As sociologist Douglas S. Massey has said, “segregation is a key cause of poverty because where one lives determines much about the life chances one faces." And this in the United States is "Created by White prejudice, Actualized by discriminatory behavior and Condoned, if not supported, by government." Today both, in the US and in Europe as well, overt racism is replaced by “politically correct behavior” and the reality of social relations has been rarified. This has made the evil of racism omnipresent, omnipotent but still invisible. It is to the credit of White societies, that, this art is not only universalized but its social reproduction is also ensured.
The North saw the issue of slavery as an evil. They believed that slavery was an impurity that became accustomed to life in America, in which made other systems of commerce forgotten. In a nation where freedom and equality is given, the property owning of people is wrong. In Hinton Helper’s “The Impending Crisis,” Hinton stresses the economic effects of slavery to the U.S. He goes on suggesting that the U.S cannot depend on only slavery and the staple crops to pull the nation forward.
My first example on how deleting our humane feelings caused harm is Document 7 by James Ramsay called, “Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies”. The article speaks about the punishments done to slaves for misbehaving in their eyes and committing mistakes. The white men would beat them with sticks, breaking their bones, chain around their necks, etc. All this was done to cause fear within them. All these people thought since Africans are slaves, it’s okay to treat them as beasts.
He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and white servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation. Chapter 3, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition" describes Bacon's Rebellion, the economic conditions of the poor in the colonies, and opposition to their poverty. Chapter 4, "Tyranny is Tyranny" covers the movement for "leveling" (economic equality) in the colonies and the causes of the American Revolution. Zinn argues that the Founding Fathers agitated for war to distract the people from their own economic problems and stop popular movements, a strategy that he claims the country's leaders would continue to use in the future. Chapter 5, "A Kind of Revolution" covers the war and resistance to participating in war, the effects on the Native American people, and the continued inequalities in the new United States.
Orwell’s perspective as a reluctant and disgusted colonizer shapes his essay’s development, detail and main thesis. The essay’s first-person narrative, causal analysis and the detail it employs obviously produce a powerful condemnation of British colonialism. However, while Orwell briefly lists the obvious abuses of colonialism---the torture of prisoners, the appalling conditions in imperial jails, the destruction of the colonized’s spirit---he focuses his essay’s detail and development on colonialism’s effects on himself as colonizer, how this system causes his degradation and corruption as a human being. He presents his younger self as tormented by his role in this system, but also as someone who has absorbed its racist attitudes. He emphasizes his “intolerable sense of guilt” (313), but also his contradictory hatred of the Burmese, those “evil-spirited little beasts” (314), as well as his callous disregard for the native man killed by the elephant (319).
Matt Mramer 9/7/2009 Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress By: Howard Zinn In this thesis “Columbus, The Indians and Human Progress” Howard Zinn refutes the common American belief that Christopher Columbus was a trailblazing hero, and instead shows the horrors of how he and his colleagues took advantage of the Native Americans and abused their kind, sharing nature. He expresses the dark side of Columbus’ encounters with the natives and the inhumane way he thought of them and treated them. He exploited the natives for work and precious metals and took advantage of them in as many ways as he possibly could. As many Americans see Columbus as a hero, Zinn exposes the abominations he imposed on the native people, and just how greedy he and the other Spaniards, such as Cortés and Pizarro, were. Howard Zinn is a firm believer that Columbus and the explorers were not heroes or saviors, but rather, cruel and egotistical characters who took advantage of the most innocent of human beings.
The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree. When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving,
I never had a chance to meet him, I always wonder what he looked like, I have never seen a picture of him, not grown anyways. There are some picture of him when he was younger but that’s it. I wish I could have had a chance to meet him and talk to him. His absence from my life really affected me. I never had a father figure and being a young boy at the reservation I really needed his advice.
One could also extrapolate the rising trend in men engaging in aberrant copulations as a result of this diabolical Western social conditioning. Colonization and slavery was the progenitor for this neo-social conditioning of the west. The system of white supremacy recognized in its gradations that elders are essential in a functional community. Whether by displacement or murder, the alleviation of elder males will eventually lead to the extinction of a specified race or
King was assassinated at the time that he was beginning to turn his focus to questions of economic justice, but like his predecessors in the late nineteenth century, he too combined a theological passion for the freedom of America’s blacks and for the equitable treatment of America’s workers. Martin Luther king believed in the” triple evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils. To work against the Triple Evils, you must develop a nonviolent frame of mind.” ( TheKingCenter.org) This is the work of the social