A claim to the superiority of Anglo-civilization has been the acceptable excuse for massacres, racial cleansings, slavery, forced poverty, and imperialism in America for centuries. This claim has provided the sanguine red which floods the flag of the United States, knotted hundreds of nooses, and scratched the names of its victims from history books. It has fooled millions into an idea of whiteness. One that has resisted time by surviving on the bountiful pabulum of American foolishness. Nonetheless, this construct of whiteness, although ever-changing, at its core highlights the ideology of white supremacy based on the assumption that whites have exclusive access to civility and humanity. In this paper, I will follow this definition from the …show more content…
Furthermore, Jacoby exemplifies how whites painted their conquest of America as an attempt to civilize savages to support their superiority (133). In addition to the rhetoric of the uncivilized Indians, Native Americans use of rudimentary weaponry and refusal to domesticate, when viewed from the scope of whiteness, supports the ideology that whites were superior both on the battlefield and in lifestyle. Moreover, Jacoby argues that this definition of whiteness was defined by violence. For example, during this time the mutilated Native American bodies which littered American soil served as both a tourist attraction and a warning sign. Whites saw these bodies as an example of their superiority; however, it can be inferred by Native Americans actions of retribution, they perceived these bodies as less of a warning and more of a call to …show more content…
According to Hannah Rosen in her novel, Terror in the Heart of Freedom, this new definition erupted in the Antebellum era of America where, “whiteness, manhood, and domestic authority constituted what it meant to be a citizen in antebellum Arkansas, and exclusive citizenship as well as domestic authority constituted what it meant to be a white man.” (Rosen, 97) This definition elucidates Anglo-Saxons belief in their superiority considering their whiteness derived from an exclusive partnership between civilian and state that did not extend to those they deemed unworthy. During this time whiteness, or exclusive citizenship, is not extended to blacks considering blacks were not independent and existed as the “preindustrial fantasy” of white men. In addition, black men’s and white women’s dependency is created and supported by the legislation that gives political power to white men (93). For example, Rosen points out that by using the modifier free whites in the Arkansas constitution, whites living in Arkansas create and reinforce black’s and women’s dependency, while producing avenues such as exclusive citizenship. In response, blacks unified and attempted to gain political power. They employed educated black men to guide poor and illiterate former slaves on how to become politically active
In Myne Owne Ground, the authors argue that it was not inevitable that black men and women were made subordinate to white colonists in colonial Virginia because in the early days there was more about wealth, economic standing, and religion than the color of one’s skin. For example, when a white man, Richard Ackworth, ask John Johnson to give testimony in a suit which Ackworth had filed against another Whiteman (Myne Owne Ground, 16). They were unwilling to allow a black man to testify in legal proceedings involving whites at first, but when they learned that John had been baptized and understood the meaning of an oat, they accepted his statement.
Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
Reginald Horsman’s Race and Manifest Destiny: The Orgins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism explores the evidence and reasons of racial prejudices in America and discusses one of the most controversial topics in American history. The book also navigates the subjects of white superiority, and the creation of Anglo-Saxonism.
This story was set in the deep south were ownership of African Americans was no different than owning a mule. Demonstrates of how the Thirteenth Amendment was intended to free slaves and describes the abolitionist’s efforts. The freedom of African Americans was less a humanitarian act than an economic one. There was a battle between the North and South freed slaves from bondage but at a certain cost. While a few good men prophesied the African Americans were created equal by God’s hands, the movement to free African Americans gained momentum spirited by economic and technological innovations such as the export, import, railroad, finance, and the North’s desire for more caucasian immigrants to join America’s workforce to improve our evolving nation. The inspiration for world power that freed slaves and gave them initial victory of a vote with passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. A huge part of this story follows the evolution of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment more acts for civil rights.
In the informative article "The Great White Father Myth," the author Stan Steiner discusses the stereotypical view that the white man has created of himself as the hero, conqueror, and savior. He labels this view as "The Great White Father Myth," and begins by talking about the silent role the Indians have taken in the face of their Great White Father. Steiner supports his view of the white man's superiority as being nothing more than a myth, by discussing the crimes the white man committed against the Indians were silenced. The Indian Wars and the White man's desire to civilize the Indians were illustrations of the myth that whites were superior. Although the article contains a one-sided view of the events between the Europeans and the Indians, the fact that the white man is hypocritical in the view of himself as the Great White Father comes through very accurately and strongly.
The quote above is from the British governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore who proclaimed freedom for African American slaves who fought for the British, after George Washington announced there would be no additional recruitment of Blacks in the Continental army in 1776. For numerous free blacks and enslaved blacks, the Revolutionary War was considered to be an essential period in black manifestation. Many public officials (like Dunmore), who initially had not expressed their views on slavery, saw the importance of African Americans and considered them an imperative tool in winning the war. Looking back, it almost seems like an inherent paradox in white America’s desire of emancipation from England while there still enslaving blacks. This concept has different grounds in white’s idea of liberation in comparison to that of the African-Americans. To white Americans, this war was for liberation in a political/economical tone rather than in the sense of the privatized oppression that blacks suffered from. But what started this war and what would this mean for blacks? How did these African Americans contribute to the war effort? What were there some of their duties? How did the white communities perceive them? How did it all end for these blacks? The main topic of this paper is to show how the use African Americans helped the control the outcome of the war while monitoring their contributions.
