What Is Apartheid And Economic/Political Disempowerment?

Race and racial inequality have powerfully shaped American history from the very beginning. Americans think of the founding of the American colonies and, later, the United States, as driven by the quest for freedom when initially, religious liberty and later political and economic liberty. Still, from the beginning, American society was equally founded on brutal forms of domination, inequality, and oppression which lead to the foundation of two models of minority exclusion known as Apartheid and Economic/political disempowerment. Apartheid meaning “state of being apart” is “An official policy of racial segregation, involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against nonwhites” (Wk:3, Lecture 1). Originated in South Africa apartheid …show more content…
As Europeans expanded across the nation the status of Native Americans “changed from a majority culture of peoples living in sovereign nations to a disadvantaged minority living apart from mainstream U.S culture and subordinate to U.S law” (Shaw et.al.2015:31). The model of economic/political disempowerment applies to the Native Americans as seen through the Indian nations loss of land, power, and independence, all of which has had lasting consequences. An example of such model is the decline of sovereignty, in the beginning period of Sovereignty (1700s-1830s) native nations and the British/U. S government entered treaties as co-equals when exchanging demands, doing such over 400 treaties were signed between the groups which suggest that there was a respect for the native communities as being independent nations (Wk:3, Lecture 2). The period of sovereignty declined steadily as Europeans expanded westward which put white settlers into frequent contact with the native population. The white settlers greedily craved the natives land and resources which created conflict that they thought they could resolve with treaties but the growing U.S population proved to be too much to peacefully resolve with treaties. Which changed the view of native nations from co-equals to a group they could dominate over, ultimately “population/resources overturn juridical notion of Indians …show more content…
African Americans “have been a group akin to Native Americans that has a very long and continuing history of challenging the imposition of race, racism, and White supremacy that at times has contributed to the creation and definition of U.S social norms, laws, and citizenship rights” (Shaw et.al.2015:70). Apartheid is the common model of minority exclusion for African Americans. Since the beginning the U.S Constitution saw African Americans as 3/5 of a person with the passing of the three-fifths Compromise, and with any outcome where any group is less than a whole person suggests a weak position of citizenship (Shaw et.al.2015:79). Even after their freedom was won with the passing of the 13th amendment which ended slavery in the United States, and the ratification of the14th and 15th “which stated that citizenship based on birth in the U.S” and “rights of citizens to vote cannot be abridged” (Wk:3, Lecture:4) African Americans still struggled with fighting for basic rights. A historical apartheid period was the era of Jim Crow politics which was- “the official government sanction of anti-black racial discrimination, racial separation, and violence” (Shaw et.al.2015:92). This era was lowest point of postbellum black history because state constitutions and electoral laws were staring to be rewritten to express the