Race And Racial Discrimination In The Reconstruction Era

1432 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Reconstruction era after the civil war

While racism is usually more easily recognizable by way of comments, social isolation and stereotyping, there is another divide that many don’t recognize and that is white privilege. White privilege, also referred to as white skin privilege, is when white people are granted certain rights, privileges, positions, courtesies, etc.…over those of a different race. This is often seen in political, educational and social environments. This impacts social inequality by adding to the existing differences in social experiences and/or statuses that results in people having unequal access to valued resources, services, and positions in society (Kerbo, 2012). Throughout history white privilege has suppressed the advancement of African Americans. Historical …show more content…

This is known as the Reconstruction Era. As the federal troops withdrew from the territory, it was left in the hands of white rule once again. This led to a set of laws meant to create a distinct separation amongst black and white yet again, taking away most of the rights that were given to blacks during the Reconstruction Era. This set of laws being called “Jim Crow”. Though seemingly rigid and complete, Jim Crow laws did not account for all of the discrimination blacks suffered. Unwritten rules barred blacks from white jobs in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles. Humiliation was about the best treatment blacks that broke such rules could hope for. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which revived in 1915, used venom and violence to keep blacks “in their place”(crfusa.org). This type of hate and discontent for blacks thrived during World War I. Despite having more than 360,000 black men serve in the Armed Forces for the United States during the war, a serious and major race riot in Chicago among 24 others in the country is what they walked back into. Black veterans were being lynched in uniform by white mobs. In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded and gave colored people a voice, a way to fight back. Although they drew support from both blacks and whites, not much changed the “efficiency” of segregation for the next 30 years. By 1944, a Swede visiting the South pronounced segregation so complete that whites did not see blacks except when being served by them (crf-usa.org). It wasn’t until the second World War, when a bigger and more sinister foe, embodied the same ideals as Jim Crow to create a “master race”. It was in Hitler’s presence that the United Nations delegates, shocked, wrote home about the heinous practices of

Show More
Related

  • Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBoise

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the four decades following reconstruction, the position of the Negro in America steadily deteriorated. The hopes and aspirations of the freedmen for full citizenship rights were shattered after the federal government betrayed the Negro and restored white supremacist control to the South. Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates, as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the “Negro problem” in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational, and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a sort of peonage, black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or “second-class” citizenship. Strict legal segregation of public facilities in the southern states was strengthened in 1896 by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. 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.

    Read More

  • Essay On Post Racial Society

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks” (McIntosh, 172). White privilege is all around us, but society has been carefully taught

    Read More

  • Analysis Of White Privilege Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack

    775 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up as an African-American you are always taught to be twice as good. Twice as good as the white people to receive the same treatment as them. I grew up hearing this same phrase constantly but never really understood exactly what it meant until I got old enough to actually see the kind of world we are living in. The author of the article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” Peggy Mclntosh, took as step into shoes of black America and found that white privilege not only exist, but many whites are blind to it. She gives a clear argument about how white privilege is harmful to our society and how we can work together to fix this.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of White Privilege In The Movie Little White Lie

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    The famous anti-racism activist Tim Wise once said “The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americans to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege. In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America.” White Privilege is commonly defined as “a set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those common to all others.” (What) As White americans living in the United States, you never really pay any attention to the fact that there is a racial “smog” (Marks) living among us in everyday life and you really never realize how it affects the people on the other end who don’t receive this ‘privilege’. White privilege shapes the world we live in by how we go about and interact

    Read More

  • African Americans During Reconstruction Dbq

    496 Words  | 1 Pages

    Reconstruction(1865-1877) was the time period in which the US rebuilt after the Civil War. During this time, the question the rights of freed slaves in the United States were highly debated. Freedom, in my terms, is the privilege of doing as you please without restriction as long as it stays within the law. However, in this sense, black Americans during the Reconstruction period were not truly free despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. While legally free, black Americans were still viewed through the lens of racism and deeply-rooted social biases/stigmas that prevented them from exercising their legal rights as citizens of the United States. For example, black Americans were unable to wholly participate in the government as a

    Read More

  • Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack Summary

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dr. Peggy McIntosh looks at white privilege, by “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She describes white privilege as almost a special check or coin that she gets to cash in on. Dr. McIntosh tells that white privilege has been a taboo and repressed subject – and that many white people are taught not to see or recognize it. However, she is granted privileges (McIntosh 30). Dr. McIntosh goes on to describe twenty-six ways in which her skin-color grants her certain privileges. In example twenty, she describes how she can buy “…posters, postcards, picture books…” and other items that “…feature people of my race” (32). Additionally, in her first example, she talks about being able to be in the “company of people of my race most of the time” (McIntosh 31). Instances in which a privilege person would not even recognize unless they were looking, show evidence for white privilege. People take these advantages for granted because they simply expect them. Due to the lack of melatonin in her skin, she was granted privileges and her skin served as an asset to her. Dr. McIntosh conveys how her privilege is not only a “favored state,” but also a power over other

    Read More

  • Jonathan Kozol's Still Separate, Still Unequal

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    White privilege is not a figment of African American or colored people’s imagination, it is just as real as many problems in America and one privilege that wealthy and middle class white people have is the right to a decent education. Many people might not think a simple thing such as education is a privilege seeing that all students by law have to attend schools but it is, and we all know that all schools and their districts are not created equally. In Jonathan Kozol essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid,” he writes, “Of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominantly white school” (349) Kozol

    Read More

  • Christine Emba's White Privilege?

