America has been working for a long period of racism behind us. Enter presidential candidate Barack Obama. Sure, we still have a long way to go. Why do we still struggle with racism? The laws last year, so why delay progress? Why do most churches are still divided like that? Why are famous (and not so famous) people remain insensitive language? Why are children of color graduate at lower rates than their European American counterparts?
Why we do not alwaysactually reached the "melting pot?" U.S. President John Quincy Adams wrote at the end of the American Revolution, "[immigrants] has slammed the European skin, to include it again. You must look forward, not back to their offspring to their ancestors, they must be sure that what may be their own feelings, which their children are clinging to the prejudices in this country. "
Melting involved intermarriage and production of "American" children. So meltingPot for the Europeans, and was never intended to Indians, Mexicans, Africans, or to be incorporated. Later, when America started to wonder to assimilate people of color and melting, many rejected the invitation, choosing instead to nourish a sense of pride in one's heritage.
Imagine in your head, the doctor, the blood bank and invented the method of manufacture and storage of plasma. He was the first director of the Red Cross Blood Bank during the Second World War, saving thousands of soldiers lives. "Heentered this position in 1942 on the issue of segregation. Not separation of soldiers or of the health workers, but separation of blood.
The U.S. War Department in 1942 directed that "White" blood should be kept out of the "black" blood. It had to be labeled in this way, of course, because all the blood looks red to the human eye. But consider "white" blood as "black" blood, said Dr. Charles Drew, who was African American, took up his post of Professor for themselvesSurgery at Howard University.
If you me to be the inventor of the white blood bank, you were not alone. Why is this so? And how are we to the point in America where we parted, blood on the skin color of the donor? It was no accident but the logical consequence of a deliberate effort – an effort that thorough testing is needed if we are to understand why America is still struggling with racism in the 21 Century.
Ralph Ellison said,"There are few things in this world as dangerous as sleepwalkers." When talking about racism and diversity advocate for diversity without trying to understand closely to combat racism, we will further delay the achievement of our goal, how we miss the mark with our ideas for solutions. To work for justice, we need about what Alden Vaughan calls the "Roots of American white racism" and how, as stated by Joseph Barndt, they are systemic in nature.
Many diversity advocates movingthe struggle against racial prejudice to the next case, and find that it is a task without end. But the search for the source of the racial prejudices, and deep into the systemic nature of American racism, a more comprehensive solution. This article provides a brief overview of the historical racism in the American systems and institutions. It is hardly a piece of American history.
For the purposes of this Article, American Racismdefined as the institutionalization of the entire system of America, the lie that the white race better than anyone else.
Significantly, America has not the concept of hierarchies or even oppression. Probably the first was that the hierarchy of the sexes. Other advantages include the American hierarchy of oppression of the caste system in India, which embodies the rise of light over darkness in religion. Moses was criticized by Aaron, but defended by God in the numbers 12for marrying a Cushite (African) woman. Hippocrates divided the world between Greeks and barbarians, the barbarians of the less desirable group. Shakespeare wrote Othello in 1604, a testimony to the entrenched oppression against dark skin against racism in America. The Great Chain of Being is a classist orders of all, the Greeks, and later Alexander Pope.
During slavery plays a central role in any discussion of American racism, slavery was also aworldwide phenomenon. At the time, Portugal led the African Atlantic slave trade during the period between 1400 and the Spanish, Dutch and British all took a turn for the control, slavery was a well-known institution in the world. When Christopher Columbus on his first trip to the Western Hemisphere for the first time the "Indians saw," his immediate thought was to catch them and bring them to Spain as slaves, and that's what he did.
Egyptian, Hebrew, Roman, Greek, Chinese, and many AfricanCultures accept slavery at various points in history. In these cultures, slaves were usually prisoners of war, criminals, or the result of the sale to pay himself a debt. Marry are dominated in most cultures, slave, slave, at least their name, many were able to hold property, vote, teach them to keep their religion and culture, and many have their freedom. There were often enslaved to strict religious guidelines regulating the humane treatment of people.
Now for America. Britishand other European immigrants saw the "new" world as a country that could prove highly profitable expansion. However, they were two obstacles: 1) Those who already lived in the country, they wanted to develop and 2) there were not enough people in Europe willing to work the land. European servants worked only for a period of years and then they were released. If they are prematurely escaped, they could easily blend into society and are difficult to capture.
