Introduction
Race is the discrimination of a person or group of persons by treating them unfavorably due to his/her personal characteristics. The personal characteristics that are used to distinguish one race to another include; facial features, skin color and hair texture. The most common form of discrimination in the United States is color discrimination. After watching the short film History: Race in the USA, my definition of race has not changed but I have discovered race is not a thing of today. It started long ago and it has reduced tremendously. Racism and race has a complicated and long history in the United States of America, it started in the peculiar institution of slavery in the 14th century and continued to hunt the United States until in the 1960’s during the civil rights movement when it started to diminish. By learning about the shakers and movers during the fight for civil rights an individual will understand how racism has affected American citizens over the years. The united state government has tried to right the wrong of the past by introducing practices such as affirmative action that protect the right of every individual in the society.
Right to land was one of the promises of Reconstruction. Black people who discriminated from allocation of land were promised the freedom of owing and working on their own farms. Working on share was also a promise of Reconstruction. Almost all the shares which black people worked for went to white people but during the Reconstruction period, black people were promised to have the right to use their share. Other promises include right to education, stable family, basic civil protections, right to vote and to vie for elective post and owning own institutions. Failure include less substantial economic gains, black American were still forced to give half of their farm products to white land owners. Unethical activities such as economic depression and political scandal took place and prevented African American from attaining political power. After watching the film Slavery by another Name, my opinion regarding Reconstruction has not changed. Reconstruction did not provide equal opportunity to both white and black Americans. It still favored the white while discriminating blacks due to their skin color.
The current government of the United States is being used as a contemporary form of shambolic lynching because there are still many black Americans who are killed in the name of extrajudicial activities. The recent killing of a black teenager, Trayvon martin, in Florida is an example of how black Americans are still killed due to their race. The killer of the teenager, Zimmerman said he killed the teenager in self defense. But this is not the first case where black Americans are killed and nothing is done.
Reference
Ida B. Wells: A Lifetime of Activism
