The immense diversity in race, ethnicity, and gender orientation in the U.S. has led to constant inequality that throughout history has made the country into what it is today.
The end of inequality in our Nation was kickstarted with the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century. In 1864, the Republican Party introduced the 13th Amendment to Congress, and ⅔ of the Senate passed the amendment. While the motion would’ve passed right then, the House of Representatives didn’t choose to pass the amendment until January of 1865. Slavery was supposedly abolished on December 18, 1865, however former slaves like Frederick Douglass, who became a world-renowned anti-slavery activist during the Civil War, never felt like they were truly welcomed in the …show more content…
Though African Americans were equal under the law, they were discriminated through segregation in all aspects of society from restaurant seating to bathroom usage. All public utilities were separated for “White” and “Colored”, and this segregation was protected by law from the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson. The outrage of this mass injustice sparked the African American Civil Rights Movement in 1954; the movement lasted until 1968, when segregation became officially illegal in all 50 states. Richard Wright wrote a book in 1942 called 12 Million Black Voices, where he talks about the hardships that colored people had to experience when moving North. “We see white men and women get on the train, dressed in expensive new clothes. We look at them guardedly and wonder will they bother us… Even though we have been told that we need not be afraid, we have lived so long in fear of all white faces that we cannot help but sit and wait.” (Zinn 391). Wright describes how fearful he was of the spontaneity of how others might react at any given time. As a black man, he’s observed and experienced the hate and brutality first hand for the color of his skin. He knows what it’s like to be hated simply for the way you look, and while times were changing, and segregation was diminishing (thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. and his Civil Rights Movements), Wright still felt the discomfort and rejection while living …show more content…
The term Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) began getting tossed around .While straight people also had AIDS, they generally stayed hidden, so that people wouldn’t accuse them of being gay. This negligence only allowed the disease to spread further and in 1999, HIV/AIDS was the fourth largest cause of death in both straight and gay persons worldwide. . Martin Duberman, historian, recalled the fight between police and protesters at Stonewall in 1993. He states, “By now, the crowd had swelled to a mob, and people were picking up and throwing whatever loose objects came to hand - coins, bottles, cans, bricks from a nearby construction site. Someone even picked up dog shit from the street and threw it in the cops’ direction.” (Zinn 457). The Stonewall is important to remember since it demonstrates the frustration towards the government who refused to recognize AIDS as more than a ‘gay’ disease. The government’s refusal to recognize AIDS as more than a “gay disease” made AIDS only a gay problem, and therefore not something that straight men with power needed to worry about. . The Stonewall Protest led to the Gay Liberation Movement and the overall fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Now in the United States, gay marriage is legalized in all 50 states, and people are more than less accepting of the diversity of different
The end of inequality in our Nation was kickstarted with the abolishment of slavery in the 19th century. In 1864, the Republican Party introduced the 13th Amendment to Congress, and ⅔ of the Senate passed the amendment. While the motion would’ve passed right then, the House of Representatives didn’t choose to pass the amendment until January of 1865. Slavery was supposedly abolished on December 18, 1865, however former slaves like Frederick Douglass, who became a world-renowned anti-slavery activist during the Civil War, never felt like they were truly welcomed in the …show more content…
Though African Americans were equal under the law, they were discriminated through segregation in all aspects of society from restaurant seating to bathroom usage. All public utilities were separated for “White” and “Colored”, and this segregation was protected by law from the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson. The outrage of this mass injustice sparked the African American Civil Rights Movement in 1954; the movement lasted until 1968, when segregation became officially illegal in all 50 states. Richard Wright wrote a book in 1942 called 12 Million Black Voices, where he talks about the hardships that colored people had to experience when moving North. “We see white men and women get on the train, dressed in expensive new clothes. We look at them guardedly and wonder will they bother us… Even though we have been told that we need not be afraid, we have lived so long in fear of all white faces that we cannot help but sit and wait.” (Zinn 391). Wright describes how fearful he was of the spontaneity of how others might react at any given time. As a black man, he’s observed and experienced the hate and brutality first hand for the color of his skin. He knows what it’s like to be hated simply for the way you look, and while times were changing, and segregation was diminishing (thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. and his Civil Rights Movements), Wright still felt the discomfort and rejection while living …show more content…
The term Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) began getting tossed around .While straight people also had AIDS, they generally stayed hidden, so that people wouldn’t accuse them of being gay. This negligence only allowed the disease to spread further and in 1999, HIV/AIDS was the fourth largest cause of death in both straight and gay persons worldwide. . Martin Duberman, historian, recalled the fight between police and protesters at Stonewall in 1993. He states, “By now, the crowd had swelled to a mob, and people were picking up and throwing whatever loose objects came to hand - coins, bottles, cans, bricks from a nearby construction site. Someone even picked up dog shit from the street and threw it in the cops’ direction.” (Zinn 457). The Stonewall is important to remember since it demonstrates the frustration towards the government who refused to recognize AIDS as more than a ‘gay’ disease. The government’s refusal to recognize AIDS as more than a “gay disease” made AIDS only a gay problem, and therefore not something that straight men with power needed to worry about. . The Stonewall Protest led to the Gay Liberation Movement and the overall fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Now in the United States, gay marriage is legalized in all 50 states, and people are more than less accepting of the diversity of different