...Kristy Nguyen JOUR453 Spring 2014 The Meaning of Race in a 21st-Century America As far as America has come in the battle for equality and improving civil rights, the topic of race still looms over our nation and sparks many different debates. The division of the 21st-century isn’t as obvious as it used to be in the past, there are no “Whites Only” sign to direct us and the simplistic black-white concept of race no longer exists. The issue lies much deeper than we could ever imagine and its fast-paced change is making it difficult to comprehend. The increase in the multiracial population further adds to the complexity of this topic and our ideas on race. That is why Center for American Progress located in Washington, D.C. decided to tackle this matter head-on by opening an in-depth panel discussion entitled “The Meaning of Race in a 21st-Century America” to dig into America’s history to find the origins of race, address race and ethnicity today as the nation’s demographics are shifting, and emphasize the importance of the U.S. Census to accurately represent the people of this. Featured panelists included Rinku Sen, President and Executive Director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation; Julie Dowling, Associate Professor, Department of Latina/Latino Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Roderick Harrison, Senior Research Fellow, Civic Engagement and Governance Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies; and Hilary O. Shelton,...
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...Final Exam At the turn of the last century, WEB Dubois wrote, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, --the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. Every study has come to the same conclusion that biologically, there are no 'races', yet the social construction of race as a category is alive and well today. The classification system, which radicalized different groups - typifying them according to their skin color and/or other defining features has a long history. With the advent of colonialism, racism underpinned the different and negative valuations attached to skin color. The racism of today is much more subtle and is no longer the blatant discrimination based on the color or your skin. It exists within the institutions of our society. It is the combination of government, corporate and media institutional racism that is largely responsible for the inequities of today. Unfortunately, these divisions impact the way in which we live our life and how we advance socially. Race has always been a complicated subject and is inevitable. Although we have made tremendous strides to dismantle the foundations of racism, it is clear and evident that racism still persists within the institutions of our society. I believe that America is one of greatest countries on the earth and it is a land of opportunity for everyone. The American dream is alive and well and many...
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...is black, white and red, respectively. The concept of racism is born from the interaction of the different races. More often than not, racism presents a conflict due to stereotyping and discrimination of members of one race against the other. This paper will discuss the idea of race and how racism has changed over time, as well as the historical challenges that people have presented to racism. Race-based conflicts have subsided in the 21st century as compared to the earlier centuries across the world. A clear chronological organization and thorough analysis into the available historical evidence will demonstrate the...
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...Over the last few decades British governments have been committed to tackling various aspects of direct and indirect racial discrimination with the incentive of promoting 'equality of opportunity' and remedying other social disadvantages suffered by black minority communities in British society’ (Solomos 1989:2). Equality of opportunity in this sense is associated to the concept of racial equality, which can simply refer to ‘social equality for peoples of all races’ (Crenshaw 1988). In spite of this however, there remain deeply entrenched processes of discrimination resistant to legal and political interventions throughout society (Solomos 1993). This essay will discuss the claim ‘there ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’ in relation to these processes of discrimination which have encouraged the mis representation and exclusion of Black people within British society. The first part of the essay will outline the meaning of race and racism in the 21st century. It will then go on to discuss processes of exclusion, which are reinforced by the media and politicians representation of black migrants and the existence of so called ‘White spaces’. These exclusions of black people can be seen to prevent them from identifying as British thus excluding them from being part of ‘the Union Jack’. Whilst the concept of racism has been restricted by the notion of ‘colour’ as it has concealed the full range of ways in which racism has operated in Britain, including against Jews, Gypsies and the...
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...Decline of Democracy in America The founding fathers didn’t create a democracy because they thought it would work perfectly. They didn’t give people the right to vote so that everyone would find true happiness. They knew better than to create a utopia where everyone had their own white picket fence, went to church on Sunday and lead lives as model citizens. They understood that toes would get stepped on, feelings would get hurt and sacrifices would happen. The founding fathers didn’t start a revolution to make people happy, they started a revolution because they believed in the idea that everyone had the right to equality. They founded America on the belief that hard work will lead to prosperity in the land of opportunity. All the ideas we associate with America: capitalism, the free market, education, elections, these all came about because people wanted to have power over where their life took them. Being able to make decisions in your own interest: the founding fathers based America on that principal, and they structured the government so it would protect those interests. Today, this is not the case. Although it may appear that America has come a long way since the civil and women’s rights movement, increasing inequality and discrimination in the 21st century has created a democracy that no longer represents the interests of its constituents but its ruling elite. Despite people’s preconceptions that our society represents...
