Racial Discrimination In African American Society

As John Locke once said “[A]ll mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his [or her] life, health, liberty or possessions.” Stated above, people born of this world are given natural rights regardless of gender or ethnicity, and no one can impinge them. However, throughout the timeline of American history, there have been numerous instances that contradict this natural equality. It has become apparent that one race ostensibly ‘rules all’ and is dominant in every which way. It can be traced to the first case of slavery, discrimination, abuse, and simple hatred ever so present today. Although not everyone is like that, a vast majority of white people were responsible for the immoral actions that occurred in the …show more content…
Both ethnic groups were forced to comply with white edicts as they were continually being overpowered by white privilege. Ironically, the majority of Native Americans were mandated to vacate their lands and homes as whites manhandled their lives. Furthermore, Native Americans lost their ‘given rights’, traditions and faced hardships as said “[l]ife was so hard for our people--starving, fenced in, without horses or weapons.” (Crow Dog 149). In similarity, the African American’s situation was nearly identical. The blacks were also required to abandon their homelands, traditions, and rights. By embedding odious laws, whites were able to manipulate indians and blacks into submission. The strategies utilized by the Native Americans was to resist and disobey white laws. As stated “[w]hite historians think that there was no sun-dancing among the Sioux..., but they were wrong. The dance simply went underground.” (Crow Dog 253). As shown, the strategy was successful since many whites thought the sun-danced vanished, but they failed to realize Native Americans resisted and avoided further conflict by simply concealing their heritage amongst the whites. Another example of a passive tactic used by the African American community were called ‘sit-ins’. Like the Native American strategy of resisting without violence, the sit-ins was another non-violent strategy that blacks implemented in order …show more content…
The two well known ethnicities affected by this were the Native Americans and the Latino community. The strategy used by the Native Americans and Latinos were somewhat different yet achieved the same purpose. For example, Native Americans utilized the press as way to get noticed. By writing about their sufferings and discrimination employed by whites, they were able to convey the message within a larger range to get known and potentially receive support. Another way of getting detected by the general population is to cause a disruption which was exactly what the Latino community did. Schools influenced a dilemma for latino/a students due to the segregated feeling it represented. During that time, the majority of schools would often refuse to let latinos speak in their home language and avoided teaching Latino history. Obviously this was caused by white dominance, not only did the students experience this but also the general Latino population. Latinos would work for low wages and were frequently harassed and abused. Moreover, this lead the community to strive for self expression. This idea was most popular amongst the students as they intensified it to whole new level. The strategy used by the students were dubbed ‘walkouts’ since the students would literally walk out from class to join the