CHAPTER 1
Discrimination of one race against another should have by now been confined to history books, to the ignorance of the past.
There is no denying that, during the pre-scientific era when it was either not possible or difficult for one race to interact or even communicate with another, there were mutual suspicions and fairy-tales told about different races. Some of these stories were scaring and so formed basis for distrust. Allow me to cite a couple of examples here. First, I can still recall one of my classmates in 1982 telling me that while he was in grade school, one of his class-mates was brought to the principal for fighting in the rest room with his Caucasian class-mate. The child had wanted to see his tail, since he was told by his parents that people of African descent had tails like monkeys.
Second, I remember something that happened to me in 1985 during my post graduate studies in Rome. When I was going to help out in a parish at Easter celebration, some of the children who had obviously never seen any person of my brown complexion, came over following the celebration. They talked with me, and held and examined my hands to see if there would be any mark from my hands left in theirs. These two stories from different settings indicate the willingness of children, in their innocence, to step out from their enclosure to look for facts, not just the fairy tales they are saddled with. The question here is this: if children can embark on this fact- finding strategy, why should adults prefer to remain comfortable in their ignorance rather than recognizing the fact that, just as there are varieties of things to make life much more meaningful, so are there people from different races created by God, differing in size, charisma, colors or complexions, or any other endowments. Besides this, in this contemporary global village of ours, where all means of knowledge is made available for those who care to know, it has become obvious that the worth of any human being does not depend on which part of the globe the individual was born or on his/her complexion but the type of human being, good or bad he/she chooses to be.
AMERICAN Background Check: There is no justification for anyone to be a Racist
In this country, we know that before someone is hired for any reasonable job background check is of utmost importance. In this context, we are going to examine the background check not of individuals but of the country itself to show that there is no justification for someone to be a racist. Historically it is a well-known fact that the original inhabitants, the owners of this land are the Indian Americans (Native Americans) who, initially happily welcomed immigrants from Europe and helped them to settle and cultivate the land. Unfortunately they were gradually sidelined by the very guests who, through technology had access to weapons with which the Native Americans were pushed aside and consequently confined to a small section of the country. They were considered too primitive to be allowed to mingle with the "enlightened or civilized Europeans". The Obama's administration is now realistically incorporating their culture into the mainstream of this country. For example in 2013, Obama appointed a Native American woman to serve as federal judge.
There is no doubt that the fertility of the land brought about the negative and long standing injustice of the American enslavement of the unfortunate Africans brought in chains into this country. Beginning in the 16th century, Africans were brought to cultivate the land for the Caucasians, since they were naturally endowed with strength with which to till the ground and conquer it (Gen. 1: 28). Before delving into how African-Americans were actually brought and forced into the country as slaves, it is important to briefly examine how the immigrants from Europe first kept Native Americans as slaves.
Conflicts of the European immigrants with the Native - Americans
From the end of the 15th century, the emigration of those of European extraction to the Americas led to centuries of conflicts and adjustment periods between the immigrants and the natives. Many Native Americans lived as hunter gatherer societies and preserved their history in oral tradition and artwork. Therefore the first written accounts of conflict were authored by European immigrants. As would be expected, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of proto-industrial immigrants. These differences, along with the shifting alliances among different nations at the time caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence and social disruption.
Following the revolt of the then colonies against Britain, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as US citizens either voluntarily-- as with Choctaw-- or by force. The expansion of the European American populations to the west following the American revolution resulted in increased pressure on Native American lands, warfare between groups and rising tensions. In 1830 the US congress passed the Indian Removal Act authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their own lands within the established states to lands west of the Mississippi River to accommodate the European American expansion. This led to the near genocide of many tribes, with brutally forced marches known as the trial of tears. It was the establishment of the treaty rights that eventually allowed the Indian Americans to gradually embrace formal education through which they developed cultural activism in the late 1960's and political participation. This led to expanding efforts to teach and preserve indigenous languages for younger generations as well as infrastructures. More recently Native Americans have founded independent newspapers and online media including, the first Native American television channel, Native American studies programs, tribal schools- including universities and museums, and language programs. Several Native Americans have also become published authors.
Slavery in the Americas
Prior to the advent of European immigrants into the U.S., the Native Americans often had tribal wars among themselves, and captured men from the warfronts as slaves. He slaves were eventually integrated into the tribes in which they were brought. At times such captive slaves were made to ill in the gaps left by the men killed during the war. Initially when the Europeans arrived America, some of these slaves were sold to them by tribal warriors to work on the Europeans' farms. Slavery in America first began in April 1502 when the Spanish colonist transported the first Africans forced into slavery and brought in chains to Hispaniola. his mark the initial contact of the Native Americans with Africans. He bone of contention between the African-Americans and the Native Americans surfaced when the former coming in initially as traders gained favor with the Europeans. Following the ensuing envy in which the Cherokee exhibited the strongest color prejudice of all Native Americans, it was contended that because of the European fears of a possible united revolt of the Native Americans and African slaves, the colonist encouraged hostility between the two groups: "Whites sought to convince the Native Americans that African-Americans worked against their best interest".
