When the Hater Meets the Hated- Why is Tom Robinson Guilty? One may be punished for something he or she never did depending on the circumstances in their community. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows in Maycomb County, a society being controlled by racism, Tom Robinson is punished for assaulting Mayella Ewell even though he is the victim. If the majority of the inhabitants of a community are racist, the racist social values influence everything that takes place in the courts of the community. Thus the racist social values of Maycomb County are responsible for the failure of Atticus Finch’s defense for Tom Robinson.
His family tried their best to mold him into a better man in order to survive the later years to come. Wright had to realize the harsh realities of the consequences of being a black man in the early 1900s. In that time, many blacks were tortured for the simple fact that they were not white. Black people experienced much violence. Jim Crow Laws promoted the idea that blacks were naturally mediocre to blacks in all important ways, including intelligence, morality, and civilized behavior.
Therefore, the black community in Maycomb was crippled with fear. A fear that they will get lynched for a crime they did not commit. Stereotyping is a human instinct. We will always stereotype people's race, class and families. When Aunt Alexandra lived with the Finches, she said this to Scout about the Cunninghams, "Because he is trash, that's why you cant play with him.
Even after slavery ended, most citizens and leaders in the country believed that African Americans were inferior and made laws specifically to repress African American rights. Even more recently, after the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II, the United States government placed many Japanese-Americans into internment camps where they were often malnourished and mistreated. Undoubtedly, most citizens within these groups must have a complex view of the flag that isn’t positive or unifying. How can the American government expect the Native American peoples, African Americans, or the Japanese-Americans to respect the American flag and its hypocritical ideals? The answer should obviously be that the government cannot, the ideals being hypocritical due to the United States taking control over these groups more extremely than Great Britain ever had
While there may have been many who disliked and hated African Americans, the Civil Rights campaigners crafted and cunningly planned tactics to permanently change the opinions of the brain-washed racists using methods and people, such as: Little Rock, Martin Luther King and Rosa parks (bus boycotts) – as source 7 displays R. Parks being arrested for refusing to give up her seat for sitting in the ‘white only seats.’ Racism was also stored in the hearts and minds, which can be identified through Source 3, which shows the two separated sinks that a black and white person would use – the clean, spacious tap for the whites, and the dirty, tiny tap that the black people would use. While some may argue that Little Rock was the most important event of the civil rights campaign, others may argue that Little Rock was not the most important event. However, it is clearly evident that Little Rock was indeed the most important tactic to tackle segregation. Conversely, it is clear that Little Rock was not the most important event of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, in Source 13, a young, intelligent, black girl is present being violated, spat on and yelled at by the white, racist crowd.
Rather than place the blame at the feet of the poor, the author demonstrates how federal and local governments aided in cutting off persons from decent housing, economic and educational opportunities with legalized segregation and planned metropolitan expansion that sought to ensconce the poor in the shadows of southern society. This intensified the poverty as a whole to the point where it then became the highest ranked poverty are in the nation. Dyson points out that this nation’s willful ignorance and naivety concerning its poorer and disproportionately darker citizens is disturbingly sad and dissapointing. The second and third chapters, “Does George W. Bush Care About Black People?” and “The Politics of Disaster,” focus directly on toward the “rhythms, relations, and rules of race” that informed the federal government’s response to Katrina, or lack thereof, and the anemic structuring of FEMA that has been embattled by a history of what the author refers to as “a combination of cronyism, politicization, inexperience and incompetence” respectively. According to Dyson, Katrina uncovered a culture of “passive indifference” to the problems plaguing poor black folk that as a matter of consequence is indistinguishable from “active malice.”
Mass Incarceration is the New Jim Crow Daniel N. Johnson ENG: English Composition II Instructor: Ashton Schwarz November 11, 2014 The Mass incarceration of men of color (African-Americans) and to a lesser extent Latino-Americans is the 21st century New Jim Crow. It is the brainchild of American (European) Eugenics and/or white supremacy fueled by physical, social, and psychological warfare for the psychological and social annihilation of men of color. The social and racial disparity that men of color face when it comes to mass incarceration has proven detrimental much like the years of Jim Crow and slavery. It has been fueled by the ideology of white supremacy and American Eugenics, which uses propaganda and psychological warfare to convince non-people of color that men of color are a threat to their existence and our society as a whole. Michelle Alexander, who holds joint appointments with Ohio States Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, works as an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and has made a profound impact on the topic of mass incarceration of men of color.
In this short essay I will define institutional racism, its history in American and who it mostly affects. Institutional racism also known as institutional oppression refers to racism perpetrated by government entities, major cooperation’s, schools, the courts or the military (Moore 2008). Unlike the racism perpetrated by individuals, institutional racism has the power to negatively affect the bulk of people belonging to a minority group. This form of racism still persists in America because dominant groups are unwilling to share or give up the benefits inherited from past generations. Through numerous examples, Institutional Racism demonstrates how inequality and racial exclusion are embedded within the fabric of American society.
In “My First Conk”, Malcolm X assured that black people were being brainwashed to believe that they actually were inferior to white people, thus they conked their hair; which was a hair straightener gel made from lye popular among African-American men from the 1920s to the 1960s. They were, essentially, giving up what they were fighting for as far as civil rights- the right to be who they were and also be accepted by society. Therefore, the conking of their hair was hypocrisy and a contradiction of morals and values. Blind conformity caused them to disregard their strongest beliefs which should be the most powerful driving forces in all lives. Especially in today's society, there is a dire over emphasis of the media.
A native son is a product of the violence and racism that suffused the devastating social conditions in which he was raised. By no means does Wright downplay the oppression of blacks by whites, but he does demonstrate that much of the racial inequality was due to the profound lack of understanding, among both blacks and whites, of the other social group. Bigger’s misunderstanding of whites binds him to a self-fulfilling insight, because as he behaves according to what he believes is his racial destiny. An important quote that can describe the racism in the story as well as the racism during that time is when Wright writes, "We live here and they live there. We black and they white."