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how does racial segregation affect us
racial segregation in united states
racial segregation in united states
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Did Racial Segregation Improve the Status of African Americans?
“Whites were there because they chose to be; blacks were there because they had no choice.” (p. 158) This quote, from the essay written by Howard N. Rabinowitz, encompasses many, if not all of the ideas that go along with racial segregation. It is a well-known fact that racial segregation did create a separate and subordinate status for blacks, however, seeing as how at the turn of the century the integration of blacks and whites was a seemingly unrealistic idea, segregation could be seen as somewhat of an improvement from the blacks’ previous position in the U.S. as slaves.
“Everything is forgiven in the South but color”. (p. 159) On the contrary to the above ideas, this quote, spoken by a black woman in Alabama, and seen in Leon F. Litwack’s essay opposing the idea that segregation improved the status of African Americans; shows how blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were characterized by increased inequality because of their skin color. What is looked at as an improvement by Rabinowitz is seen as “an informal code of exclusion and discrimination” (p. 160) by Litwack.
Although congress reconstructed the exclusion policy in 1867, many white Southerners still remained committed to the exclusion policy. As a result of this, the military and other forces, to grant new privileges and services to blacks, forced the whites. After all, segregation was the alternative to integration, and whites didn’t want integration. In Rabinowitz’s essay, entitled From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865-1890, many examples are shown in regards to how the exclusion of blacks was transformed into the segregation of blacks from whites. Some examples of this were seen in bars, athletic events, parks, trains, etc. An idea was presented by certain Republicans that said that separate provisions for blacks was not a violation of civil rights as long as the facilities and accommodations were equal to those of whites. Rabinowitz states: “They [blacks] accepted segregation because it was seen as an improvement over exclusion and because they believed, or at least hoped, that separate facilities could be equal.” (p. 156) The segregation of blacks was also seen by Rabinowitz as the chance to form a gro...
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...also think that in today’s society although things are not as they were in the 1800’s there is still a significant amount of racism and segregation implemented by whites and blacks. Although we are supposed to be equal, I think there is significant evidence that shows we are not.
Although racial segregation could be seen as part of the natural progression of blacks from going slaves to being equal to whites, I would have to agree with Litwack in his views that segregation did not improve the status of African Americans. The violence and discrimination that occurred during this time was not going to help the progression of blacks towards equality. By the government establishing separate facilities for blacks and whites, it showed its own discrimination towards African Americans. Even though facilities were supposed to be equal, the mere fact that they were separate and not integrated supported the idea that the two groups were not equal. After the Civil war, it could not be expected for blacks to immediately integrate with whites; however, different measures should have been taken by the government to ensure the proper and equal treatment of everyone.
The original edition of The Strange Career of Jim Crow had as its thesis that segregation and Jim Crow Laws were a relative late comer in race relations in the South only dating to the late 1880s and early 1890s. Also part of that thesis is that race relations in the South were not static, that a great deal of change has occurred in the dynamics of race relations. Woodward presents a clear argument that segregation in the South did not really start forming until the 1890s. One of the key components of his argument is the close contact of the races during slavery and the Reconstruction period. During slavery the two races while not living harmoniously with each other did have constant contact with each other in the South. This c...
Although some of Woodward’s peripheral ideas may have been amended in varying capacities his central and driving theme, often referred to as the “Woodward Thesis,” still remains intact. This thesis states that racial segregation (also known as Jim Crow) in the South in the rigid and universal form that it had taken by 1954 did not begin right after the end of the Civil War, but instead towards the end of the century, and that before Jim Crow appeared there was a distinct period of experimentation in race relations in the South. Woodward’s seminal his...
... newspaper article shown by Woodward gave a picture of how new the idea of segregation was in the South. Woodward put it best when he stated, “The policies of proscription, segregation, and disfranchisement that are often described as the immutable ‘folkways’ of the South, impervious alike to legislative reform and armed intervention, are of a more recent origin.” (65) He wanted to show how the roots of the system were not integrated with slavery. Jim Crow laws and slavery were both horrible institutions, but they existed as two seperate entities. Woodward does not claim the South to be picturesque, because the Jim Crow laws were not established in the region. The South established Jim Crow laws and made them worse than found in the North. Woodward’s goal was not to protect the South’s legacy, but to give a clearer picture of the facts regarding the Jim Crow laws.
2- Carl Schurz wrote reports called Reports on the Condition of the South, in 1865 in which he investigated the sentiments of leaders and ordinary people, whites and blacks, from the defeated South. He describes that was not safe to wear the federal uniform on the streets and soldiers of the Union were considered intruders, Republicans were considered enemies. But, even worse was the situation of freedmen in which were expected to behave as slaves for white Southerners. Schurz heard the same phrase, “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion,” (Schurz) from so many different people that he concluded that this sentiment was rooted among the southern people. He related this case of a former slaveholder that suggested blacks were unfitted for freedom, “I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a whipping.”
