African American Racial Ideotype Essay

Question 1: In contrast to the majority of immigrants, Africans were first introduced to America as slaves, meaning that they were forced to migrate and it was not a voluntary movement. As slaves, African Americans provided whites with a solution to the high demand of cheap labor, therefore, slavery was maintained through many centuries. Black men, women and sometimes even children were owned by white Americans who claimed their superiority over the enslaved group. Often, blacks were tortured and forced to comply with excruciating hours of work and demanding labor. As mentioned, the sex or age was not taken into consideration for these tasks, meaning that most of the time African American women faced the same experiences as men in regards

Usually, this is done so the dominant group can rationalize their unjustly gained positions of power. In order to justify their positions of power, the dominant groups has devised racist stereotypes to show the inferiority of the subordinate group, the black Americans. Negative views of African Americans have been developed since the 1600s in Europe and have continued to exist. The origin of these racist ideologies stems from Europe, where the African race was seen as inferior to Caucasians. Because of these ideologies, many people, including Thomas Jefferson, continued to carry these ideas, which led to the creation of negative stereotypes. As racist ideologies were continued to be expressed, many stereotypes were originated. Some stereotypes depicted African Americans to have offensive odors, as potential rapists, as “apelike” creatures, etc. These stereotypes all originated in order to rationalize the oppression towards African Americans. One main factor that also gave birth to these stereotypes was the controversial topic of racial mixing. Back when slavery was predominant in the United States, many white slave owners would rape black women and created interracial contact, because of this African Americans were targeted with these