The first coloniststhought they could solve both their problems with a solution: working to enslave the indigenous inhabitants, around the country. However, these efforts proved unsuccessful, because the ones that we see today as the Indians quickly died in large numbers in captivity. It was in the British colony of Virginia in 1619, the first African officials who arrived in America. By 1700, colonies, where slavery was legal, slavery was synonymous with African heritage. The British colonists had developed a brandSlavery that the world had never known before, slavery to skin color or race. "The latent belief in European superiority and internal prejudices against dark-skinned people began to be institutionalized.
Note two things in the following excerpt from the Virginia slave code of 1705 are: that is the justification for the enslavement of dark-skinned people is that they are not Christians, and that an abusive master receives full immunity in advance for the killing of every slave who exercises his ortheir (inalienable) right to freedom.
"All officials and introduced in the country … who were not Christians in their homeland … is to be accounted for, and slaves. All Negroes, mulattoes and Indian slaves within this dominion … shall, at it were real estate. If a slave resist his master … correcting such slave, and will be just killed in such correction … the master shall be free from all punishment … as if such accident never happened. "
1705, Virginia slaveCodes
Not only the colonial period and later pre-war mansions slavery in America was unique in its combination codified in skin color, but it was also one of the most extreme slave systems in the world had ever seen. Borrowing a page from the burgeoning Latin American slavery, black slaves for life and their descendants were also served lifelong slaves. Enslaved people in America regularly branding, straps and chains suffered as methods of discipline.
But perhaps the most important and lastingDamage was the loss of languages, names, religion and families. The family structure of enslaved Africans in America works at the mercy of slaveholders, which are often sold out man, woman and child on various plantations. European American ordinary landowners raped women enslaved on their plantations by applying to the destruction of the Black family systems.
Indeed, many civilizations reputation for brutality. In fact, some might observe that the American brutalitybore a striking resemblance to the British brutality that would not be surprising, since 90% of the settlers at the end of the 17th Century were of British descent. But as a nation that still recently risked everything to cross an ocean to escape oppression could quickly turn into oppressors of others? And, like religion, which they tried to practice freely as fast as a means to suppress with them? As someone as prominent as the governor of South Carolina say, to feel entitledthe following points before the Senate of the United States?
"We do not believe that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, the other and inferior race. The state in which we have provided, which is one level. They are from the state, first created in God they increased by it can made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the earth to be compared with the slaves in the South. They are happy, satisfied, unaspiring and totally incapable ofintellectual weakness, ever to us no trouble with their expectations. "- Henry Hammond, South Carolina Governor 1807-1864
Americans created and evolved over our American system of religion, education, business, police, health, media and others. The institutions are the organizations, companies create to implement their systems. For example, each school is an institution in our country for the implementation of our educational system. One of the important things to know,about institutions is that they take time to change practices to preserve, even after measures and laws. When we realize that almost all American institutions have been developed in a climate of pervasive racism, we can begin to see exactly why institutional racism still looms so large.
The original problem of ambitious colonists was that a large number of people who do not usually agree with the plan and to civilize, "" this country, and they were willing toto fight to keep their traditional way of life. But still-young American system met the challenge and helped to an almost complete genocide of the Indians to implement.
Ninety percent of North American Indians were killed by violence and disease between 1492 and 1900. The U.S. military not only for the typical warfare techniques, but also poisoned with smallpox blankets as soon as they learned the Indian resistance against the killer disease was extremely low.
L.Frank Baum, author, The Wizard of Oz and the editor of The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer in 1891, printed this justification of actions of the military: "… The only certainty is dependent upon the total extermination of the Indians. After centuries we had better injustice in order to protect our civilization, follow by a wrong and wipe these untamed and wild creatures from the face of the earth. "
This is just one example of how the media played on the fears generated when Indiansfighting for their lives and preserve their way of life. In combination with the religious messages from the early American pulpits, systemic, was the seamless message.
Not only did American colonists a racist system to develop in order to secure the land and resolving the dilemma of work, but they fanned the flames of racism in order to maintain and develop their positions of power. It can be said that all the important system lent their support in the U.S., a typical AmericanRacism.
Racism could not survive, let alone flourished, as in America, if the system of the Christian religion had not given his blessing. John Louis O'Sullivan said in 1845, the European-American western expansion, divinely ordained, coining the term "Manifest Destiny". This religious teaching was God's blessing for the genocide of the Indians, African slavery and American expansion in the Caribbean and the Pacific. But the idea already existed much earlier.
