“The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.” The ”New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, published in 2010, explains the development and constant change of the current racial caste system and its effects on African-Americans and other minorities. She offered a persuasive analysis on why our society is the way it is and how those who are affected can change it.…
According to the narrative of Frederick Douglass, during the 19th Century, the conditions slaves experienced were not only cruel, but inhumane. It is a common perception that “cruelty” refers to the physical violence and torture that slaves endure. However, in this passage, Douglass conveys the degrading treatment towards young slaves in the plantation, as if they were domesticated animals. The slaves were deprived of freedom and basic human rights. They were not only denied of racial equality, they weren’t even recognized as actual human beings.…
In 1855 a potato famine caused Irish immigrants to flee Ireland in search of a better life. In 1857, many of these immigrants arrived in the America for the plentiful job opportunities. Mills in Lewistown, Maine, and Lowell, Massachusetts sprung up overnight to provide these people with jobs. However, soon these immigrants found that their new lives were far more difficult in the land of the free than they imagined. What they found was a system similar to that of the south, where the working classes was mistreated and underpaid by the rich and powerful. The leader of the Women’s Rights Movement, Susan B. Anthony, said this: “The men and the women of the North are slave-holders, those of the South slave-owners. The guild rests on the North equally with the South.” Susan B. Anthony meant that the laborers in the North and slaves in the South were treated the same; that is, unfairly.…
The first thought that comes to mind when talking about racism is the separation of two races based on skin tone. “In 1960, when a six-year-old girl enrolled in a white school in New Orleans, parents withdrew their white children in her class. She was the only child in her classroom for over a year.”(Baughman et. al.). In the 1960s, African Americans were mistreated in the US, mostly in the south. Kathryn Stockett, the author, assumed that society wouldn’t be as understanding in her writing The Help, because many wouldn’t clasp the fact that the nation was discriminating.(Stockett). For her, though, it was convenient to write about the other side of the situation in this era. “I don’t have to think about the dialect. It wasn’t hard for me to get that musicality on the page because I started writing the voice of Demeitre and she sounded exactly the way I wrote her.”(Stockett). Growing up, she had an African American maid,Demeitre, in which she got close with, and being accustomed to her always being around, it later got her to write Aibileen’s parts in the…
Harriet Jacobs’ narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, not only presents her journey through slavery and her experiences but also shows how she asserted her identity as a woman and resisted the sexual humiliation and exploitation most African American women suffered in slavery. Harriet Jacobs, speaking through her narrator, Linda Brent, reveals her reasons for deciding to make her personal story of enslavement, degradation, and sexual exploitation public. Jacobs was a woman of great dignity, strong will, and aspiring desire. Harriet was considered nothing more than just a slave girl would give anything for the freedom for herself and her two children. Jacobs asserts that slavery is not only about “perpetual bondage” but also about “degradation”. Jacobs indefinitely uses her knowledge as a key to gaining freedom from the bondages of slavery. Her own education provides her with a look at the possibilities of freedom in the North and this her mental capabilities allow her to fight herself free from her obscene master, Dr. Flint. Linda’s actions in this book underscore a theme of the love and support of the black community and especially the community of women and how this community served as a critical component of the struggle for survival and freedom. Harriet Jacobs asserted her identity as a woman and resisted the sexual humiliation and exploitation in her narrative Incidents through control over the situation with Dr. Flint, the risks she took for her children, and through the strength she held while being mistreated.…
Michelle Alexander, author, accentuates this fact by saying that “there are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began”.…
It is through the growth of “moral worth and intellectual improvement” that Maria Stewart believes the African American race will prosper and be accepted by the white community. Continuing on the topic, Stewart qualifies that no person, white or black, is content with their lives if they are forced to perform menial jobs when they clearly obtain the capability to hold jobs that far surpass the skill level of the “servile labor” they find themselves executing. She even goes so far as to say that if her lot in life was to make a living performing such a task and knowing there was “no possibility of rising above the condition of” the job, she would rather die. In the following sentence she personifies chains, such as those in slavery (and the newest, more modern form of slavery – being stuck in menial jobs), as those of “ignorance and poverty,” to once again display the “horrible idea” that would be to support such slavery. For it is impossible to “enrich” one’s life when spending it “washing windows, shaking carpets, brushing boots, or tending upon gentlemen’s tables” in that once you return home from such a job at the end of the day, the motivation to engage in more substantial, intellectual activities dies. To conclude, Stewart makes the point of attempting to connect with her new, white audience by stating that their American blood flows through her. She is careful to say “your blood” as opposed to our blood because she is aware that due to her previous colloquial language used when reaching out to her black audience, her more intelligent crowd is now skeptical to whether or not she shall be accepted into the likes of their group or calculated as another “lazy and idle” member of what they view to be the African American…
