according to law” (Apology 35c). The juryman must put aside his personal judgment, and instead focus on judging according to the law. Among men, each has his own moral compass which in turn creates differing opinions on judgment of character and actions. In order to create a level field of judgment, men must judge according to the common law. This leads to a set of guidelines that each person must adhere to regardless of their personal beliefs. Those guidelines help enforce impartial judgement where the charged person isn’t being judged in the eyes of each juror’s personal beliefs, but rather they are being held to the standards of the community. Creating While people have the power to implement change, widespread change often doesn’t occur until a powerful group also adopts said changes and then coerces others into also adopting these changes.
One of the most easily recognized in this position is government. People will usually take up a change only once a) someone forces them to--ie the government passes laws that make old ways illegal--or b) they want to feel like they are part of a group and so will change in order to fit in. In terms of racial equality, both of these aspects are true. The majority of Northerners didn’t take up the rally for freedom of slaves until it was apparent that was what the North stood for. All who were in favor of slavery pretty much lived in the South. These two distinct areas stood for the two very different ideals. Once the North won the Civil War, Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves. This was an example of people being forced to adopt change, while the North was an example of people choosing to adopt change. Douglass says, “To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit” (Douglass 122). To do what you believe in and stand up for those beliefs, even if it seems to go against all normalcy, is where true power comes through. To stand with the oppressed or the weak or the minority when everyone else is screaming that it’s wrong, that is where true power comes into …show more content…
play. Whichever side can gain more power will achieve their goals. In 19th century America, white men had power and blacks did not. The majority of those white men believed it was perfectly humane to force the blacks to do their work. When a small section of whites decided to stand with the slaves, the oppressed and weak, it caused a whole system of oppression to be overturned. When those with more power stand with and for those who have less power, equality is achieved and progress is made. Authoritative powers hold the power to provide a base so that all members of its population may have an equal chance at life.
In terms of racial equality in America, the government was instrumental in giving the freed slaves a boost and putting them on equal footing as the whites and creating a country of equality. But as we can see from history, they didn’t do such a good job at that. Du Bois states, “ the Negro farmer started behind,--started in debt” (91). When you start behind, in a world run by men who see you as inferior and for years ranked you with cattle and pigs, it’s hard to ever get ahead. The white men, especially those of the South, were determined to carry out slavery through cloaked measures such as controlling the freed slaves wages, feeding on their lack of knowledge of saving and spending and their lack of knowledge in general. Du Bois claims this was “the crime of a happy-go-lucky nation which goes blundering along with its Reconstruction tragedies, its Spanish War interludes and Philippine matinees” (91). The US has a history of helping other countries “solve” their problems while ignoring what’s going on at home. The figure of authority, in this case the government, started efforts to make the black man equal to the white man, but before any real change could be made, they jumped right into another problem without finishing the previous one. Whoever holds the authority and power must be able to see things through and ensure that their plans are carried
out and finished, otherwise no progress will actually be made. Socrates’, Douglass’, and Du Bois’ unique perspectives on and experiences with equality illuminate why authority is so instrumental in the development of equality.
Slavery is the idea and practice that one person is inferior to another. What made the institution of slavery in America significantly different from previous institutions was that “slavery developed as an institution based upon race.” Slavery based upon race is what made slavery an issue within the United States, in fact, it was a race issue. In addition, “to know whether certain men possessed natural rights one had only to inquire whether they were human beings.” Slaves were not even viewed as human beings; instead, they were dehumanized and were viewed as property or animals. During this era of slavery in the New World, many African slaves would prefer to die than live a life of forced servitude to the white man. Moreover, the problem of slavery was that an African born in the United States never knew what freedom was. According to Winthrop D. Jordan, “the concept of Negro slavery there was neither borrowed from foreigners, nor extracted from books, nor invented out of whole cloth, nor extrapolated from servitude, nor generated by English reaction to Negroes as such, nor necessitated by the exigencies of the New World. Not any one of these made the Negro a slave, but all.” American colonists fought a long and bloody war for independence that both white men and black men fought together, but it only seemed to serve the white man’s independence to continue their complete dominance over the African slave. The white man must carry a heavy
...rough popular sovereignty and majority rule. With Andrew Jackson he had come from a humble beginning and could understand the minority and gain their support just as much as the majority on an economical level and what he could do for both classes. Even through out time this gaining a support from a common majority and or minority to voice that group’s opinion has lived on through out Americas time in such cases woman’s rights, Fredrick Douglass and his the fight against slavery, Martin Luther King and the fight against racism, and now our celebrities are speaking and idolized for and by the people in which they use to be such as Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar. Those seeking power connect the best way possible with those who give them just that and those seeking a voice give those with more and common understanding a chance to speak for them in hopes to be heard.
