America has committed a terrible sin. It has once decided to own people as property and deprive them of their liberties and enslaved them based on the color of their skin. The United States must repair the wounds that have resulted from the social injustice committed against the African American community. Many have argued that this must be done through reparations. However, African Americans have faced a plethora of legal complexities in attempts to obtain legal reparations for past injustices committed against their ancestors.
America Should Pay Reparations to African Americans The United States government should pay reparations to African Americans as a means of admitting their wrong-doing and making amends. The damages African Americans have sustained from White America’s policy of slavery have been agonizing and inhumane. Therefore, I am in favor of reparations for African Americans. The effect of slavery has been an enduring issue within the African American community. Many of us are cognizant of the harm racism brought to the African American race, conveyed through slavery, racial segregation and discrimination.
There are multiple reasons why slavery caused a lot of problems between the whites and the blacks. “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people”. -Luther King, Jr Most African Americans were enslaved “95 percent of the African Americans in the United States was slaves.” (Problems of Slavery – Murphy). Many problems evolved due to slavery racism became a really big problem. The problem was that most slaves didn’t understand that there was other life out there they thought that because they were black that they had to be enslaved and couldn’t live their own lives.
The issue was not slavery itself necessarily, but the different views and controversy towards it. Slavery was dehumanization; making black people less human. Black people were treated unjustifiably wrong since they were treated like property during this time period. Some events that impacted slavery the most were the Industrial Revolution, Westward expansion,Abolitionist movement, publication of A Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Written By Himself, Dred Scott Decision, John Brown raid, Election of Abraham Lincoln and many more. A group formed known as the Abolitionists, and they opposed the idea of slavery.
It seems that the colonists felt as if they were going to be treated like slaves. This protest contradicts itself because the colonists are the originally the ones that are oppressing and setting strict rules and laws against African Americans. In addition, it appears that the colonists are unbothered with treating the slaves worse than the result of King George and Parliament’s policies, but suddenly it is not okay once that action is placed upon the colonists themselves. Another document that speaks on these contradictions is Document 10. This document examines Phillis Wheatley’s letter to Samson Occom.
D) Before the secession of the south, the issue of slavery was dividing the Union. Since the institute of slavery was not directly mentioned in the Constitution, both the North and South claimed that the Constitution was in their favor. The North claimed it did not protect the institute of slavery, while the South said that it protected a citizen’s property, which they believed that the slaves were. From the Compromise of 1850 the Utah and New Mexico territories were left up to popular sovereignty to determine if they were slave or free. While the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it increasingly more difficult for escaping former slaves to hold on to freedom in the North.
Zinn sets out to show the reader that as early as the 1600 blacks have been made to feel unequal and that the color black was degrading. According to Zinn slavery was brought to the fore front about fifty years before Columbus’s time, and originated in South American, the Caribbean, Portuguese and the Spanish colonies. “He stated that Por... ... middle of paper ... ...of their punishments consisted of being hung and beaten, or the removal of a body part. This was a scare tactic by the slave owners to intimidate fear or control over the slaves to keep them obedient. Laws and policies were passed to protect the slave owners making it impossible for the slaves to learn to read or write.
In order for them to achieve this, the white southerners came up with the Jim Crow laws to prevent the African Americans from achieving their god given right of being free and equal. This did not end the African hope of becoming equal. After many years of mistreatment, African Americans knew that change in society was necessary. The members of the black population have been enslaved, beaten, abused, neglected and just taken advantage of, since the end of the civil war, even into present times, African Americans have struggled for equality and rights that white Americans often take for granted. Arguably, no post-war struggle was larger or more significant than the movement to eliminate the Jim Crow laws from existence in the South.
(210) The courts were striving to keep blacks at a level similar to slave laws. In this state of chaos it is no wonder why black crime was steadily rising. Many whites tried to explain black crime by stating that black people were inherently evil and violent, that they were biologically inferior. Those statements were obviously incorrect as it is clear why black crime was growing during the urban transformation. Blacks were subject to the culture that slavery instilled in them.
In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin depicts the relationship of African Americans to the United States-and the society on which it stands-in a way that reinforces this idea: Blackness is defined and problematized by the white society in order to define their identity. This is shown by the inhumane treatment of African Americans since their arrival in this country, the recurring label of criminal thrust upon Black people in their ongoing quest for civil rights, and the psychology of inferiority perpetuated among Black people in their dealings with whites. Baldwin poses that Blackness determines your circumstances from birth. “This innocent country set you down in a ghetto in which, in fact, it intended that you should perish…. You were born