Skinner, E. Benjamin. A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. New York, NY: Free Press. 2008.…
There are more African Americans under correctional control today, in prison or jail, on probation or parole then where enslaved in 1850s. Civil Rights advocate and writer of The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander acknowledges in her book that the African American community is suffering more than the non-colored people when it comes to the U.S Justice system. Alexander introduces the book with a story about a man names Jarvious Cotton. Cotton was not allowed to vote just like his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather because of the history behind their color. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather beaten to death…
History has had an immersive influence on our lives today. Slavery is a sensitive subject to discuss, but it’s vital to get to the root of influences in African Americans lives. Africans experienced murky times in the 1600’s, they had their freedom revoked from them and was coerced to do free labor, known as Slavery. African slaves was not treated with rights like the colonist; they were treated and viewed equivalent to modern day machines; managed what needed to be managed, fixed what needed to be fix, and replaced what needed to be replaced. Slaves were originally promised land and freedom in exchange for seven years of labor, but as the colonies prospered the colonist were reluctant to lose their labor. In 1641 slavery became legalized; African…
Our forefathers have battled for our independence and today it is our turn to do the same for every slave. Consider the plight of every single man, woman and child in enslavement as we speak. Each of these human beings has been forced to do backbreaking work under horrific living conditions under threat of a beating or worse. They have been dehumanized and violently abused for too long and it is time for us to speak out for those who have had their voice taken from them. Even by using one’s intellectual knowledge it can be understood that the entire practice of slavery is based on the false assumption that black people are inferior to whites and are made for…
The issue of Slavery, though believed by some to be no longer evident, is still, unfortunately, a huge industry throughout the entire world. A few include, sweatshops, sex trades, and even drug cartels. All these plague society, of the, “modern world.” Even though, many years ago, we claimed to have, “abolished,” slavery, the true reality, is that we only ended it in one aspect, in one place. We don't truly look at what still exists. We turn our back to the real issues, to simply pretend that they don't exist.…
The United States of America was founded on the concept that all men are created equal; however, it has taken us until the last fifty years to make significant strides toward equality for many minority groups. Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a vastly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence (www.history.com, 2015). In 1960, the black Americans made up 10.5% of the total population and 55% of them were living in poverty (http://www.shmoop.com/, 2015). This is just one example of how a century of oppression can affect a whole demographic.…
cruel, inhumane, and brutal. We have saw in the past the way the white men did the African Americans slaves when they put them in cages, stack them on top of each other, and stuffed them on boats basically leaving the African slaves for dead. Also we seen in the past how the white men took the African family’s split them apart and sold them off to other white men like they were food. In addition to that the white men even raped some of the African women. So, as you can see this is why slavery was never necessary in society because the slave owners could do their own work and also it’s not right to make someone work for less than the work is worth.In addition to the previous paragraph,…
It was a hot August day as sweat beat down on Thomas Jefferson Brown. He had been working in the field 2 hours before the hot sun had made its presence known. He looked back over the drying field, hoping that this crop would provide for his family better than last years crop had. Thomas watched his oldest son, Nathan, who worked down one row of the field while staring intently at the cotton plants as he picked the cotton. Nathan was a very inquisitive young man who had just yesterday asked his father what it was like being a slave for Mr. Walter Johnson. When his father had told him that in a lot of ways life was so much easier than now, Nathan had given him a look that allowed Thomas to know that his son could not understand. How could he understand? Nathan had not grown up a slave and seen that while it was extremely difficult, there was a feeling of stability to life then. Yes, Thomas Jefferson Brown had endured the beatings and yes he had watched as his Mother and eventually his sisters had been sexually assaulted, but how do you tell a young man such as Nathan that such was the way of life; it was to be expected, along with the comfort of knowing where your next meal was going to come from. Since Tomas had been freed after the great war, He s and his family had endured much more than that; having watched the lynching of two of his brothers and numerous friends. They were the lucky ones though, Thomas thought, while looking up at the fiery ball of heat known as the sun. They did not have to endure other hardships; their suffering was over. Yes it was hard for Nathan to know that life was indeed easier as a slave than a freed man, and maybe, just maybe, things would change during Nathan's lifetime. Thomas Jefferson Brown wiped his brow once more and continued on picking the cotton Even though the civil war ended in 1865, African Americans still faced an uphill battle to obtain rights that were afforded other Americans. This was in…