Comparing W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. W. E. B. -. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had very different views about their culture and country. Du Bois, born in the North and studying in Europe, was fascinated with the idea of Socialism and Communism. Booker T. Washington, on the other hand, was born in the South, and like so many others, had a Black mother and a White father.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, racial injustice was very prominent and even wildly accepted in the South. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois were two of the most renowned “pioneers in the [search] for African-American equality in America” (Washington, DuBois, and the Black Future). Washington was “born a slave” who highly believed in the concept of “separate but equal,” meaning that “we can be as [distant] as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress” (Washington 1042). DuBois was a victim of many “racial problems before his years as a student” and disagreed with Washington’s point of view, which led
Black Power, the seemingly omnipresent term that is ever-so-often referenced when one deals with the topic of Black equality in the U.S. While progress, or at least the illusion of progress, has occurred over the past century, many of the issues that continue to plague the Black (as well as other minority) communities have yet to be truly addressed. The dark cloud of rampant individual racism may have passed from a general perspective, but many sociologists, including Stokely Carmichael; the author of “Black Power: the Politics of Liberation in America”, have and continue to argue that the oppressive hand of “institutional racism” still holds down the Black community from making any true progress.
From slavery being legal, to its abolishment and the Civil Rights Movement, to where we are now in today’s integrated society, it would seem only obvious that this country has made big steps in the adoption of African Americans into American society. However, writers W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin who have lived and documented in between this timeline of events bringing different perspectives to the surface. Du Bois first introduced an idea that Baldwin would later expand, but both authors’ works provide insight to the underlying problem: even though the law has made African Americans equal, the people still have not.
“Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X’s “Learning to Read” address their abilities of being self taught to read and write. A deficiency of education makes it difficult to traverse life in any case your race. Being an African American while in a dark period of mistreatment and making progress toward an advanced education demonstrates extraordinary devotion. Malcolm X seized “special pains” in searching to inform himself on “black history” (Malcolm X 3). African Americans have been persecuted all through history, yet two men endeavor to demonstrate that regardless of your past, an education can be acquired by anybody. Douglass and Malcolm X share some similarities on how they learned how to read and write as well
Although many laws were passed that recognized African Americans as equals, the liberties they had been promised were not being upheld. Hoffman, Blum, and Gjerde state that “Union League members in a North Carolina county, upon learning of three or four black men who ‘didn’t mean to vote,’ threatened to ‘whip them’ and ‘made them go.’ In another country, ‘some few colored men who declined voting’ were, in the words of a white conservative, ‘bitterly persecute[ed]” (22). Black codes were also made to control African Americans. Norton et al. states that “the new black codes compelled former slaves to carry passes, observe a curfew, live in housing provided by a landowner, and give up hope of entering many desirable occupations” (476). The discrimination and violence towards African Americans during this era and the laws passed that were not being enforced were very disgraceful. However, Reconstruction was a huge stepping stone for the way our nation is shaped today. It wasn’t pretty but it was the step our nation needed to take. We now live in a country where no matter the race, everyone is considered equal. Reconstruction was a success. Without it, who knows where our nation would be today. African American may have never gained the freedoms they have today without the
“There must be the position of superior and inferior” was a statement by Lincoln which formed the basis of discrimination towards black Americans as it highlighted the attitudes of white Americans. Although civil rights for black people eventually improved through the years both socially and politically, it was difficult to change the white American view that black people are inferior to white people as the view was always enforce by the favour of having “the superior position assigned to the white race”.
