Summary Of Democracy In America

Alexis de Tocqueville is a French author and historian. Tocqueville’s text Democracy in America takes place in the 1830s and the French are the main audience. Analyzing Tocqueville’s observations of America is important because it teaches the livelihood of people around the time this novel is written. The lifestyle of the people around this time was consumed with racism and prejudice in the form of slavery. America still has racism and prejudice today, but in the form of name-calling and actions towards another person instead of slavery. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville prophesizes that prejudice will exist even when slavery is abolished; today, although Americans are legally entitled to equal rights, discrimination continues to exist
Chapter 18 of Democracy in America explains how all of the groups are different. Tocqueville states,
Three races, naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each other, are discoverable among them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education and law, as well as by their origin and outward characteristics, but fortune has brought them together on the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not amalgamate, and each race fulfills its destiny apart. Tocqueville believes that the African Americans, Native Americans and Anglo-Americans will never come to accept each other because they have nothing in common, from facial features to their religion, causing a wide barrier between their relationships with each other. This becomes prevalent just after the Civil War and sadly still exists today in a similar way. For example when president Obama was running for office people refused to vote for him based on the fact that he was African American. Since African Americans today feel discriminated against, they have created groups and organizations to prevent awareness of the problem they face everyday, one being the Crossroads