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...from the Holocaust, to the Japanese Americans internment camps, to the segregation between African Americans and caucasians. America has never fully collaborated throughout time. Many have been treated differently, not only based on how they look but their gender as well. This is an issue that most are aware of but not to the full extent of seeing the true gory. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Jessica Viñas-Nelson’s ‘Post-Racial’ America”, they both encompass that gory through their thematic message; many people encounter mishaps such as discrimination due to their gender and race solely based on their identity and societal expectations. In Butler’s novel, Kindred, Dana travels back...
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...Civil Rights Movement Since 1845, African Americans have struggled to find equal rights in America. Thus, African Americas have a long history of activism in America, from fighting for the right to vote to pushing for integration in public places. Activists like Stokley Carmichael organized the freedom rides, James Meredith fought to integrate blacks and whites at the University of Mississippi, and Rosa Parks instigated the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Although these protests were often legal and non-violent, the protests made a powerful impact on civil rights in the United States. With the bravery and help of activist like Carmichael, Meredith, Parks and many others, the country slowly worked to acknowledge the basic rights and contributions of African-Americans within the United States. Through it all, African American civil rights leaders risked and sometimes lost their lives in the name of freedom to end segregation, discrimination and isolation to attain equality and civil rights. With civil rights activists leading the fight for racial equality, America slowly but surely became a better place. Through the protests, marches, sit-ins and news articles; African Americans showed there was more ways to attain freedom and equality as opposed to violence. Even before Rosa Parks, on Sunday July 16, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings Graham boarded a street car of the Third Avenue railroad company at the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets. The conductor of the train ordered her to...
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...Humanities Final Presentation essay– Final draft. While creating the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers arduously worked to create a document that could grow and progress as times changed in the United States. When it was first written, the statement that “all men are created equal” was certainly not in accordance with reality. However, over time, there have been significant and ongoing efforts towards creating equality for all people. Although many argue that the United States of America has made little progress in fulfilling the promises of its Declaration of Independence because of ongoing issues with racial, gender-based, and religious discrimination, they fail to consider that the U.S. has consistently been one of the most...
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...Race vs. Class From the time of slavery until the twenty-first century, race has been the driving element regarding opportunities for people of African descent. The question of whether this has changed presently is ambiguous. America has certainly evolved from a place of slavery and segregation to the self-proclaimed “Land of Opportunities” offering equal rights and prospects to all, yet there are still signs of inequality within the social construct of the nation. If one were to take a look at the American work field, they would notice the differences in positions acquired by African-Americans and Caucasians. African-Americans typically work minimum-wage jobs, living paycheck to paycheck and if they are fortunate enough to acquire an adequate paying job; their employers are Caucasians who usually own the major businesses and corporations. This inevitable conflict has emerged from America’s past history of unfair and unequal treatment of people of color. The American society has not completely eradicated the problem with racial discrimination and inequality within the workforce which has created the growing wealth gap. In the United States, issues of race and class are tied to together like a chain of DNA; one cannot address the issue of class without referring to the demographics of race. The methodology of determining the variations in social class was established in the mid-1960s and has not changed in the most latter years. Within the time span, there have been many studies...
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...subconscious attraction to the American or European aesthetic. It is the advantage given out of the subconscious desire to give instead of the desire to withhold from others. | Racial profiling | Racial profiling takes place when law enforcement officials make a conscious decision to take action or not take action on the basis of race of the offender. If a police officer pulls a black person over while driving because he or she is driving through a predominantly white neighborhood, then that officer would be guilty of racial profiling. | Racism | Racism is the belief and actions taken based on the belief that race determines the level of human a person is. During the slave trades many traders treated the African slaves as dogs and believed they were such, cattle to do their bidding. They did not judge them on their historical knowledge of the group because they had very limited historical knowledge. They based their decisions about and treatment of the Africans solely on their race. | Reverse discrimination | Reverse discrimination describes the thought that the laws created to protect minorities from discrimination actually put the majority group at a disadvantage. Affirmative action might often be heard in discussions about reverse discrimination. Affirmative action promotes the employ of different minority racial groups and genders and some believe that puts the others at a disadvantage. | Part II Complete the following using the MySocLab Social Explorer Map: Income...
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...blacks, or even the most derogatory term niggas have had a plight of racism and discrimination since their arrival onto the American soil. African Americans did not migrate from their homes to find new land to explore and/or cultivate but instead were captured by Europeans and taken away from their homelands to a new and unknown land. They were snatched from their homes to be brought to America to work as slaves. In 1619 the first African slave arrives in Virginia to be sold into what would be the dark ages of their existence. Slavery began when the first African slave was brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. European settlers in North America was looking to a cheaper labor source than indentured servants which were poor Europeans. After the initial Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore the British Colony of Jamestown, slavery spread throughout the other American colonies. Historians believe that and estimated 6-7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone (Staff, History.com, 2009). Initially black slaves worked mainly on plantations cropping tobacco, rice, and indigo. Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of taxation guaranteeing the right to repossess any person held to service of labor. In the late 18th century the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton which grew slavery in America. Cotton was a southern crop which production was unfortunately limited by...
