By:
9/9/2013
1. Columbian historian Eric Foner (1983) quotes W. E. B. Dubois in calling reconstruction a “splendid failure (p.16).” After studying the events of late 19th century, defend whether or not you agree with his position. What are the long-term implications?
In my opinion the one of the largest mistakes that was made was the amount of racism that still continued in America. Still to this day there is a large amount of racism in America, the only difference is it is not just between white and blacks. When it comes to racism for some reason it seems all races and all people can’t just get along. Growing up in the south I have seen this first hand. The problem is now if there is any kinds of disagreement between races it is blown way out of proportion. A small example would be the Travon Martin case. This case should of not had half of the publicity it did, but because it was a crime that was white on black people took it as a hate crime. The problem in my opinion is it was not even white on black and half of America still seems to think it was. When people get something in there heads they are going to put their own “twist” on what they think happened and it will cause things to get out of hand. I believe the Emancipation Proclamation was intended to be the right step in fixing a problem. The problem still existed because even when it comes to law officials there is racism to this day. I have seen police officers that treat people that are not the same race as them differently because that is the way they were raised. That to me is something that is unacceptable, if you are a police officer or a person in a similar position and they still are using race to make decisions it creates more problems in the first place. On the other side some people attempt to use their race to benefit themselves because they are a minority. I went to school with a young African American that was picked on because of the color of his skin, he was new to