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    In her 16 January 2016 The Washington Post editorial, “What is White Privilege?”, Christine Emba asserts white privilege is a societal advantage inherent in people who are white, irrespective of their “wealth, gender, or other factors.” According to Emba, white privilege makes life smoother and is an entity that is hidden or unknown until the privilege is taken away. Although racism is still a rampant issue in society today, white privilege is a concept created by the progressive left in order to brand whites as a scapegoat for issues and adversities that non-whites face. This concept of privilege ultimately causes further dissension between whites and non-whites.

    Read More

  • Jim Crow Era: A Nightmare of Racial Discrimination

    2275 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Jim Crow era was a racial status system used primarily in the south between the years of 1877 and the mid 1960’s. Jim Crow was a series of anti-black rules and conditions that were never right. The social conditions and legal discrimination of the Jim Crow era denied African Americans democratic rights and freedoms frequently. There were numerous ways in which African Americans were denied social and political equality under Jim Crow. Along with that, lynching occurred quite frequently, thousands being done over the era.

    Read More

  • Discrimination Against African Americans In The 1800s

    413 Words  | 1 Pages

    Back in the early 1800’s, America was having a hard time accepting others. The Americans did not like having immigrants living in the same area, and they really hated when immigrants took their jobs. Many Americans discriminated against African Americans even if they were only ⅛ African American. Americans were not ready to share their country and some would refuse to give people the rights they deserved. This can be seen in the Plessy vs Ferguson and Yick Wo vs Hopkins. In Plessy vs Ferguson, Plessy was asked to go to the back of the train because he was ⅛ African American.

    Read More

  • Racism and Reconstruction

    590 Words  | 2 Pages

    that a majority of the South would have to take an iron clad oath that

    Read More

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

    1560 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many things happened throughout the past to create racial disharmony in the early 1900’s. Since the first slaves were brought to America whites have seen the Negro race as inferior and unequal. They were merely chattel purchased for the sole purpose as to provide for his master. Slaves were beaten to ‘keep them in line’ or killed to set an example for the rest. As time passed Negroes gained more freedom but also more hatred from the white populace. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in 1866 greatly heightened tension between the black and white races. They preached White supremacy, “It is simple reality that to be born White is an honor and a privilege.” () To treat a Negro as an equal was viewed not only wrong but also as a direct insult and threat to the white race. “We must secure the existence of our race and a future for White children” () When a black was accused of a crime or a white person didn’t like him he could be punished by the KKK or mob through lynching, burning, dismembering, and or torturing. Nearly none of the time did the lynchings ever go to court. “A Mississippi lynch mob of 2,000 burns an accused black rapist alive a coroner’s jury returns a verdict of death ”due to unknown causes.” And Mississippi governor Theodore G. Bilbo says the state has “neither the time nor the money” to go into the matter.

    Read More

  • White Racial Identity

    3116 Words  | 7 Pages

    Prior to beginning my readings on white racial identity, I did not pay much attention to my white race. If someone had asked me to describe my appearance I would have said short blond hair, blue eyes, average stature, etc. One of the last things I would have noted was the color of my skin. Growing up in overwhelmingly white communities, I never thought to use the color of my skin to differentiate myself from others. Over the course of this dialogue I have learned that my white racial identity is one of the most defining aspects of my appearance in this society. There is a certain level of privilege that I am afforded based solely on the color of my skin. According to Peggy McIntosh, “White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank checks” (71). All these objects listed by McIntosh are things I have access to and certainly take for granted. Due to a history of non-white racial oppression, which transformed into decades of racial discrimination that still lingers today, the white race has dominated our society in terms of resources and prosperity. The ideas of wealth, higher-level education and ambition to succeed are all traits commonly linked to people of the white race that collectively define privilege. The aspect of privilege can also produce disadvantages for people of the white race as well. In the book Promoting Diversity and Justice, the author D. Goodman notes that people of advantage groups develop a sense of superiority, which will sometimes lead them to wonder if, “their achievements were based on privilege or merit” (107). Along with a diminished sense of accomplishment, the cost ...

    Read More

  • The Myth Of White Privilege

    1845 Words  | 4 Pages

    With all of these facts, the author tries to prove that racial differences and privileges appear exaggerated and unrealistic. The privileged and less privileged exist at all levels of society. Duke wants white people to understand that they are in the same position as all other races. The awareness of “white privilege” is only a fallacy that causes feel of guilt without foundation.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On White Privilege

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    White Privilege The belief that white privilege never existed or that it is no longer a problem is skewed by the selective use of facts to support this claim. How do we address this problem? We must define the what is to be privileged, acknowledge the problem and identify a means to fix it. "The idea of privilege- that some people benefit from unearned, and largely unacknowledged, advantages, even when those advantages aren't discriminatory. "

    Read More

More about Race And Racial Discrimination In The Reconstruction Era

Open Document