African Americans In The 18th Century

Since the American people declared independence from the British in the late 18th century, one of the biggest issues in the United States was and still is the status of African Americans. First, there was heated controversy over whether or not it was justified to have blacks enslaved, and this issue would evolve as America would have to adjust to having African Americans free from their shackles. American history has been tainted by its poor treatment of the African American community for no just reason other than the uneducated view that whites were more civilized and superior than black. However, despite the fact that change in general is typically slow, progress in terms of equality is possible and probable in the present-day United States
During the antebellum period, African Americans could be sold and auctioned off to the highest bidder, and as a slave, they were often overworked and mistreated. For instance, Harriet Jacobs recalls how her mistress, Mrs. Flint, would “sit in her easy chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from every stroke of the lash” (3), illustrating how cruelly treated slaves were. Moreover, Jacobs also discusses how Mr. Flint would “either order [his cook] to be whipped, or compel her to eat every mouthful” of the food that he did not find to his liking (3). Even in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he depicts how Miss Watson was “gwyne to sell [Jim] down to Orleans”, so “she could git eight hund’d dollars” (60), which illustrates how slaves were not treated as humans during the time. In addition, even the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass faced his fair share of inequality when he would have to “pour the reward of [his] toil into the purse of [his] master (2), and this portrays how America -- the so called nation of the fee -- was at the lowest point of racial equality prior to the Civil
Moreover, they also describe how the attitudes towards African Americans hasn’t changed as racists are still elected into offices of power and groups like the KKK still have a strong prevalence in American society. Despite these assertions which have some truth to them, to deny the fact that progress has been made is to deny that the US as a whole is a progressive nation. Although a good portion of African Americans live below the poverty line, it is a far better to live in poverty than to live in slavery where one could be punished and treated as property. Moreover, those blacks that do live below the poverty line are eligible for federal benefits, which is vastly different to a century ago when there was discrimination rampant within the US government. Furthermore, the argument of the prevalence of racism in government and society is quite weak when compared to the fact that the current KKK is far weaker to the KKK of the 1920s when there was an unprecedented paranoia of all who weren’t white Protestants. In addition, Barack Obama’s election into the office of the presidency as well as the fact that Congress today is not like the Congress of the 19th and early 20th centuries when political parties made it part of their platform to limit