The firstGovernor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 wrote: "By special dispensation of the Lord … It's not about two or three adults and about as many children, all died last year, it is very rare that anyone tired of hearing Agues or other diseases. "But he said in passing, such as" for the locals, they are all dead in the vicinity of smallpox, eliminated as the Lord has title to what we have. "
An obscure verses in the Bible played a major role in the acceptance of thisTeaching. British explorer George Best in 1578 and Reverend Thomas Cooper in 1615 damaged Noah curse his grandson Canaan in Genesis 9:25-27 to justify slavery. The verses read as follows: "Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves, he is to his brothers." He [Noah] also said, "blessed by God be Shem, and Canaan shall be his slave. God enlarge Japheth, and let him into the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his slave."
Cooper said that this "Curse of Ham" is meant, because theDescendants of Ham were the Africans, so they were destined to be slaves. Many used to justify many European American ministers this ancient religious curse of American peccancy.
But the curse was directed not at Ham, but one of his sons, Canaan. Ham had four sons, Cush, Mizrain, Put and Canaan. Cush is the ancient name for Ethiopia in Africa. Canaan is the area we now call Israel, although Abraham is said to have wiped out all of the original Canaanites in aBattle of the time of Moses. So even though Noah had the ability to bring certain people to always condemn slavery, it is clear that there is Canaan, whose descendants were destroyed (all) the only son of Ham in Noah's curse mentioned.
The American system is also used religious elements of the separation and forced acculturation in the implementation of racism. European Americans worked diligently to European standards of worship and theology of all nations to mediate in America, but the drivepreserve the cultural aspects of worship proved too strong. The most enthusiastic example of the diversity in American institutions today is the religion, the separation of church and state.
Although religious authorization was a priority to racism in America, slavery and genocide, prosper was disturbing that the American conscience. Early Americans faced with a fundamental divide: they form a new country based on the ideals of freedom and justice, and yet they wereStructure of this country to suppress injustice Africans, Indians and other non-whites. How could they justify slavery, while fighting for freedom? The solution was found it to produce fraudulent science that characterizes the oppressed groups as follows less than human. Recently, the American scientist George Morton was found that his experiments, which showed the African brain size have been faked to be smaller than the European.
"Enlightenment", where the classification of species. This scientificOrder of human groups to which the European heritage is positioned at the head lent credibility is crucial, racist ideology. Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish anthropologist, said the system of nature in 1735. Building on its classifications, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1776 developed the classifications Negroid remind many of us, from primary school, including the "Caucasian", "Mongolia" and "." What does not remind us, the racist characterizations of each group given. The European scientists whoprepared to bring this order shamelessly their own group at the top of the order of: Caucasians were considered intellectual, adventurous, characterized and civilized while other groups were assigned to various shortcomings and negative qualities.
Historically, the term "race" was used synonymously with nationality, but now it has on a scientific flavor. The term "white race" was seen as a scientific fact that most Americans still accept today. Europeans and European Americans weresent the language to use in order to disguise the truth of what is being done to. Ironically, the "Enlightenment" was a time when scientists used false science, in order to formalize a racist ideology, the Americans, the economic exploitation of the "defend lesser" races.
Even while racism was the accepted norm, those who attempt to examine race was stopped sink into confusion. Originally, the Irish were not considered white, but became so after a few generations, as they are increasingly becomingPart of the American fabric. Race was such that the intangible U.S. Supreme Court reversed many times in the early 1900s, the attempt to ascertain whether groups like the Indians and Syrians were white rule.
Today, the Human Genome Project has shown that all people are equal to 99.99% genetically, show that the systems are used to promote not only racism but also to control them. In fact, reject the vast majority of anthropologists today, now the scientific realities of race,called it a social construct with little relevance to the science. The American Anthropological Association, in his statement on race, not a leaf moves:
"Invented the" race "ideology, in order to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power and wealth. The tragedy was in the United States that the policies and practices based on this worldview succeeded all too including the construction of unequal populations among Europeans,Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. "
The system of the U.S. federal government was one of the most powerful systems for the performance of American racism. Nevertheless, most Americans are of the 21 Century, the blatant racism of our first President not aware of.
Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and all racist beliefs publicly aired. But the federal government has a lot more than just talk. Congressional restrictions on immigration as the ChineseExclusion Act, United States, 1882 and 1906 Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan were explicitly racist. The Dawes Act of 1887 Anglicized Indian name and led to large losses of Indian lands. During the Second World Congress of the Japanese Americans acted born in the U.S. is based on fear, they were a threat to American security Intern.