In conclusion, racial segregation provides a gateway for countless other forms of injustice. Blacks are forced to live in a world, in which poverty is an epidemic, infrastructure is inadequate, education is non-existent, families are torn apart, and crime and violence are everywhere. Segregation utilizes all of these factors within a certain area to isolate one group of people from another. This apartheid system refuses to acknowledge the rights of blacks as rightful citizens and forces them to endure the consequences of economic, political, and social oppression. That is unfair and unjust. It is ironic how Americans are the first criticize foreign countries, yet remain blind to their own faults. Until they can identify the problem, the United States of America will continue to struggle as a country.
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.
Segregation is the act of setting someone apart from other people mainly between the different racial groups without there being a good reason. The African American’s had different privileges than the white people had. They had to do many of their daily activities separated from the white people. In A Lesson Before Dying there were many examples of segregation including that the African American’s had a different courthouse, jail, church, movie theater, Catholic and public school, department stores, bank, dentist, and doctor than the white people. The African American’s stayed downtown and the white people remained uptown. The white people also had nicer and newer building and attractions than the African American’s did. They had newer books and learning tools compared to the African American’s that had books that were falling apart and missing pages and limited amount of supplies for their students. The African American’s were treated as if they were lesser than the white people and they had to hold doors and let them go ahead of them to show that they knew that they were not equal to them and did not have the same rights or privileges as they did just because of their race. In A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass segregation is shown through both slavery and the free African American’s during this time. It showed that the African American’s were separated from the white people and not
For 75 years following reconstruction the United States made little advancement towards racial equality. Many parts of the nation enacted Jim Crowe laws making separation of the races not just a matter of practice but a matter of law. The laws were implemented with the explicit purpose of keeping black American’s from being able to enjoy the rights and freedoms their white counterparts took for granted. Despite the efforts of so many nameless forgotten heroes, the fate of African Americans seemed to be in the hands of a racist society bent on keeping them down; however that all began to change following World War II. Thousands of African American men returned from Europe with a renewed purpose and determined to break the proverbial chains segregation had keep them in since the end of the American Civil War. With a piece of Civil Rights legislation in 1957, the federal government took its first step towards breaking the bonds that had held too many citizens down for far too long. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was a watered down version of the law initially proposed but what has been perceived as a small step towards correcting the mistakes of the past was actually a giant leap forward for a nation still stuck in the muck of racial division. What some historians have dismissed as an insignificant and weak act was perhaps the most important law passed during the nation’s civil rights movement, because it was the first and that cannot be underestimated.
Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, segregation in the United States was commonly practiced in many of the Southern and Border States. This segregation while supposed to be separate but equal, was hardly that. Blacks in the South were discriminated against repeatedly while laws did nothing to protect their individual rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ridded the nation of this legal segregation and cleared a path towards equality and integration. The passage of this Act, while forever altering the relationship between blacks and whites, remains as one of history’s greatest political battles.
During the first half of the twentieth century segregation was the way of life in the south. It was an excepted, and even though it was morally wrong, it still went on as if there was nothing wrong at all. African-Americans were treated as if they were a somehow sub-human, they were treated because of the color of their skin that somehow, someway they were different.
Furthermore, despite the Federal government’s attempts to combat white vigilance, violence was still continuously used against African Americans. Although higher education was now available to African Americans with the opening of universities such as Howard and Fisk, many ex slaves remained uneducated and therefore maintained an inferior position in society. Like French political observer Tocqueville noted, although slavery no longer existed, ‘racial prejudice’ continued. This allows us to draw the conclusion that while the reconstruction period succeeded in aiding African Americans in the fight for civil rights, its goals were not full-filled.
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
Massey, Douglas S. & Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1993.
Segregation was a terribly unfair law that lasted about a hundred years in the United States. A group of High school students (who striked for better educational conditions) were a big factor in ending segregation in the United States. Even though going on strike for better conditions may have negative impacts, African Americans were not treated equally in education because of segregation and the Jim Crow laws were so unfair and the black schools were in terrible condition compared to the whites’.
...ners they continued to fight. As more and more African American students were admitted into white Southern schools, segregationist continued to retaliate and defend their schools against them. No matter how difficult the situation turned out for some of them, and without much help from the government, African Americans did everything they possibly could to protect their educational rights for the sake of their future and success, and in the hope of promoting equality for all African American people of the United States. These students became the symbol of freedom and opened up the window of opportunity for all black people, for their ancestors, and for the future generations to come.