The Melting Pot Illusion: Understanding Race and Power by Rethinking American History

Race in Media
Mid-Term Paper
April 18, 2014
When it comes to race in the United States, America has always thought of itself as a racial and ethnic melting pot. This “melting pot” message has always been known throughout the world as a key aspect of America’s national identity, built on the promise that all people of various colors, races and ethnic backgrounds are afforded basic civil freedoms and opportunities to pursue their dreams within a democratic society. In fact, in school classrooms throughout the United States, where most of us received our initial understanding of American history, we often witness a romanticized narrative of Americans striving forward towards progress with limited or partial understanding of race, the complex story of Native Americans and their removal from conquered lands, and the enslavement of African-Americans. The purpose of this essay is to rethink prior understandings of American history and what race means, as well as how it has determined and limited citizenship and opportunity for some Americans, by exploring the voices in author Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove’s book Voices of a People’s History of the United States and other literary sources, and what American citizenship means to those not designated white, rich or male. The definition and concept of race, a human classification system used to group human beings into large and distinct categories, is a relatively recent modern concept, with roots in the breeding of animal stock that only became a commonly employed concept as a physical category by the end of the 18th century (Ferber 28). However, centuries earlier, emphasis on differences among human beings was used as a means for conquest and domination. Christopher Columbus, as taught in school history books, was known as a hero and great sailor who was the first to discover the Americas. Contrary to these distorted facts, he was not the first, as the Arawak Indians he encountered throughout the Americas and Caribbean islands would be there before him. Unfortunately, Columbus was the first, or one of the first, to participate in genocide and the transatlantic slave trade. In recent years, Columbus has begun to be characterized in a different light, as the first symbol of European imperialism in the Western hemisphere who kidnapped, tortured and killed the indigenous population he encountered, all in the pursuit for gold and riches. As witnessed and told by Bartolome de Las Casas, one of his contemporaries, Columbus and his men were greeted by a peaceful and generous native population, but because of their ruthless quest for gold and riches he inflicted enslavement, misery and death upon the natives on the lands he “discovered”, with profit as the driving force (Arnove and Zinn 29). As told by Bartolome de Las Casas, a native population on the island of Hispaniola of initially nearly 3 million had dwindled down to barely two hundred persons in a short period of time, and additional conquests on other islands followed, including San Juan (Puerto Rico), Jamaica and Cuba. After resistance by the Indians resulting in wars and killings had ended, many of the adult male Indians were killed and only their women and children remained, who were distributed among the Spaniard “Christians” to be enslaved, with attempts to convert them to Christianity. As de Las Casas became disillusioned and appalled by the cruelties committed by the Spaniards against the Indians, he began to defend the Indians and engaged in a debate with another priest before the Royal Council of Spain. This was one of the first known cases where one group of human beings brought into question the status and classification of another group of people as to whether they were sub-human and therefore deserving of their cruel and harsh treatment, all done in order to justify, rationalize and legitimize their conquest and enslavement (Arnove and Zinn 42). This method would be used centuries later in another period of American history with the brutal institution of the enslavement of African-Americans, through the plantation system, an economic system dependent on cheap and totally controlled labor left unchallenged by the Federal government. This led to some of the most inhumane and cruel treatments of human beings throughout the course of American history, a system which not only deprived a whole race of African-Americans without a heritage, but relegated them in history books with partial and limited truths about not only slavery conditions, but the hypocrisy of the American government in allowing these cruelties to be enforced and maintained, while the traumatic physical, emotional, and mental consequences can still be felt to this very day. These actions moved David Walker, the son of a slave who was born free in North Carolina and later moving to Boston, to write his pamphlet “Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” becoming widely read while infuriating southern slaveholders. As noted by Arnove and Zinn, Walker was moved to write candidly that no other group of people, including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks or Romans, had ever treated a set of human beings as cruel as the American slaveholders and government had treated Africans during slavery. Walker emphasized the hypocrisy of the language and message found in the American Declaration of Independence which touted America as a place where “all men are created equal” but were really enforcers of various cruelties and murders in their quest for profit and power (Arnove and Zinn 168-170). Throughout American history, race has also been used to commit violence against various racial groups, including African-Americans, and limit their citizenship and other opportunities. After the end of the American Civil War that officially ended slavery, the United States passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution, created in an effort to establish equality for all African-Americans. These amendments, in order, officially abolished slavery, addressed citizenship and equal protection for every citizen, and prohibited the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". All of these amendments promised great hope for all African-Americans, including former slaves, but unfortunately, these new freedoms promised by the Constitution would also bring continued struggles and challenges. With the betrayal of the former slaves by the Federal national government, widespread violence against African-Americans through burnings and lynchings became commonplace, especially in the southern states, as well as parts of the north. These acts of cruelty