Ostracism in and of itself is a condition no human wants to experience but compounded with disrespect and abuse, it describes the condition of the African Americans prior to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth , and Fifteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment supposedly outlawed slavery; however, whites still found ways around the law in order to keep blacks below them. The Fourteenth Amendment granted blacks citizenship, but they were still denied basic rights. The Fifteenth Amendment granted blacks the right to vote; however, most blacks were incapable of voting due to specific obstacles. Jim Crow Laws were an extreme obstacle in the integration of African Americans.
To conclude, I believe that American society was very racist in the 1920s. This started off with the Jim Crow Laws in the southern states and then the 'resurrection' of the Ku Klux Klan. The treatment towards the Black American degraded at a very fast rate and so they decided to move to the northern states where there was a less concentration of them. However, the Americans there were racist as well and the police and courts didn't do anything about it as they too were racist. Even though treatment towards Blacks slightly improved due to organisations such as the UNIA, overall, they were seen as 'an inferior race' and it would be a while until treatment towards Blacks greatly improved.
I do not believe that the Americans of African and European ancestry successfully rebuilt their relationship right after the Civil war. Even though slavery was finally slowly getting abolished, there was still much discrimination against the African Americans. The Jim Crow laws and the black codes discriminated against black people. The Ku Klux Klan in particular discriminated against black people. Even though the United States government tried to put laws into the Constitution to protect black people, the African Americans were discriminated in every aspect of life from housing, working, educating, and even going to public restrooms!
Blacks tend to forget that the War on Drugs has devastated other families in their communities and silences families due to the fear of humiliation. The War on Drugs and drug policies have been useful tactics that have to continued to disenfranchise black males and keep them isolated from society, allowing for upper class whites to continue to dominate society as they have for centuries. Through the term Jim Crow is not one that you see on a day-to-day basis to refer to the disenfranchisement of blacks in today’s society, it still exist and is full fledged. Targeting black through the form of drugs allows for racial discrimination to occur without using the classification as a public basis. Though one might argue that the issue is drugs, race is a consistent trait that is common is all cases of mass incarceration.
Things such as Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws were racist in their intent and were in place to try to keep Black people from advancing as a people. Black Codes denied freed slaves the right to vote, marry whites, and bear arms, or assemble after dark. Many argue that these Black Codes was the offspring of slavery in a disguised form, but the Jim Crow Laws weren’t much better. Jim Crow Laws regulated social, economic, and political relationships between whites and African Americans. Laws that segregated public and private facilities between blacks and white.
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.
Laws and policies were passed to protect the slave owners making it impossible for the slaves to learn to read or write. This was another attempt at keeping the slave’s dependent on their owners, so they would remain ignorant on what is going on without any skills or training. Although slavery is not in existence any longer racism is still alive and sometimes it does have an opportunity to come forward. The Africans were tormented and demoralized for centuries due to the color of their skin and was made to feel less than equal. Money and power was a driving force in the past and in today’s society which sometimes make a person do unethical and immoral things.
Every state had their own form of the Jim Crow laws. African-Americans used to be treated very poorly by the rest of the United States. They were still treated as though they were slaves until the end of the Jim Crow laws. Even after that, southern states still attempted to keep African-Americans from being equal to the rest of Americans. Taxes were put up in order to vote, which kept African-Americans from doing so because most were very poor.
A common misconception is that all white citizens hated and disrespected black citizens; however, “Even when the Jim Crow laws were being enacted, many people (including white people) felt that they were not fair. They believed that blacks and whites should have equal access to opportunity” (The Impact of Jim Crow Laws on Education 1). The Jim Crow Laws legally separated black citizens and white citizens with segregation in schools, public bathrooms, water fountains, and many more public places. Signs that read “Colored Only” or “White Only” were visible everywhere during that time period (Racial Segregation in the American South: Jim Crow Laws 1). Shockingly, in South Carolina, black textile workers could not even enter through the same door as a white man, let alone work in the same room (A Brief History of Jim Crow 1).
This cycle could be part of the reason African-Americans are poorer nationally than caucasians. This cycle truly began with slavery and then Jim Crow laws, African-Americans were oppressed and treated as less so they never got the chance to start on the same level as whites. We personally have family members that lived in a time when it was regular for and African American man to get lynched, tortured and killed for simply looking at a white girl wrong. We as a culture often forget how recent this really was, and that many social institutions have not fully adjusted. One of those institutions is our criminal justice system that is not as color blind as it claims to be.