Will+race+be+important+in+the+future?

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 * __Will Race be important in the future?__**

Race is not as important as it used to be in the past, but it still has some role in United States society today. In the past especially the 1800's-1900's there was a huge problem in USA about racism. Race, defined by skin color, was a big issue especially with African American people. Because their skin color was darker, they were treated as inferiors. They were kept as slaves in many southern states and they did not count as a whole person; they were considered a fraction of a human being. Slavery went on for about 12 generations until it was finally ended around the late 1800's, but there was still a problem with racism against them. Blacks were still treated as inferior and everything was segregated. Some examples are buses, schools, water fountains, restaurants, etc.

In the present, the biggest racial issue is the racism against Muslim people. Every time a terrorist attack happens, people around the world start having more security and guards double check Muslims in the security lines. After the 9/11 attacks, people became afraid of Muslim people and a stereotype came that all Muslims are terrorists. Although there is still racism, the United States has broken many barriers. The biggest event is the election of a black president; President Obama. Not everyone was for Obama as shown in the picture below, but the country as a whole could soon come into a post racial era (NPR recording).

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As Obama said in the [|race speech] he gave in Pennsylvania in March, " But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow." Racism and segregation has caused many of the problems in the African American society in the United States. Segregation hurts people in the future. It has been many years since blacks have gained rights and they still have many disparities.

In a ThinkQuest article called Racism around the world, there was a sentence that said racism strongly influences the possibility of getting a job. In USA, the unemployment of African Americans is twice as much as white people. I think our country is starting to overlook the racism problem because we now have a black president. Blacks are still under a little of problems because of the events of the 18-19 hundreds. In 1993 seven out of ten fights were started by the idea of racism. For justice, black people are only 12% of our population but 48% of that 12% are prisoners.

According to a poet, Elizabeth Alexander, our country as a whole has moved forward. When we elected President Obama, we didn't think of race or skin color, but what was best for the country. Instead of letting the old kind of racial thinking decide how we voted, we did not think about different races and we made the right choice. We chose what would be good for our country.



What do I want to learn more about? I want to learn more about how people came up with the idea of racism. I don’t understand why people would want to treat others as people of a lower class because of their ethnicity or skin color. When did people start thinking that people of a darker skin color were so bad that they were not even human?

The History of Race article by Audrey Smedley is about how race evolved from the 17th century through the 19th century. In the beginning, servants were brought from England, but then Africans that knew about European culture were brought in. They were civilized people who knew how to take care of a plantation. For a long time, these servants were treated as equals to white people; although, their skin color was different. Soon, slaves were brought directly from Africa, so they had no idea what the European culture was like, but the colonists said they were nothing without the Africans. They even sent back Irish slaves because the colonists though they weren’t civilized. Throughout the years, the equality between the colonists and their servants decreased. In the colonial times, the richer plantation owners had an impact on racial stereotypesby the laws they formed and the social classes they built, which organized the society against African American people.

AnnBibDesai