Summary Of The Shifting Grounds Of Race

One of the major issues relevant today in regards to race, ethnicity and migration in American history in the period following the Second World War is that white people are still seen as “more than.” For instance, in Steve Kroll-Smith, Vern Baxter, and Pam Jenkin’s book, Left to Chance, white people are seen are more important than the black people who have their homes completely submerged under water from Hurricane Katrina. The book focuses on two black neighborhoods in New Orleans, both of which are generally low on economic class totem pole—they are also both located below sea level and at the bottom of the bowl. The higher you live in New Orleans corresponds with the amount of money you make, so there are a lot of white people who live …show more content…
In The Shifting Grounds of Race, one of the major parts of the book is when Japanese Americans return from internment because African Americans are able to use the abuse this group of people faced as motivation to enact change. They took the anger the Japanese Americans were too afraid to express and made it their own. They began to get more politically involved and branched their efforts out to other ethnic groups who were facing oppression—which is one of the reasons why African Americans became angry at the Japanese Americans because it seemed like they were giving up a fight that was just beginning to gain traction. But to the Japanese Americans, they were always going to hold less power and influence than white people would. They just wanted to get their lives back and unfortunately believed the “white people are ‘more than’” issue and actually help perpetuate oppression by being the posterchild of a successfully, assimilated immigrant because they were being celebrated for being quiet and not fighting the discrimination they faced, which was a huge issue for post-World War II America. In these types of cases, silence is violent. Not fighting back tells the people around you that you’re okay with being stepped on being seen as a lesser people, which is a disgusting belief still held today. For instance, situations like the Freddie Gray case today can be argued as crime against race. When someone is in a position of power and holds a toxic belief such as racial superiority, it becomes an extremely dangerous situation to those on the short end of stick. The only thing clear about Freddie Gray’s case is that he was not safely and properly put in the back of the squad car and the ride he took ended his life. The officers involved in this tragedy were not all white so racism (even though it should be noted that racism isn’t just whites