Temporary inequality exists as a means of “improving” a subordinate to the level of a dominant. After the period of inequality is over, the two view each other as equals. The other form of inequality, permanent inequality, exists solely because of an ascription of inferiority to a subordinate that is inherent and unchangeable. Unlike temporary inequality, there is no possibility of improvement for the subordinate; they are, in the eyes of the dominant, inferior and impossible to “fix.” The dominants, who view themselves naturally superior to the subordinates, begin to take advantage of the subordinates. “Out of the total range of human possibilities, the activities most highly valued in any particular culture will tend to be enclosed within the domain of the dominant group; less valued functions are relegated to the subordinates” (Rothenberg, 112). Moreover, the subordinates, who by this point are under the total control of the dominant group, may begin to internalize the value of the dominants. “[Subordinates’] incapacities are ascribed to innate defects or deficiencies of mind or body…More importantly, subordinates themselves can come to find it difficult to believe in their own ability” (112). This theory of domination and subordination are clearly mirrored in race relations in the United States. Whites, who are the dominant group, make all of the fallacious errors involved in race-based thinking; they are prone to, like Miller describes, hoarding superior roles in society and practicing systematic cruelty towards the subordinates due to their sincere belief that the subordinates are inherently incapable of rising to the level of the dominant. This internalized belief on the part of the dominants, that the subordinates
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
Before entering into the main body of his writing, Allen describes to readers the nature of the “semicolony”, domestic colonialism, and neocolonialism ideas to which he refers to throughout the bulk of his book. Priming the reader for his coming argument, Allen introduces these concepts and how they fit into the white imperialist regime, and how the very nature of this system is designed to exploit the native population (in this case, transplanted native population). He also describes the “illusion” of black political influence, and the ineffectiveness (or for the purposes of the white power structure, extreme effectiveness) of a black “elite”, composed of middle and upper class black Americans.
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
...icit in the cause of white supremacists, and is in fact as personally involved with the subject of his scholarly article as Wright is with his own less academic essay. Phillips’s evidentiary support is subject to a striking caveat, one which puts almost any source to work for his purposes, “When…slavery was attacked it was defended not only as a vested interest, but…as a guarantee of white supremacy and civilization. Its defenders did not always take pains to say that this was what they chiefly meant, but it may nearly always be read between their lines.” This has the effect of providing an assumed motive for all of his sources; Phillips’s reader also begins to ‘read between the lines.’ The most troubling aspect of his article is that, in the guise of a serious historian, he twists historical fact to suit his thesis, rather than suiting his thesis to the facts.
White racism cannot exist standalone; it exists in a causal relationship with white domination. Domination must be established first before racism can occur. This form of domination does not have to be overt or physical in nature and needs no reciprocity in acknowledgment of said domination, but characterized by a covert metaphysical dominance that can be known solely by the suspects themselves. The colonialists exhibited white racism as a consequence of the influence of the ideology of white dominance created through the accounts of those who visited the Americas: "One will experience a strain, a cognitive tension between possible egalitarian findings and overarching category, insofar as "savage" already has embedded in it a narrative, a set of assumptions about innate inferiority, which will preclude certain possibilities," (Mills 27). Thus, the physical act of coming to the Americas confirmed a one-sided, de jure form of white domination which then manifested itself into white racism. The concept of white domination when established in colonialists, allows for the exhibition of white racism: "Concepts orient us to the world, and it is a rare individual who can resist this inherited orientation. Once established in the social mind-set, its influence is difficult to escape…" (Mills
The hierarchy of race in society is based on the idea that one race is superior to the others with “white” being at the top due to the systems put in place by the hegemonic structure of dominance. Whenever the wealthy British conquered an indigenous group such as the Native Americans, that group took a spot in the racial hierarchy somewhere below the British. By placing the native population below whites, they are then denoted as inferior, in part due to the ideology that the superior race would not have been conquered. For example, Takaki writes about how during the western expansion of the U.S., Native Americans were being successfully pushed off to the west and the American conquerors felt justified in their actions because many of them believed in the idea of manifest destiny, which states that God is allowing the Native Americans to be brutalized because God wants the U.S. to colonize westward. To elaborate, since God is allowing what is most beneficial for the “whites” rather than the Native Americans, “whites” must be superior, and therefore higher in the racial hierarchy, than Native Americans. This ideology of white supremacy was formed to create a hegemony in which the British
The four-year war between the states not only left the southern cities destroyed, economy in shambles and its people destitute, but it also introduced an overwhelming population of former slaves to be integrated into the folds of the victorious Union. Freedom for the blacks came slow and progress on their behalf was contaminated, inconsistent and feeble. Freedmen and women, accustomed to strife and adversity, desired only equality as citizens of the United States, however that status was going to come at a hefty price. Lincoln proclaimed the slaves freedom in the midst of the Civil War, but that freedom was neither instant nor accepted at war’s end. With great uncertainty and only the title of freedmen the black community immediately sought out their greatest needs no matter what brutality they faced from those that refused to accept their freedom.