Submitted by: Submitted by cmcjimson4
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Words: 1059
Pages: 5
Category: English Composition
Date Submitted: 12/09/2010 02:15 PM
Ethnic Groups and Discrimination
The ethnic group I belong to is African American. African Americans have faced prejudice, segregation, and racism in their lifetime. Racism as a social invention in and of itself became a breeding ground for many of the social ills of today, such as, racial profiling, capital punishment, police brutality, predatory lending, No Child Left Behind, welfare reform, affirmative action and racial disparities in healthcare, academic achievement and home ownership. Some still believe it exists still in today’s society. “Most African Americans are the descendants of captive Africans held in the United States from 1619 to 1865” (Wikipedia Jim Crow Laws 2010). During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese, Dutch and English realized the profit value that a market in human capital would provide and decided to travel to Africa to enslave and export from their homeland millions of its inhabitants as slave labor for distribution to the West Indian sugar plantations, and the cotton and tobacco plantations of the colonies in the New World. My ancestors were packed like sardines in the hulls of slave ships under the most horrible conditions imaginable. As many as 1.5 million perished as a result of illness, suicide, insurrection, and sometimes murder by example (The slave trade, 2007). Survivors of the voyage were dropped off the boat into a racist social structure where Whites felt that God had deemed them inherently superior to others. Considered non-human and treated as property, Africans were auctioned or sold for rum and sugar that was sent back to England. They could not possess property, marry or enter into contracts, and had to abide by many laws or be punished if those laws were broken. Africans were punished for the slightest infraction; running away would most likely be a death sentence, with almost no exception. The Africans’ ethnic category was obvious, and cinched their place as a subordinate group who would endure a...