Journal_Entry_of_a_Subordinate_Group_Member

Running head: JOURNAL ENTRY OF A SUBORDINATE GROUP MEMBER Journal Entry of a Subordinate Group Member ************ Axia College ********** ETH 125 November 7, 2009 Journal Entry of a Subordinate Group Member Today at work, I overheard some of my co-workers telling “nigger jokes.” I can’t believe that the people I talk, work, and laugh with every day have that kind of prejudice in their hearts. Considering the history of my people in this country, however, I really shouldn’t be surprised. Black people have always had a hard time in America; today was just another demonstration of that fact. In the early 1600s, African slaves began being transported to America by Europeans. “According to Du Bois, the number of men and women seized from the African continent approximates 15 million, while De la Roncière puts it at 20 million; if, however, to these numbers are added those who died in the slave ships during the voyage (35 percent), in the slave pens on the African coast (25 percent), or on the journey from the interior of the continent to the 166 ports (50 percent), as well as the victims of the manhunt (50 percent), a more precise idea of the number sacrificed can be had.” (Montiel, 1997) Just thinking of the millions of people taken from everything that they’ve ever known in chains almost makes me want to cry as I write this. This forced migration of Africans continued for another 200 years, and these slaves were assimilated into America’s Eurocentric culture. Even after the international slave trade ended, slavery in America continued until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Just because Black people were no longer slaves doesn’t mean that our story had a happy ending, however. The mental and emotional damage was already done to our race as a whole. As Dr. Khalid Muhammad said, “"Have you forgotten that when we were brought here, we were robbed of our names, robbed of our language. We lost our religion, our culture, our God, and many of us by the way we act…we even lost our minds." During the years after the Civil War, Black people lived segregated existences from White society. Separate drinking fountains and restrooms were the law of the land. Popular Black entertainers such as Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald could be the headline performers of nightclubs that forced them to eat in the back with the Black kitchen staff. The Tuskegee Airmen were considered good enough to fight and die for America, but couldn’t sit at a counter in certain restaurants when they came home from World War II. This would change, however, in the 1960s, beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Figures like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael were instrumental in affecting social change. The tragic assassination of Dr. King in 1968 brought a sobering end to the Civil Rights movement. The race riots that sprang up around the nation afterwards served as an unceremonious funeral pyre for him while buildings in Watts, Detroit, and New York burned. Since then, men such as Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Minister Louis Farrakhan have tried to fill in for the originators of the Civil Rights movement; but they have come across more like echoes of their predecessors rather than visionaries in their own right. Many African-Americans have taken advantage of the new opportunities offered to them since the ‘60s. There are more Black millionaires in this nation today than there have ever been in the history of the United States of America. People like Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Tyra Banks, and Shaquille O’Neal are successful businesspeople as well as entertainers. As I write this, we have the first African-American President of the United States in office. Barack Obama, the literal personification of the term “African-American”, has elevated himself into the highest position that this country has to offer. This product of Kenya and Kansas has demonstrated that the dreams, hopes, and sacrifices of so many Black people before him were not in vain. Yet for all that he has accomplished; for all that we as a forcibly migrated, assimilated, and segregated people have achieved, all it takes is for the ignorance of one person to make you feel like you’re wearing the chains of the slave master. All it takes is for one word to be uttered and African-Americans of every economic level, education level, and religious background momentarily flash back on a time in our history when we would have been considered less-than-human. References Montiel, Luz María Martínez (1997). Our Third Root: On African Presence in American Populations. Diogenes 1997; 45; 165. Retrieved on November 7, 2009 from http://dio.sagepub.com