In 1751 South Carolina Law stated :"The carrying of the negroes among the Indians has all along been thought detrimental, as an intimacy ought to be avoided". In addition, in 1758 the governor of South Carolina, James Glen, wrote:
"It has always been the policy of this government to create an aversion in them, Indians to Negroes. The two groups considered inferior by the Europeans were made to work and live together (as slaves to the Europeans), produced collective recipes for food, shared herbal remedies, myths and legends and in the end intermarried. Due to the shortage of men, many tribes encouraged marriage between the two groups to create stronger, healthier children from the unions".
Since the 18th century, many Native American women married the run-away African men due to the decreased in the population of men in Native American villages. Some of the Native American women, due to the matrilineal family system, bought male African slaves but, unknown to the Europeans, freed and married these African men into their tribes. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which the colonists incorporated in to the law, when the African men married and had children with their Native American wives, the children so born were freed since the mother was free.
The Initial attempt at abolishing Negroes slavery
It was only after more than three centuries (from 1504 to 1863) of enslaving the people from Africa that it gradually dawned on some politicians that such obnoxious trade should be stopped. This is attributed to be one of the causes of the civil war fought between the Northern and Southern parts of the country. In January 1963, President Abraham Lincoln issued an Emancipation Proclamation setting free all the slaves engaged in the civil war. Though it was only limited to the slaves conscripted to fight on the side of the Union, the proclamation marked an important point of departure in American history. It is believed that at least in theory, slavery came to an end with the passage of the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution on December 1865 passed by Congress on January 31 and ratified by the states on December 6. It abolished slavery in the United States and provided that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United State or any place subject to her jurisdiction. This amendment was passed at the end of the civil war before the Southern States were restored to the Union. Though it had been passed by the Senate on April 1864, it was only through the intervention of President Lincoln that it was added to the Republican Platform for the upcoming presidential election. That consequently convinced the House (Congress) to finally pass the bill on January 31th, 1865 with a vote of 119-56. The following day, February 1, Lincoln approved the joined resolution of Congress and submitted the proposed amendment to the states' legislatures whose necessary majority number ratified it on December 6th, 1865.
The slaves trade mentality continue to manifest itself from 1865 till now, with the rise of racial discrimination in nearly all sectors of American life. Before delving into the intricacies of discrimination in various categories, it is important to peruse key phases in the struggles that African-Americans, those affected [right arrow]the most in the fight for freedom, have been enduring for all people now living in this county.
1964 Civil Right Act
Prior to his assassination in 1963, President John F. Kennedy, proposed a Civil Right Bill aimed at putting an end to the segregation of African-Americans from Caucasians in public facilities and transportation such as schools, restaurants, train, busses, Churches, and a host of others. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson convinced the Americans that the time had come to address the segregation problem. With the increasing number of African-Americans in cities the Caucasians started passing restrictive laws demarcating urban spaces within racial lines. As if this was not enough, they also instituted the "separate but equal law". When a mixed race thirty year old shoemaker, Homer Plessy violated the Louisiana separate Car Act delineating separate train cars for "white and Black" passengers in 1892, the case was taken to the Supreme Court. The court upheld the law favored by a 7–1 vote "as long as the facilities were separate but equal". This became known as the Jim Crow law. However it is worth noting that the only dissenting vote was cast by Justice John Marshall Harlan. In defense of Plessy, he protested that his colleagues were wrongly favoring the existing segregation. He said:
"Our constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. The arbitrary separation of citizens on the bases of race while they are on public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and equality before the law established by the Constitution. It can never be justified upon any legal ground".
This had to be challenged in court since the facilities were never equal in 1954. Gradually it led to the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and sit-inns of 1960 as well as the Freedom Rides of 1961. As more and more African-Americans risked their lives exposing the harshness of the racial laws in the wake of the Brown decision, the federal Government along with the president could no longer ignore segregation. It is against this backdrop that President Johnson, as indicated above, announced his intention to push a Civil Right Bill: "... no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter and to write it in the books of law".
President Johnson received the needed votes in congress enabling him to sign the bill into law in July, 1964. The first part of the legislation states that its purpose is "to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodation, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits, to protect facilities and public education, to extend the commission on civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federal assisted programs, to establish a commission on Equal Employment Opportunity and other purposes".
The main purpose of the Act was to end the piecemeal strategy of integration by putting an end once and for all to Jim Crow law which has created legalized discrimination that lasted for over 60 years.
The Effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts
While in the South, the Caucasians were still maneuvering the legal and extra legal means to deprive African-Americans living there of their Constitutional rights, in the North, the de facto segregation still continued to raise its ugly head. African-Americans lived in the worst urban neighborhoods and attended the worst urban schools. The only positive thing in this legislation is that it ushered in a new era in which African-Americans could seek legal redress for civil rights violations. The Act, as noted by Lisa Vox not only led the way for the voting Rights but also paved the way for programs like affirmative action.
The negative side of the law and indeed most other laws enacted to favor African-Americans since the end of the slavery in this country is that they still generate various forms of subtle servitudes including: racial, or ethnic, job, or employment, residential, gender discrimination, hate crime, stereotypes, and racial profiling. Racial profiling in particular generates many conflicts particularly between the police and the African-American young men who are sometimes killed at random by some of the Caucasian police officers. This subject is the main rationale for undertaking this write-up.
