Did_African_Americans_Face_Colonization

Ethnic Groups and Discrimination: African Americans   Although, forced against their will the Africans were one of the earliest immigrants of North America. “They were forcibly taken from their homelands on large slave ships by European Americans across the Atlantic” (Thomson Gale, 2005-2006). African American culture for many years has developed separately from the mainstream American culture; slavery and racial discrimination are two of the main reasons why (©Wikipedia.org, 2010). African Americans has faced and suffered through a large amount of prejudice. The prejudices started from day one when we were forced into slavery. People has always looked at us differently and said things about us that really do not describe all African Americans. For many years, African Americans have been degraded. African Americans have also faced many years of racism from the schools to riding public transportation. We never got the same equal opportunity as white Americans. For example, when we would ride the bus we would be forced to give up our seats to a white person and move to the back of the bus. The entire south was fluttered with a combination of segregation, racism, and prejudice. All southern schools, concerts, restrooms, water fountains and a host of other things were segregated. Segregation was a very big problem in the south, which causes African Americans to migrate once again, but instead of leaving the U.S, they migrated too many of the northern states. All of this came about around some time after the civil war. African Americans have suffered a form of discrimination called, “redlining.” “Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets, to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas” (©Wikipedia.org, 2010). The redlining began with the National Housing Act of 1934, which this also established the Federal Housing Authority (© Wikipedia.org, 2010). However, thirty-four years later a bill passed called the Fair Housing Act to put an end to the practice of redlining. African Americans did participate in dual labor market it effected them. Early stages, they were forced into lower labor markets even if they did get an education they would start in much lower positions than their white counterparts. African Americans has suffered a type of racism called Laissez-faire racism, which means that blacks are responsible for the separation between African American culture and White American culture. The idea white Americans to hold blacks responsible for whatever inequalities they face in America for example, the discrimination happening in the housing market. All of this is mainly a form of institutional discrimination. African Americans participated in affirmative action. The original act of affirmative action came about during the Civil Rights Act of 1964 this was created to make sure the courts could impose violators of the Act. In the year 1965, President Lyndon Johnson issued an Executive Order, which gave the U.S Department of Labor affirmative action enforcement responsibility. However, “In 1972, affirmative action became an inflammatory public issue” (©Wikipedia.org, 2010). There has been a study done by the Glass Ceilings Commission, and the results were that whites make up 97% of senior managers of fortune 1000 and fortune 500 companies and on top of that, 95-97% is males. The remaining 57% of the workforce are both ethnic minorities and women. The study also showed that blacks make 21% less than their white counterparts in the same job. There are a couple forms of double jeopardy being thrown at African Americans for example; African American women face double jeopardy in the corporate world because they are a double minority. Another example of the double jeopardy that African Americans face is the rights after serving time for a felony. If an African American felon has paid full restitution and released from prison their voting rights has been revoked. This punishes the African American twice for the crime they committed and taking away their voting rights. In conclusion African Americans has suffered a lot from the being forced to a foreign land and sold into slavery to not being able to eat in certain places or not receiving the same education as others. Throughout all of this African Americans still seem to raise above all challenges and much of the discrimination that they are faced. For example, many people thought that they would never see the day that America would have an African American president and as of today we have one thanks to Barrack Obama. I believe most of the barriers that African Americans have faced from then until now have been broken.