Slavery By Another Name: Prejudice Against Racism

AnothThroughout history, discrimination can be seen as a never-ending cycle; modern day racism traveled down the generations of the inequality that blacks experienced in the past. The definition of racism consists of “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

This term can be specifically observed when blacks were forced into slavery and even after the Emancipation Proclamation where slavery was supposedly abolished, whites illegally used the convict leasing and the peonage system to remain in power. For example, in the film Slavery by Another Name, convict leasing is described as “brutal in a social sense” since this lease allowed whites to simply pay for a worker for a

One’s skin color doesn’t define them as criminals, but since blacks looked distinctly different than whites, it was easier for whites to forge the idea that they were superior. This allowed the society to falsify that a black’s life could be wasted in order to expand their industrious and plantations while attaining money. If blacks weren’t considered criminals than whites would underhandedly keep them in debt so that they could remain in authority without blacks conceiving ideas about freedom and individuality. Whites, specifically the government and industries, favored the convict leasing and peonage system because of the conveyance of gaining a cheap labor force who could be pushed to the limits without the prospect of being viewed as evil or bad since slavery was the cultural norm. Furthermore, the author of the film describes how “it was a crime in the South for a farm worker to walk beside a railroad. It was a crime in the South to speak loudly in the company of white women. It was a crime to sell the products of your farm after dark” (Blackmon). Blacks had a continual target on their back and everyone move was made with an utmost caution. Even with being