Analysis of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro by Winthrop D. Jordan

For example Conrad says, "the thought of their humanity-like yours…Ugly" (Conrad). This just goes to show that when Conrad is compared to a black man he is discussed because he is racist. One reason we say the Europeans were racist was because they made the blacks be their slaves. The audience can see the people of color doing work for the white people and that just goes to show that they were racist. Women are discriminated throughout this book.

Blacks have been made to feel as though they were unequal or less than human. Howard Zinn shows the reader how racism that existed in the New World exists today, and how the barriers society has placed on color has caused a division among the races throughout the generations. How we as individuals have allowed one person’s belief to dictate how a person should be treated. Racism is defined as a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races to determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others. In this chapter we see that the slave owners possess all the qualities of racism toward the African slaves.

The animosity and ideals that whites had toward blacks after slavery was outlawed spawned segregation. The societal forces that arose from American history was the major cause of the oppression of African Americans, but individual separation was instigated to counter the persecution. Works Cited King, Martin Luther “Letters from Birmingham Jail.” Cultural Conversations: the Presence of the Past. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

Douglass’ narratives revealed the severity of the consequences of slavery. After his death the exclusion of marginalized groups in order to gain political and economic gain continued causing more hardships for African Americans. Douglass substantiated to the United States that the humans were considered substandard had the potential just not the opportunity. He represents the dogged strength and the double visions of African Americans have that allows them to see the world with the eyes of two cultures.

The Segregation Era was an extremely miserable time for African Americans in the United States. Whites treated African Americans like trash or their own property instead of as equals. I will explain segregation and what the main causes of it were. Then, I will describe what life was like for people living during this period. Finally, I will talk about the laws that were passed during the segregation period.

His character’s name was Jim Crow. At the end of the 1800’s, several anti-black laws were nicknamed, “the Jim Crow laws”. These laws stated that black and white Americans must be separated in every aspect of life. Ac-cording these laws, it was legal for African Americans to be treated worse than everyone else. The Jim Crow laws were unfair to the African Americans because they replaced slavery with racial segregation, little attention was given to the groups against these laws, and they received unjust punishments.

The Harm caused by Slavery still continues to be suffered by the community through this day. African Americans have always been devalued in the American Legal System. Even since the days of colonial Europe, it was custom, not law that African Americans were inferior to their Anglophone whites. They have always held that they were inferior, meant to be subjugated by the superior and dominant white Anglophone race. It has been ingrained in custom and cultural beliefs of America and thus the American legal system is inherently prejudiced against African Americans.

There is a period of time in American history where slavery was not only allowed, but part of the original Constitution. However, for as many who were for slavery there was always a number against it. Slaves themselves, like Frederick Douglass in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, have criticized slavery as well as American writers, like Henry David Thoreau in his speech "Slavery in Massachusetts". Despite these two abolitionists being separated by class and education, they share the same disquiets on enslavement. They both believe slavery to be innately wrong and a crime against humanity.

A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege" (Douglass 19). This passage clearly indicates differences between white children and slav... ... middle of paper ... ...ppressors and raised it against them, and his words became a healing balm and a fixer of wrongs of slavery. Douglass sums this up great when writing a letter to Mr. Auld in Gorn Document 5 by saying, "I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery-as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening their horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of me… make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy-and as a means of bringing this guilty nation with yourself to repentance" (Gorn 242).

Racists, northern and southern, proclaimed that the Negro was subhuman, barbaric, immoral, and innately inferior, physically and intellectually, to whites—totally incapable of functioning as an equal in white civilization. Between the Compromise of 1877 and the Compromise of 1895, the problem facing Negro leadership was clear: how to obtain first-class citizenship for the Negro American. How to reach this goal caused considerable debate among Negro leaders. Some advocated physical violence to force concessions from the whites. A few urged Negroes to return to Africa.