Through all of our readings and discussions from this class, we have studied many issues related to diversity. Diversity plays a major role in our culture today; however, discrimination based on race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and gender has been apart of America’s history since the beginning. This class taught me a lot about discrimination because of diversity, and I want to focus on specifically on racial issues. In this essay, I will review several excerpts from this class concerning issues that have arisen from racial discrimination, both from America’s history and present. The first excerpt we read regarding racial issues discussed immigration to America in the late 1800’s. Two of the biggest immigration centers were on both the East and West coast, allowing for
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Slavery legally stood in America for 245 and suggested that people of different race did not deserve rights and were inferior to the white man. We were asked to read Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” in which Douglass describes the division created from this national holiday by saying, “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine” (465). Celebrating the Fourth of July essentially whitewashes American history by honoring the white man, when really America was also built on slavery. By only recognizing white men during this holiday, we choose to forget our past and almost legitimize slavery by telling future generations to forgive and forget as it was so long ago. The idea that we are told to forget the racist ideals of America’s past and instead celebrate what came from it, is a prime example of how discrimination holds up to this
Slavery legally stood in America for 245 and suggested that people of different race did not deserve rights and were inferior to the white man. We were asked to read Frederick Douglass’s “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?” in which Douglass describes the division created from this national holiday by saying, “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine” (465). Celebrating the Fourth of July essentially whitewashes American history by honoring the white man, when really America was also built on slavery. By only recognizing white men during this holiday, we choose to forget our past and almost legitimize slavery by telling future generations to forgive and forget as it was so long ago. The idea that we are told to forget the racist ideals of America’s past and instead celebrate what came from it, is a prime example of how discrimination holds up to this