Hello Dave,
You know, a couple days ago I watch a TV show where the theme of intolerance was slightly noticed. The thing is in this ‘slightly’ – it seems like nowadays only a few people can clearly formulate its origins and reasons it still exists. With it, I also remembered the movie Crash, which also discussed some racial tensions (Crash). It was as if the TV show and movie were pulling me in the same direction. Maybe it is a coincidence, but on our last lecture we had some topics connected with this problem. Thus, in this letter I will try to touch you with this, doubtless, alarming disadvantage of our society.
I believe that any prejudice reflects the inadequacy of our society. They appear in people and entire States, directly or indirectly, by ‘preaching’ inequality in religious, ethnic, gender, age or other aspects of our life. However, mostly we are faced with religious and racial intolerance. Even a superficial analysis of the history of religious fanaticism gives us some insight on the nature of this phenomenon, its prevalence and the depth of its penetration into all spheres of people's lives. Insults, harassment, confiscation of property, the expulsion of individuals and entire populations, massacres, local and even world wars – all these are manifestations of religious and racial hatred. Therefore, I do not understand why such social phenomena still exist in our modern society.
The origins of fanaticism are deeply rooted in history and remain alarming to this day. Its spread is facilitated by all known forms of mass communications – from ancient scrolls to modern online blogs. The art also did not stay aside from these processes with all its influence on our society’s views on life. However, everything, after all, comes back to history.
The USA is a vivid example of such a phenomenon as prejudice. From the times when America had been under the wave of immigration until now – there are races, which suffer from the Americans’ prejudice. Starting from the Indians, it, in the aftermath, ended up with Afro-Americans. They were enslaved and even taken from their homeland as slaves to the USA in 1619.
Approximately 12 million enslaved men and women were forced to leave the African continent. Of course, as they were not counted as human beings, it was nothing that they were dying due to terrible living conditions on the boats. The middle passage death rate was about 10-20%, so just 9.6-10.8 million eventually arrived in the Americas. Then they were divided with their natives again: 90% went to the Caribbean and South America: about 500,000 came to what is now known as the United States of America ("Africans and in 18th ").
Thomas Jefferson once stated about enslaved black women that he consider them to be a child-making machines rather that women and therefore they are more profitable to have than black men ("Africans and in 18th"). It is it true that this was long ago.
The one, who fought for the blacks’ rights, was Martin Luther King. He is famous for his active civil position of fighting for his native – Afro-Americans. Especially remarkable moment in his story was his speech "I have a dream", which he was proclaiming in Washington D.C. in 1963 at the foot of the monument to Lincoln at a time when the U.S. Congress debated about the civil rights legislation. It was Martin Luther’s day of triumph.
He was seen on TV and heard on the radio by tens millions of Americans and millions of Europeans. He said that he had a dream of this nation to be more tolerant and united. "We hold it self-evident, that all men are created equal". He had a dream that one the children of former slaves and slave owners would be equal and would coexist together. In 1963, the magazine "Time" named him man of the year (Norton 175).
Actually, as a president, Thomas Jefferson put too much attention on the problem of the other races’ rights. People may approve him for infringing upon the rights of blacks, but doing so he only encouraged nation’s anger against them.
However, when Andrew Jackson became president in 1828, he as well saw in Native Americans competitors in possession of territory and violation of the USA constitution in addition. According to him, they were not even sovereign nations. He favored political and military action to remove them from lands that whites increasingly desired. Jackson saw the elimination of Native Americans as “inevitable” ("Native American Identity").
In his speech in 1833 he noticed that founds Indians some kind of competitors in the right of owning his homelands and that their ‘barbarian’ behavior he cannot stand ("Andrew Jackson Speaks: Indian Removal Policy :: Tracking Westward Expansion & The Trail Of Tears :: Critical Thinkers").
Nowadays there are organizations, which are responsible for the rights of black people and racial equality. Such is The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It was created in New York City in 1909 by blacks and whites and, as it is clear from the title, tries to fight for the equality in economic, political, educational, social spheres of life ("History+Of+Civil+Rights+Movements").
However, talking about Indians, women rights were well-respected. In the past, when men Amerindians, or Native Americans, had been doing their main job: hunting and feeding their families, women’s duty was to raise children and if it comes to the food, to gather fruits or nuts. However, with time gender relations became more European counterparts like, but with one exception which is in matrilineal/patriarchal social aspects: positions and possessions flowed from mothers to daughters, instead of from fathers to sons as in patriarchal or patrilineal societies.
The Iroquois Confederation (Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onandaga, Mohawk, and Tuscarora) was one on the mightiest Native nations that the British and French empires encountered and also matrilineal, or led by women. The Iroquois’ family standards were quite strange to us due to their special attention towards women in their families. For example, Iroquois men were said to love their mothers more than their wives, and their closest connections were with their mothers and her female relatives.
In the historical development, primitive society with its family structure and public ownership of land was replaced by a higher social organization. Originally, it was only the stratification based on age group. The most important place in this hierarchy were occupied by women of mature age, and their activity was predominant in the community. The veneration, which the oldest were surrounded, became the norm of ritual, almost a religious rite, because it was believed that they already communicate with the spirits of ancestors, among whom they themselves soon will be – spirits-the protectors of the tribe. The experience acquired during a long life, gave them the knowledge and wisdom needed to understand and guide the interests of the tribe. Elders began to act as judges and advisers, and their desires are the instructions were the ones that member of a pride must follow. In other words, they became a kind of legislature in the sphere of both material and spiritual culture. The tribe was developed according to the traditions, the meaning of which had been passing from mouth to mouth and which, therefore, is the most important element of the culture of primitive society. Traditions passed from generation to generation, eventually always allowed determining their source, which still feeds the inexhaustible spiritual wealth ("Gender: Native American Men And Women").
Of course, it was connected with the Americans-Indians conflict. After the "military victory" over the Indians of the prairies, Americans were already able to "purge" North America from the Indians, to drive them over the fence to reservations hoping that they will soon be extinct.
The creation of Indian Territory became, thus, a form of forced settlements of the natives of North America on a limited, designated government space. The other much more frequent and brutal were the RES. Even now, reservations are homes to over two thirds of the Indian population of the United States. Some of the authors of this policy created the reservation with outright intent to complete the physical destruction of the Indians, to destroy their national and moral unity ("Gender: Native American Men And Women").
Researcher William Ferris from the Center of the study of the South at the University of North Carolina said that racism is like a cancer, it cannot be completely cured. The only thing, which is left, is to achieve remission. It turns out that to remedy the situation the country will require many years, decades and even centuries. Well, let us see what happens next.
Works Cited
2016: Obama's America. Hollywood: Directed by Dinesh D'Souza and John Sullivan, 2012.
film.
"Africans and in 18th ". 2016. Lecture.
"Andrew Jackson Speaks: Indian Removal Policy :: Tracking Westward Expansion & The
Trail Of Tears :: Critical Thinkers". Synaptic.bc.ca. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
"History+Of+Civil+Rights+Movements". 2016. Presentation.
"Gender: Native American Men And Women". 2016. Lecture.
"Native American Identity". 2016. Lecture.
Norton, Mary Beth. A People And A Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001. Print.
Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Lionsgate, 2004.
