Whiteness As Property Analysis

Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and his comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. In the beginning of the article, she used the existed survey reports to support and justify their purpose to perform this survey. The survey analyzed urban youth interactions with authority figures, comprising police, educators, social workers and security guards.

Herbert Hill strongly believes we should adopt a strong affirmative active action policies that mandate quotes and/or timetables. He also argues there must be some benchmark, and some tangible measures of change. Hill states a system based on race existed for many generations under the U.S. Constitution. This system defined black people as property not as human beings. In the Dred Scott Decision of 1857, Chief Justice Taylor declares that black people have not rights and they are just articles of merchandise. Considering this, he is stating America is a white man's country and every other race has no voice in this country. However, even with the ratification of the 13th,14th, and 15th Amendments, discrimination and prejudice still remain strong.

In 1857 the court case of Dread Scott v. Stanford and in 1896 the case Plessy v. Ferguson were introduced into the Supreme Court. They showed people of color were not considered to be anything other than property; the whole majority had no regard for the feelings of another person. The notion of slavery was just coming to light in the United States. As time grew on, the slaves and former slaves were rightly becoming increasingly outraged. Through evaluating language of exclusion throughout both Dread Scott v. Stanford and Plessy v. Ferguson concurrently, anyone can recognize the effects of dehumanization negatively impacting members of the black community. This is disconcerting because African Americans are human beings and should be treated as such.

Jaswinder Bolina uses his identification as Other, to describe difficulties within the writing and speaking community related to what is commonly identified as “white” English in his essay, Writing Like a White Guy.

Thesis statement: The two great leaders in the black community debating about the issues that face the Negro race and Du Bois gave a compelling argument by using pathos, logos and ethos to create an essay that will appear to all readers.

Being an American is simply having equal rights, equal opportunities, freedom, and a safer, better life. There are countries that are so strict that if you are seen doing something you are not supposed to, you will be arrested and killed. That’s why we are so privileged to live in a country that allows us to do what we want to.

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, written by Peggy McIntosh, suggest a list of invisible privileges, which she is immune towards due to her ethical background. McIntosh names the numerous ways and examples of privileges she obtained from her white heritage. Which most other ethical race would have to think twice before attempting. People of the white heritage in the United States, are not stereotyped or live in fear of being a victim of racism like many other race. McIntosh provides a solid point; in addition she supports her arguments through observations and examples of her personal life. Like, McIntosh many people of the white heritage are consider the norm in the American society. While many other that are not white,

A color-blind ideology appears to permeate throughout our society drawn from a lack of color consciousness. This is for the reason that it neglects to challenge white privilege by subsisting in a position of race privilege. Reflection of one’s conscious and unconscious belief about race can help to break down existing societal and inevitable racism as opposed to culture or personal ineptitude. Self-reflexivity will also provide assistance with an honest discussion about race and ethnicity being social constructions from attitudes, actions, beliefs, and so on. Ultimately, racial ideologies are consistently subject to change for engaging with the transformation of a particular era’s social conditions at the complexly interconnected levels of

As a young country, the United States was a land of prejudice and discrimination. Wanting to grow their country, white Americans did what they had to in order to make sure that they were always on top, and that they were always the superior race. It did not matter who got hurt along the way because everything that they did was eventually justified by their thinking that all other races were inferior to them. A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki describes the prejudice and discrimination against African Americans and Native Americans in the early history of the United States. We see how the leaders of this country, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, had prejudice thoughts about these two different ethnic groups, how prejudice was built into society and the

The term “race” is one of the major aspects of one’s identity which tends to completely change over time. The primary source, “Introduction: The Fabrication of Race,” is part of a book called “Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race” which was written by Matthew Frye Jacobson in the twentieth century. In this source, he expands on the topic of “whiteness” with its relation to European immigrants in the United States and also, on the different perspectives of how other races are seen.

Anderson claims that white people have more power in society and because of this, minorities are forced to take it upon the streets. Anderson wants the reader to understand that white people, especially white males, have more power than other races because in our society the reader sees powerful men everyday such as lawyers, policemen, judges, CEO's ,and etc. The reader doesn't see many minority's as high power people. When the author states that “...white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors,...” the reader can infers that white people are perceived as higher roles in our society and that the minority's rage carries a aura of disrespect and leads to violence. This allows white people to to be heard easily because of how they are seen in society by other white people, but for minority's they struggle to be heard because nobody pays attention to them because society feels that this is an ongoing issue. Minorities will cause violence just so that they can be heard. For example for the death of Laquan McDonald. Many minorities were upset at the police and want them and city to know that their lives also mattered. This caused a lot of looting and destruction within the city, and because of this the police officers were suspended off the force.

W.E.B DuBois, a well known civil liberties advocate, in his speech, Niagara Movement, illuminates the need for racial equality in America. In his speech, his purpose is to call white Americans to action, as well as highlight the effects of the African American’s white superiors excluding them from simple, constitutionally given, liberties. He adopts an authoritative tone in order to establish a feeling of guilt for white people who determine the rights given to African-Americans. DuBois convinces his audience that African-Americans should become equal on a social, economical, and political level, through the use of emotional diction, reasonable ideas and a dominant tone.

The enslavement of African American’s has many negative impacts on the United States’ legal system in many ways. One of the ways slavery have impacted the United States’ legal is Caucasian people had developed theories to claim that the Caucasians were inferior to African Americans. Some of the Caucasian people that contributed to coming up with theories or ideas that Caucasians was superior to African Americans are Thomas Jefferson, Charles White, Oliver Goldsmith and Benjamin Rush.

White privilege is very real in America. Though certain ethnic groups of white people have been disadvantaged in American history such as Irish Americans, white people currently possess advantages in American society when compared to people of color or non-white people. These advantages can be seen in the amount representation in the government and mass media. They can also be seen in our own day-to-day interactions. These privileges can stem from the fact that white people are still a dominant group in American society.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois made a great contribution to the study of sociology by defining race and emphasising its historical location through some of his key concepts such as double consciousness and providing various examples round the idea of race. He was born on 23 February 1868 (Ritzer, 2008) three years after the abolishment of slavery in the United States of America and wrote famous literary pieces such as The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920) (Ritzer, 2008). He was also a political activist (Lemert, 2010) and explored post-emancipation life. (Lemert, 2010) He formed the Niagara Movement of 1905 and became crucial to interracial organisations such as the