Sixth Point Of The Civil Rights Movement

984 Words2 Pages

The civil rights movement for African-Americans was a mass popular movement with the goal of establishing rights and opportunities equal to those given to whites in the United States. Leaders in the civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, fought fervently for the rights of African Americans through nonviolent demonstrations and protests. What came out of the peak of the civil rights movement were acts of legislation that were supposed to help provide equal rights and opportunities for African-Americans. In 1964 The Civil Rights Act was passed, which prohibited discrimination in the United States based on gender, race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. Shortly after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, …show more content…

This led to another idea in the sixth point of the “Black Panther Platform”, the idea that all African American men should not be drafted into the United States military. At the time Newton and Seale wrote the “Black Panther Platform”, The Vietnam War was taking place in which the democratic United States of America attempted to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. The Black Panther Party felt that African-American men should not be drafted to fight for a country that fiercely acts against their best interests. The sixth point states, “We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America,” (210). The Black Panther Party’s goal is not to oppress other people of color around the world, it is to achieve the rights and opportunities guaranteed to African-Americans by the Constitution. African-Americans going to war for the system of government that is oppressing them is …show more content…

This is because the government has placed structural obstacles in place with the intent of oppressing black people for the purpose of perpetuating the hegemonic ideology of white supremacy. Structural institutions, such as refusing to sell homes to black people have kept African-Americans out of “white” neighborhoods for decades. White supremacists would want to keep African-Americans out of their neighborhoods because they feel that blacks are inherently inferior to them. This common-sense feeling of whites being inherently superior to blacks is what makes white supremacy a hegemonic ideology in America. Laws and structures have been established based because this ideology was believed to be true by the highest forms of government. An economic institution of white supremacy is slavery. African-Americans were not only enslaved for hundreds of years in America, but they have been racialized as a group lesser than white people within the hierarchy of race. A racial hierarchy is a way of grouping people into categories based on race that have consequences such as being associated with a particular class. In this case, African-Americans have been thought of as being second-class citizens, and have been segregated from white society until the civil rights movement occurred. The ideology of white supremacy has oppressed African-Americans in order for

Open Document