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Structural racism
Ways for anti discriminatory practice
Ways for anti discriminatory practice
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Earlier in the semester we watched a video over Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy. This video was inspiring for people to look at what has happened in our history and society. This has been a major social injustice to African-Americans for so long, and it is now time that it needs to be confronted. People are often confused about why some people get upset about the way African-Americans react to some things, it is because they never had the opportunity to heal from their pain in history. In the article “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” it is talked about how racism is, “a serious illness that has been allowed to fester for 400 years without proper attention” (Leary, Hammond, and Davis, “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”). This is …show more content…
By this time, the mindset of people who owned slaves, thought of ex-slaves as if they were still objects and property to be owned. The inequality and treatment of ex-slaves were ridiculous. Even some objects were more valuable than the life of an ex-slave, or any colored person. Leary, Hammond, and Davis stated in the “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome” article, “Being reminded that our ancestors were treated as property and only as humans when it was profitable to their owners stirred our emotions… The author details how blacks were counted as 3/5 of a person… American slaves had no legal rights as property, but interestingly enough, slaves outside of the United States did have rights and could even buy themselves out of slavery under certain conditions” (Leary, Hammond, and Davis, “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”). This played a major role into Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome making a lasting effect throughout generations and generations to come. There were people who believed in the great plan of equality and fairness, but those people were very few. Even when President Lincoln passed the emancipation proclamation, people still did not want slaves to be free or even wanted to acknowledge them as people. This started to cause the Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome because there was no closure on the situation and the pain that came out of it. To this day, …show more content…
Many people try to think “back to the good old days,” when really they were not that good for most people who had no rights. With the advancement in technology, we were forced to open our eyes to what is going on in the world around us and the disadvantaged people face throughout the world. As a society once we start to working on damage control to clean up the mess we got into we can finally have true change. The damage control will take time and effort from all people involved on either end of the situation. One major move I feel we can make is by giving honest history lessons that cover every part of our history in schools. I feel that American History and World History should be more emphasized on in our school systems and curriculum. If the students get the full education of our history and how we got to where we are, then moving on will become easier. We expect for children to lead us into a bigger and better future, but how can we expect that without the truth coming to light for our diverse culture. We cannot expect to make this country better without knowing their full history and the mistakes we have made in our past. Looking for another way to move forward, Essence asked Dr. Joy DeGruy on what we could do moving forward, her answer was, “…more research, support, and assistance are needed to produce vital healing…that exceeds the injury
After all, many slaves had simply accepted the horrible life because they didn’t know how to turn things around or they were just too frightened to fight back. Well recently, the American Revolution had taken place. This informed slaves that Americans do believe in the idea of freedom and they were willing to fight for it. Seeing that, slaves began to feel obligated that they should do the same thing. The French and Haitian Revolutions also had recently occurred. During the Haitian revolution, black slaves not only refused to be in slavery anymore but they completely took over the country. African slaves in America began to question if it was possible for them to do the same
From the very beginning of time African Americans have been a culture of resistance. That is resistance from slavery, resistance from torture, and resistance from wrongdoing. Families were torn apart, women were raped, and children were tortured. In an article by Atlanta Blackst they list some of the ways African American slaves were tortures, and it’s horrifying. Some slaves were burned alive, lynched by meat hooks, castrated, and even Mutated. This is the easy part, as after being tortured they had many years of psychological suffering. They didn’t have family to turn to because they were most dead or sold to another slave
The American colonies were established with the idea of freedom and liberty to all. This goal, however, is darkened by a contradictory event: racism. Racism against African Americans (Negroes) in America was a by-product of permanent and inhumane enslavement of the black population. This type slavery was built upon the need for the American colonies to achieve economic prosperity and social stability. The slavery prior to these social and economic problems was equal to that of white slavery. Black and white slaves and indentured servants received the same treatments, given equal punishments and working conditions. Both races were regarded as equally low in status and slavery itself in general carried a term of negative connotation. Free black men held the same Englishmen rights as fellow whites and were seen in every aspect as equal to whites. Only when the colonies began to strip blacks of all their titles and properties and reduce them to the title chattel, or property, because of the need to solve economic and societal problems did racism emerge to define all blacks as slaves.
The African American community is suffering with the issue of inadequate mental health care for many decades. There is a deep lack of understanding about what mental illness is and there are many barriers that hinder African Americans from receiving the care that they need. People are unaware of the effects of mental illness, and what mental illness can encompass. “Most importantly, mental health includes people’s feelings of worth in the context of the total cultural and societal system as well as within the identifiable groups to which they belong.” (Snowden, 165) The experience you receive as a race and how you perceive your race is apart of mental illness. Many African American people look down upon their race due to socioeconomic hierarchy that society has given people. African American’s are at high risk to developing mental illness. Healthcare providers have misdiagnosed many African Americans due to lack of knowledge. “African Americans in ...