In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.
As the United States developed and grew, upward mobility was central to the American dream. It was the unstated promise that no matter where you started, you had the chance to grow and proceed beyond your initial starting point. In the years following the Civil War, the promise began to fade. People of all races strived to gain the representation, acknowledgement and place in this society. To their great devastation, this hope quickly dwindled. Social rules were set out by the white folk, and nobody could rise above their social standing unless they were seen fit to be part of the white race. The social group to be impacted the most by this “social rule” was the African Americans. Black folk and those who were sympathetic to the idea of equal rights to blacks were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Burton, 1998) The turning point in North Carolina politics was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. It was a very bold and outrageous statement from the white supremacists to the black folk. The Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the local government and destroyed the neighborhood by driving out the African Americans and turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city. (Class Discussion 10/3/13) This event developed the idea that even though an African American could climb a ladder to becoming somebody in his or her city, he or she will never become completely autonomous in this nation. Charles W. Chesnutt discusses the issue of social mobility in his novel The Marrow of Tradition. Olivia Carteret, the wife of a white supremacist is also a half-sister to a Creole woman, Janet Miller. As the plot develops, we are able to see how the social standing of each woman impacts her everyday life, and how each woman is ...
The structure of a society is based on the concept of superiority and power which both “allocates resources and creates boundaries” between factors such as class, race, and gender (Mendes, Lecture, 09/28/11). This social structure can be seen in Andrea Smith’s framework of the “Three Pillars of White Supremacy.” The first pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery and capitalism. In a capitalist system of slavery, “one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of one’s work are taken by someone else” (Smith 67). From this idea of viewing slavery as a means of capitalism, Blacks were subjected to the bottom of a racial hierarchy and were treated nothing more than a property and commodity that is used for someone else’s benefit. The second pillar involves the logic of genocide and colonialism. With genocide, “Non-Native peoples th...
THE WAYS OF MEETING OPPRESSION IS AN ESSAY WRITTEN BY MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., ADDRESSING SEGREGATION THAT IS SPECIFICALLY DIRECTED TOWARD THE AFRICAN AMERICAN AUDIENCE. King’s primary audience is the African Americans, but also he has secondary audiences that he addresses, which are a combination of Christians or those who know of, or believe in the Christian views, as well as people in the legal system. He gives examples through his text that will demonstrate how he addresses mostly the African Americans, but also the various other audiences he is trying to reach to through his memorable speech. In his writing, he tells of three ways that they deal with oppression, and based on these he sends out a message to all who have read or heard his words. This message states what has been done in the past, as well as what should be done based on these past experiences. King chooses to speak to certain people through certain contexts and key phrases. In choosing certain phrases and also on how he states his words, he is successful in influencing all his audiences that he intended to persuade. The words that he carefully chose will tell how and why he wanted to focus on the primary and secondary audiences of his choice.
Freedom was knowledge, education and family, but “The root of oppression decided as a “tangle of pathology” created by the absence of male authority among Black people” (Davis, 15). Therefore, they enjoyed “as much autonomy as they could seize, slave men and women manifested irrepressible talent in humanizing an environment designed to convert them into a herd of subhuman labor units” (Davis). Instead of being the head of the “household”, he and the women treated each other as an equal. This thought would soon become a historical turning point that initiated the fight for gender
“In sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check”(King 4) They tried to reason with us to make their own lives more livable. “This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”(King 4) They came with this to grant the equality of all men so they could live their own lives in peace without the abuse of the people. “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “Insufficient funds.”(King 4) This peace maker was delivered and was put into place but refused to mark the black men of this treaty paid for and still refused to accept them. We won't accept them into our economics yet not even