caused the African-American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett to document the way lynchings were being used as a means to terrorize and repress African-Americans to limit their civic, political and economic opportunities. The situation had been so bad for African-Americans that Barnett noted that “masks have long since been thrown aside and the lynchings of the present day take place in broad daylight”, with police authorities standing by and doing nothing to stop it, in fact sometimes being a part of the local lynch mobs themselves (Arnove and Zinn 232-233). During the period after World War II, African-Americans faced continued racism, Jim Crow segregation, poverty, unemployment or low paying, dangerous and menial labor work, and limited educational opportunities and voting rights. The American narrative of fighting for democracy was bent on hypocrisy after the treatment they received back home. Although some African-Americans were experiencing more exposure and acceptance of some aspect of their culture in mainstream society, as a whole they still were struggling to realize their dream of gaining the equal rights and freedoms they felt they deserved. In his poem “Harlem”, the literary writer and poet Langston Hughes explores the theme of racial equality through the imagery of dreams, reflecting on what happens when someone puts their dreams on hold (Arnove and Zinn 394). Hughes describes the possibility of dreams drying up like a raisin in the sun, indicating something has dried up and become small and withered, perhaps on the way to losing its existence. Hughes could be alluding to the racial oppression and repression that African-Americans were experiencing at that time, with unrealized dreams of true liberation, while having to put their dreams on hold because of these circumstances. This would paint a distorted picture of America not as a land of opportunity for all people, a melting pot where everyone has the opportunity to pursue and realize their dreams, but in reality a place where American citizenship means one thing for whites, a privilege with unearned special provisions that opens doors to various opportunities which they can cash in at any time, and another for African-Americans, a place of denials, closed doors and unacknowledged atrocities that have been committed against them. This hypocritical portrait of American society and its history all symbolize a place where democracy and basic civil liberties are all dependent on race, class, and gender. The mainstream media cannot be underestimated in the central role they have played in perpetuating racial and ethnic stereotypes. Those Americans not designated white, rich or male often have to encounter false or misleading truths about them which shapes how others think about them. Stuart Hall conveys these thoughts by telling us that there are often subtle and complex ways in which racist ideologies are sustained in our culture, where a pervasive racist “common sense” has become pervasive in American society (Hall). The media in particular works from this baseline of racist common sense with unquestioned assumptions, by allowing what we see in media images to formulate opinions about others. For instance, constant images of African-Americans as dumb, lazy and immoral who do not take life’s responsibilities seriously are constantly displayed in various television and film roles. Other images show them playing basketball, which leads to many assuming that they are naturally bred for being athletic, strong and possessing unlimited endurance and therefore use these innate qualities to excel at playing basketball, while images of Whites not being able to dance or Asians not being able to drive all sustain this “chain of meaning” from the media that build and shape the racist ideology. This racist ideology has led in past American history to having others justify enslavement and harsh treatment of other people as well as distort truths about events vital to America’s economic global expansion and position as conqueror of various territories. Hall notes that the racial and ethnic images and stereotypes we are given mirror what we believe makes sense and fits into our society. This chain of meaning also plays a role on how different people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds are treated by authorities and the justice system. Given the media imagery Americans are fed on a daily basis and throughout American history, it may seem impossible that whites comprise the vast majority of drug dealers and users, because what you see, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods, are African-Americans being subjected to racial tactics and practices exclusive to people of color in poor communities (Alexander). This has all led to African-Americans experiencing feelings of mistrust, hostility, confusion, alienation and fear, all emotions that whites, because of their privileged standing in American society, are subtly trained to not acknowledge, taking for granted their privileged status as American citizens with different sets of rules and treatment compared to people of color in American society. Through the voices of Arnove and Zinn, as well as other literary writers, my prior understanding of race has been revised as the gaps of American history have been filled in, knowledge gained along the way that has altered my understanding of how race and power have shaped American history. This understanding has allowed me to see the ways in which a privileged class has held a disproportionate amount of power, while limiting power, citizenship rights and other opportunities for people of color, often by the use of racist ideology as a divisive measure to form distinct classes – those who have and those who have not. Although America’s melting pot message still holds a significant image for many of a unified place with a shared sense of commonality and purpose, America has a long way to go in being honest and acknowledging its past history in order to come to terms with it’s harsh cruelties and treatment of others of the past and present. Only then can we begin the long and difficult process of realizing that people of every color and background deserve the same civil and democratic freedoms and opportunities to achieve their dreams.
Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press, 2010. Print.

Arnove, Anthony and Howard Zinn, Voices of a People’s History of the United States: Second Edition, Seven Stories Press. 2004. Print.

Ferber, Abby, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy, Rowman & Littlefield. January 1998. Print.

Hall, Stuart, “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media”, Lawrence and Wishart, 1981. Print.