For centuries slavery had been a problem in many countries but especially in the United States of America since it was known as “the land of the free”. Slavery mostly targeted people of color, African Americans. These African Americans were being sold to white males and were forced to work and do whatever they say. Slaves did not have their own home, they did not have a voice. Slaves were not allowed education so they were mostly illiterate. After many, many years and presidents later, slavery was abolished in the south and in the north. Although African Americans were now considered “free” it was still the opposite of that. Two African American men, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois wrote autobiographies explaining their views and their
It’s shocking that so many Americans do not know important historical facts. I think a lot of our ignorance has much to do with the things we are taught in school, and by no means am I saying teachers are to blame. I know they are giving standards of what to teacher and must work within those parameters. For example, a kindergarten is forced to teach basic reading and writing skills, not slavery, the Great Depression, or make their students memorize the Constitution. Obviously you learn about those things, or at least most of those things later on in life, but it’s just an idea. I don’t think teachers are to blame for American ignorance, and I don’t think you can hold one person responsible for that. This problem has existed for so long, it’s just kind of a deep hole that seems difficult to get out
Racism isn’t a subject that appears in every day conversations. Although most people try to ignore its existence, it’s quite obvious that it marked the lives of a lot of people and it has now become an essential part of our history. As a student who has lived in the valley all her life, I’ve been taught about the hardships African Americans had to endure while obtaining their freedom, becoming eligible to vote, being segregated, but never did I stop to think that the people who shared my culture and walked the streets of the Valley and San Antonio were going through a similar experience. Throughout the years it has become apparent that African Americans weren’t the only people who had been mistreated.
we can’t. It’s just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knothole in the fence. . ." (Wright). This illustrates no matter the age or location, all African Americans still realized that they were at the disadvantage and had no way of balancing out the opportunities for themselves. Degruy wrote the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing in 2005, she had done ten years of psychological and historical research prior to the publishing of the book in order to formulate the data she had collected about African Americans before and after slavery.
Douglass describes in his book mirror the attitudes found in the PBS documentary “Slavery by Another Name”. The attitudes of those that owned slaves or held the opinion that slaves were an inferior people didn’t change with the emancipation of the slaves. The people of the South found other ways to enslave the African American community but this time by manipulating the new laws that were put in place. The southern property owners found other ways to force African Americans to work for them. The 13th Amendment states “Neither slavery or individual servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States” so they found a way to twist the laws to force their former slaves into prison and back into bondage. They dramatically increased the penalties for small crimes (5 years in prison for stealing a $1 pig), would accuse African Americans of loitering and if they didn’t have proof of employment they were sent to jail. The southern property owners and the Justice of the Peace created a system that falsely imprisoned African Americans and as a result 90% of the prisoners were now black. The Southern states already had a policy of renting out prisoners by the month to industries and now that policy was being used to force the African Americans into bondage. “There are many important implications and long-term consequences for the convict leasing. Not only is it so oppressive,
The purpose of history, to empower society to be able to make educated decisions about the present based on what happened in the past, is lost through the convoluted textbook publication process. What results is material that is historically inaccurate and ineffective in educating society. My 7th grade journal entry is hardly an acceptable method of recounting what happened to the chocolate chip cookie on that summer day, yet this is a tragic reflection of the historical distortion that is present in textbooks that students are studying this very day. Something must be done, or else societal ignorance will be the downfall of intelligent decision making. Something must be done, and we must be the change. Unlike history textbooks make it seem, everyone has the power to make a change. Make an impact on your local education system by getting involved. When election season rolls around make an educated vote for the board of education. Do not settle for ignorance. Something must be changed in corrupt historical education, and it must happen
The treatment whites made blacks endure and how they treated them was cruel, whipping, starving, even killing. Blacks were not a human to whites back in the time, more like animals. Escape wasn't common, but it did happen. Many didn't because they were scared of what would happen to them or their family. Some people did end up escaping and in many different ways and some slaves even came back to help. After the Civil War and after the 13 amendment was ratified abolishing slavery, you could argue it didn't get much better. Whites were still superior to blacks. Black codes were established and this made blacks not has the same rights as whites and they still made it seem they were still treated as slaves, they lacked many rights that whites had, but they didn't. Whites tricked blacks into still working for them by offering housing to blacks and their families, but would make it so they were trapped into working.The Ku Klux Klan also made post slavery very difficult for blacks. They risked being murdered, raped and being bombed. Slavery was never good for anyone. It helped raised the south's economy, but it made whites terrible human beings to blacks and others. It made Whites and blacks divided and till this day you can argue we are. “I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes the white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent
Before the Civil War, slavery was at its peak in the Southern states such as Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. During this period life as a slave owner was luxurious, but life as a slave was excruciating. Numerous slaves during this time period were treated inhumanly in ways that normal people couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Slaves before the Civil War were whipped, raped, burned, and even branded. Many slaves in the Southern states during this era saw the torment to much and contemplated suicide such as Fountain Hughes who stated, “If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun an’ jus’ end it all right away because your nothing but a dog.” Just like the brutality seen in the South before the Civil War slaves
Beginning in the 1830s, white abolitionists attempted to prove that American slaves suffered physically, emotionally, and spiritually at the hands of those who claimed their ownership (Pierson, 2005). Like those that were seen in our American literature text book. Not only did they suffer from those things, but they also had trouble with their identity once they moved on or was freed from slavery, that’s why we seen a lot of the former slaves changing their identity. Abolitionists were determined to educate the public on how badly slaves were being treated. They even argued the basic facts of Southern plantation life such as slave holders divided families, legalized rape, and did not recognize slave marriages as legitimate (Pierson, 2005). In the interregional slave trade, hundreds of thousands of slaves were move long distance from their birthplace and original homes as the slave economy migrated from the eastern seaboards to Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas (Thornton...
Ghanaian leader Dr. Kwame Nkrumah once said, “The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class.” This issue has become more and more prevalent in the past couple of years as students are realizing the censoring of history is infringing on their rights. States like Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma have been criticized because of their controversial curriculum revisions. Many public school history curriculums sugarcoat or omit America’s wrongdoings to create a more patriotic America for students; however, the youth of America deserve to receive a realistic and wholesome education that properly represents minority groups in order to prevent the spread of ignorance in adulthood.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...