The system implements the U.S. courts supported the racism of the federal government. Ruled in People v. Hall, 1854, a California court that the ChinesePeople were not allowed to testify against whites, the shielding of whites prosecution of crimes against the Chinese. The decision of the Supreme Court said the Dred Scott in 1857, that a person who is not enslaved is a citizen, but property, and therefore no action may be brought to justice. In Botiller v. Dominguez decision of 1889, European Americans, were the Mexican land acquired free from all guilt. The infamous "separate but equal" lie has its definition and the blessing of the Supreme Courtin Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. Plessy was also the decision that the listed one-drop rule: if a person has one drop of blood in Africa, he / she is than in Africa. This rule was positive for slave owners, the procreation of children by their slaves could produce a continuous supply of new slaves.
The American economic and labor system was based on racism in America. Southern plantations experienced the great demand for labor, which spurred the impetusfor slavery. Immigrants from Asia and almost nothing worked building the transcontinental railroad and the factories and farms. Due to the low cost, these companies prospered, so owners wealthy enough to afford large political donations to politicians who support the status quo. Generations of workers suffered terrible conditions of the building of the American infrastructure, while the European American fortunes has been bigger and bigger.
The AmericanEducation system has been in the transmission and anchorage of racism is of central importance. The tendency to white or European history and culture is so pervasive that many Americans of European background, now do not see themselves as a culture – it's just the way things are done. American heroes were almost exclusively those of European heritage, which explains why the Americans I would imagine, invent a white man in the reading of a renowned surgeon, the blood bank. Still unclearThe question is how could Columbus "discovered" America, when there were still millions of people already living there. Recent changes to the textbooks that reflect a more accurate portrayal of American history and a diverse group of American heroes have met with considerable protest from conservative groups in the European Americans.
As enslaved youth, listened to the brilliant abolitionist Frederick Douglass to tell his master that if a slave learns to read the Bible, it isalways inappropriate, he was a slave. "Douglass was learning intention, because he realized that prevented slaves from slave-learning to hold false stereotypes of white supremacy in place, many slaves brainwashed into the belief in their inferiority. To advocate for diversity must be the insidious case of internalized to oppression, one of the most dangerous and enduring legacy of racism in America fully understood.
American Indian children were given athorough Anglicisation at American boarding schools. As the Mexicans in America, they were punished for speaking their native language, and were given European names, religion and belief. When blacks were allowed to attend school after the end of slavery, schools were separated and banned the two blacks and Mexican-Americans were among the oldest equipment and materials used.
While the schools in the transmission of the message to American children, racism, the AmericanMedia mediated a similar message to her parents. It might be surprising to learn that many if not most American white race riots were initiated and fueled media. About 1,000 people are estimated to be in New York City Draft Riots of 1863 are dead (shown in the film The Gangs of New York).
White race riots came to Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Cincinnati, Toledo, New Albany, St. Louis, Detroit, Napa Valley, and Fresno, among others, in cities. Tulsa whites killed 75People and destroyed a thriving black business district in in 1921 race riot there. The 1943 in Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots lasted for seven days because every day the local newspaper printed information about where white men were Mexican American youth who were their targets to be found. Most Americans have never heard of these outrages. The 20th Century American media when it has to race riots, the explosion of pent-up frustration with the institutional racism focusesin cities like Detroit and Watts in the 1960s.
The American media historically has been and still run largely by white editors and reporters, the White interview experts, making them of one-sided portrayals of people of color. The groups that are portrayed as violent by the American media actually committed the least of violence in America. The importance of the power of the media can not redefine reality to be overestimated.
BecauseLaw enforcement leads to power, freedom, remove spontaneously, it has been a key system in the implementation of American racism. The first American law enforcement agencies was formed to protect landowners or whites. The end of slavery saw the rise of Jim Crow and the "Black Codes", a series of laws, the homeless ex-slaves were punished for vagrancy by returning to the plantation to work them out very recently. Law enforcement agencies carried out these arreststhroughout the south.
Racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan was a continuous supply of the members and the leadership from the ranks of law enforcement. Under the guise of infiltration, the FBI converted faltering southern clan. Members of law enforcement in many of the 4700 documented lynchings from 1882 to 1964 participated. A collection of racist police officers as "Good O 'Boys Roundup", founded by an ATF agent, who survived until 1995 in Tennessee.
UntilRodney King incident in Los Angeles in 1992, perhaps the best known event of the official suppression of Birmingham police chief Bull Connor turning the leadership of police dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s. In 1973, Dallas shot and killed a policeman and killed 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs while questioning him about a burglary.
