History of African Americans in the U.S.

History shows that slavery consisted of African Americans being treated inferior to whites. Slaves were mostly African Americans and even though today slavery is over people still look at blacks as less important than whites. Slavery has impacted our society today because people are still prejudice and discriminatory towards African Americans, they are still living in poverty and don’t have proper education and they don’t have an equal opportunity for jobs. Still today African Americans continue to lag behind whites.

In our past history, African Americans were slaves and were viewed as less important than whites. Still today in our society, people are prejudice and discriminatory against blacks. Many people still look at blacks differently because of how they were treated as slaves. As a result, blacks don’t get the same opportunities as whites with housing, education, employment and healthcare. The white people in the southern states are not as accepting to blacks and discrimination is more common there because that is where a lot of slavery was in history.

The majority of blacks in America still live in extreme, deep poverty and a lot of them never receive a proper education. According to Phil Jackson’s article “Remembering the Millions the American Dream Left,” 30% black Americans in Illinois live in poverty while only 8% white Americans do. One way African Americans can move out of poverty is by getting a better education but because the blacks have such low income, they can’t afford a better education. Therefore, there is a rare chance they will ever get out of poverty.

Many African Americans never got a proper education growing up which has led to unemployment. According to the New York Times, historically the unemployment for blacks has always been higher than whites. There has always been a lot of African Americans that lack skills and have low wages are losing their jobs today. Also according to the New York Times, in New York City there are about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks in the city. This unemployment rate reveals racism because many employers continue to discriminate against African Americans.

Slavery has impacted our society today because people are still prejudiced and discriminatory towards African Americans. Still in this day, African Americans living in poverty don’t have proper education and are not given equal opportunities for jobs.