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...blacks, or even the most derogatory term niggas have had a plight of racism and discrimination since their arrival onto the American soil. African Americans did not migrate from their homes to find new land to explore and/or cultivate but instead were captured by Europeans and taken away from their homelands to a new and unknown land. They were snatched from their homes to be brought to America to work as slaves. In 1619 the first African slave arrives in Virginia to be sold into what would be the dark ages of their existence. Slavery began when the first African slave was brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. European settlers in North America was looking to a cheaper labor source than indentured servants which were poor Europeans. After the initial Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore the British Colony of Jamestown, slavery spread throughout the other American colonies. Historians believe that and estimated 6-7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone (Staff, History.com, 2009). Initially black slaves worked mainly on plantations cropping tobacco, rice, and indigo. Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of taxation guaranteeing the right to repossess any person held to service of labor. In the late 18th century the mechanization of the textile industry in England led to a huge demand for American cotton which grew slavery in America. Cotton was a southern crop which production was unfortunately limited by...
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...movement of Anti-apartheid / Reformation and social change within world history. At the age of 9, after the death of his father, he began learning the role and qualities of a consensus leader under the guardianship of Jongintaba Dalindyebo of the powerful Thembu Regent. He later attended the Methodist primary and secondary institutions modeled after British schools at which he was introduced to western cultural values; he later received a B.A in correspondence at the University of South America and also a B.S in law from the University of Witwatersrand. In 1944 the African National Congress (ANC) was establish. He became their key negotiator, beginning his life’s journey of promoting the eradication of Apartheid in a nonviolent manner and establishing equal opportunities’/ privileges’ of all individuals in South Africa. He stood for the abolishment of the 1948 Afrikaner-dominated National Parties policy which allowed South Africa’s racial segregation that classified individuals according to their racial groups which banned them from living together, dictated where one could live, what school one could attend, where they could work, where they could be hospitalized and even the place of burial. In 1952 he organized the Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws where him and fellow members committed nonviolent but illegal acts of using and entering all white only establishment, toilets and striking,. They were later found guilty for "statutory communism" and banned...
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...American students, who have these background ethnicities, to describe in their own words what being Asian American means to them. In addition, we walked around campus and interviewed several second-generation Asian Americans. In their explanations, we encouraged the students to explain if it was a struggle growing up in America, whether they have ever been a victim to stereotypes or discrimination and how they have dealt with it. We took these statements and compared them to the stereotypes placed immigrants of the 1900s. In addition to the interviews, we analyzed our finding with an article published by Jerry Park of Baylor University titled, “Second-Generation Asian American Pan-Ethnic Identify: Pluralized Meaning of a Racial Label” who did a similar study in four public universities, along with other readings from class. The term, Asian American, was formed as a significant symbolic move in constructing an ethnic identity for the pan-Asian community in the 1960s (Espiritu, 33). The term was created to identify the majority of Asian American immigrants, mainly Japanese, Chinese and Pilipino (Espiritu, 32-33). The beginning waves of Asian immigration in America stared in the mid-1800s to early-1900s, of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Filipino and Korean descent (Hing, 28-50). These immigrants were used for hard...
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...of Texas. Today I am an economics professor at Harvard university, and I did not die before turning thirty. So the questions we need to ask is, why are African-Americans so much less prosperous than whites? Why do so many black children fail at school? And why do so many black men end behind bars? Do racial discrimination still exists? There have been some improvements through time the median black household income has risen from $22.300(in 2006 currency) in 1967 to $32.100 that is an improvement of 44 percent, but there is still a gab between blacks and whites, and this gab has existed since the late 80´s, and the gab has more or less frozen since then. Blacks’ median household income is still only 63 percent of whites. Blacks die, on average, five years earlier than whites. And academically, black children at 17 perform no better than whites at 13. People say that I am obsessed with education, that may be truth, but the fact is that a lot black children do not have the abilities to finish high school, and since this generation is our country next leaders, we need to prevent this from happening. I would say that education is the civil-rights battleground of the 21st century, so why do blacks lag behind in school? I have tested the most taboo proposition, are blacks genetically predisposed to be less intelligent? I have looked at new data from new test on very young children. At eight...
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