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
The Conflict Between Symbolic Ethnic Identity and Socially Enforced Racial Identity Racism and discrimination in the United States has been a major issue since the colonial era. Heavy burdens of racism in the country have fallen upon African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Italian Americans, and a host of other ethnicities of color and their descendants. Discrimination against African Americans, Italian Americans, and people of color has been widely acknowledged. Members of every major American ethnic minority have perceived racism in their dealings with people in the majority group. Throughout the history of the United States Italians and other ethnic groups of color did not have the opportunity to celebrate their symbolic identity, but rather had a socially imposed racial identity.
Gangs in prison There are gangs in every prison and the guards have to keep a look out for them; recruiting new inmates “fresh meat” as the inmates call them. They victimise an inmate to join their gang. Gangs are viewed as a means of survival in a prison starved of any morals, and murder and violence is just normal routine. Many prisons are let off with being the worst prisons in the world due to the upkeep of the prison not through the violence decreasing. Venezuela’s prison La Sabeneta is one of the worst prisons due to that they have one guard to every 150 inmates.
Racism in America Racism is a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others (Webster Dictionary). Racism in America has been an issue for hundreds of years, and still continues to develop presently. Heavy burdens of racism in the country have fallen apon native americas, africans Americans, asian Americans, mexican americans, american jews, and irish americans. Major racially structured institutions included slavery, Native Americans reserations, segregation, residental schools (for Native Americans), and internment camps for the Asian Americans during World War II (Hansman). All of theses ethic groups experiences some kind of racism, from White Supremacy, scientific, state positive and institutionalized racism, also segregstion and discrimanation.
To prevent enemy soldiers from returning to their troops, the Japanese held prisoners of war in horrible camps throughout Japan, forced them to work in horrendous conditions, and treated them inhumanely. The living conditions the prisoners had to endure on the way to the camps was truly awful. When transported, the men were crammed into rusty old freighters and spent several nights in these “hell ships” (“The POW Camps”). The men on the ships had no room to move, were ill with dysentery and had very little food. Sometimes they were transported from one “hell ship” to another on their journeys to work camps.
Indian Wars erupted due to tension between the settlers backed by the federal government who were encroaching upon native land and the Native Americans occupying this land. The result of this tension led to Indian Wars such as the Sioux Wars which contained events such as the Wounded Knee Massacre in which federal troops killed 300 Sioux men, women, and children and the killing of General Custer during the battle of Wounded Knee which caused public opinion to turn even more against Native Americans. As a result of these Indian Wars all Native American tribes were effectively put onto reservations. The purposeful impairment and alienation of native culture was strongly emphasized by actions taken and legislation passed by the federal government of the United States. In Document A, Santana, Chief of the Kiowas, describes the destruction of timber and killing of buffaloes by soldiers who sit in camps where his people have lived for generations.
Oppression in the Native American and African American Cultures Throughout American history there has always been a sense of racial and ethnic hierarchy. Both Native Americans and Blacks were victims to some of the most terrible oppression imaginable, reduced to mere shadows of their culture. Ever since the pilgrims discovered the new world, “Americans” have demonstrated a disturbing sense of exceptionalism. America’s exceptionalism is based on the idea that we are different from all other countries. Americans feel as though they have their own ideology, which is unique and like no other nation in the world.
Genocide to Black Christians in Sudan Sudan’s situation is critical since many Sudanese suffer genocide everyday. Genocide is the systematical destruction of a being by another being from the same specie. Sudan’s genocide has been caused by an immense number of circumstances. Human rights have not been respected in Sudan and therefore the situation has not ceased. Genocide is the systematical destruction of a being by another being from the same specie.
What could have caused these events to occur during WWII? Wartime hysteria was a rather symptom that many people of the US experienced during WWII. Wartime hysteria was the paranoia about the residents/citizens of Japanese culture, wondering whether they would turn on the US or not. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Empire on December 7th, 1941, wartime hysteria made sense. There were false reports of the Japanese spying and planning the Pearl Harbor attack, so the hysteria pushed the US government to start relocating innocent residents into camps.
This is because of our ignorance of the person’s real character and personality (Newsweek, Racism vs. Prejudice, 2009). Unfortunately, we’ve all been guilty of this behavior at some point in our lives. Racism is the systematic subordination of certain racial groups by those in power (Orbe and Harris, 2008, pg. 8).