Racist incidents involving law enforcement authorities have continued to occur up to the presentDay. A New York policeman abusing Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997. The centuries-old tradition of racial profiling is now receiving national attention after the subject of a suit in New Jersey. Almost half of the American state legislators have passed or the consideration of racial profiling legislation.
Other systems that helped to translate are full of racism in American society, housing companies, zoning and insurance systems, the blacks and redlinedHispanics less desirable parts of town, a political system that encouraged and openly racist candidate elected who are victims of racism to blame for their position in society, a health system that rejected people of color practicing segregation, and even today his studies usually leads European-Americans, and a system of art and literature, and reflected increased a racist American society. Although there were exceptions in each system, for example, some employerspaid a living wage for their employees were American and their institutions, the tool used to implement racism throughout the country.
All these different systems came together to implement and maintain the American culture. The result? Picture of "All American Girl." Do you think someone who looks more like Anna Kournikova and Serena Williams? Although America is one of the richest countries in the world, our systems of racism have conspired to give us a picturethat a person of European heritage, though the term "American" is used.
Another cultural aspect is the language of black and white. Why did the American colonists who begin to know themselves in the 16th Century? Obviously, no European American 's skin is actually white. A quick check of the dictionary entries for "know" many positive meanings: innocence, purity, cleanliness. "Black", on the other denotations of evil, death and leadsDisaster.
Also the colors black and white are polar opposites. Is there a better way to enshrine the idea of European superiority and African inferiority, as the ideology is woven into the American language, with words, people already understood and used? During the 1960s, "Black is beautiful" movement and James Brown with his song "It Loud, I'm black and I'm proud to say that" contributed to the understanding of America's shifting of the word "black", the older underlying meanings survivetoday.
The systemic institutionalization of racism in America, a powerful force that the life and mind of every American. And at the same time, there were many, many courageous people in America who is fighting the poison. Violent racism was brilliant with violent opposition from political leaders, including Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Geronimo met Nat Turner and John Brown. Organizational resistance was even more successful. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, William LloydGarrison and groups like the NAACP, LULAC, VPB, SCLC, AIM and unions substantial change in American culture. If the country is strong leadership is needed, got people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to the challenge.
The NAACP's case, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 was a watershed in the history of our country, because they last the "separate but equal" doctrine reveals not only unethical but unconstitutional. Scientific andsociological writings, including Man's Most Dangerous Myth, The mistake Race (Ashley Montagu, 1942), The Kerner Commission Report of 1968 and The Mismeasure of Man (Steven Jay Gould, 1981) also brought to light what was happening in America. We are indebted to these often-forgotten heroes of progress towards America, has made the elimination of racism.
And there's so much more to be done. Many of the profit desegregation in public places, voting rights, anti-discriminationLaws are now taken for granted to the younger generations. And yet the system is very American racism – the economic system – today is fueled significant inequities between European Americans and Americans of color. In 1968, the income of black families was typical that 60 percent of European Americans. Beginning in 1997 the percentage had increased one percent to 61%. The difference is in the Latin American and other American Indian communities. And the economicVulnerabilities affecting so many important aspects of American life such as education, housing, employment, mental and physical health, and so on.
This article has touched only briefly on the way, are implemented in each U.S. system of institutions with a Pervasive racism in our country, and, as planned, leading Americans of European heritage and implement that strategy.
Although such information can provoke anger, there is superior to another disturbing question: What would Ibe willing to change our history? Perhaps the wealth of our country and the high living standards we enjoy today not be ours, if the people who built it were paid a living wage.
While this article goes back to racism at European American leadership in the formation of our country, the message will not be that Americans are bad people of European heritage, but that racism is deep in history, systems and institutions of the United States. TheMany efforts to combat racism and do not change the law in its entirety the racist practices of these institutions eliminated. Realizing this truth, then we might begin to despair that things will never change.
However, current efforts in Iraq could be removed, all traces of Saddam Hussein's concept insight into how distant we were the elimination of racism in the U.S. system. Public Images of his regime. An international commission, including UNICEF is working in IraqComb through teaching on the lookout for a "bathist" elements and replacing them with more balanced information. They are also retraining all teachers who are trained for the widespread bathist ideology.
These are the kind of effort by U.S. institutions require (but never seen) in order to rid our country of racism albatross that we still bear around our collective neck. Until we undertake this major cleansing, we will continue to suffer with the peopleracist heritage of our American ancestors to us. It is a costly affair, but seek cost-effective, and the participation of all the diversity of America's call for talks.
American National University 
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