Where Are We Now?

            As the semester is coming to an end, the idea of race and racism and how it has changed since the colonization of America resonates within me. People often question whether America has made improvements regarding race-thinking, or whether we have stayed in the same position. From my point of view, I think that America has come a long way and has definitely made improvements, but I have learned that there are limitations and setbacks that black people still face every day.

            In the beginning of the semester, we learned about how Africans were captured and traded by Europeans who would take them overseas to the New World. The Africans were the colonists’ slaves, doing many jobs such as working as house servants and as laborers in the fields. During colonial times, I think that the colonists desperately needed the Africans. Without their labor, I do not think that there would have been enough manpower, particularly in the South, to construct the basic infrastructure needed to have a civil life, without which many of the European settlers might have headed back to their native countries. During the era of the slave trade, Africans were treated as objects; to the colonists, they were mere property. The institution of chattel slavery lasted for over 200 years, and it was not until 1865 that Africans were finally “freed.”

            Although slavery had ended, Africans were not fully free. Of course, their plight has improved tremendously in the last 150 years, but it seems as if blacks today do not have full equality to whites, especially where the judicial system is concerned. Jim Crow laws, beginning during the Reconstruction period, enforced racial segregation such as restricting blacks from using the same trolley cars as whites, and even limiting the type of jobs they could hold. Although Jim Crow laws were overturned during the 1960s, today we have a new form of “Jim Crow” in our legal system. The war on drugs, police brutality, and the incarceration system all target black people. Today, when black people are stopped by the police, blacks must be extra cautious in their behavior. Police brutality has always been present, but recently it has become an everyday phenomenon and has taken the lives of many innocent Americans. The war on drugs targets people of color, locking them away in jail for years. When compared to white people, black people are targeted and searched more often and more in depth, and the punishment for a white person is often lesser than that of a black person.

The dynamics of race thinking has changed throughout history in America. In the 1600s, Europeans saw Africans’ darker skin and assumed that blacks were biologically inferior and not as smart as the Europeans were. This thinking and prejudice has been debunked time and time again, but some of it carries over to present day; we still see people characterizing black people as lazy, loud, and overly sexual. Black people can still face life-threatening scenarios when interacting with white people. On a more optimistic note, we have just had a black president for the last eight years; when looking back at our history, America has come a long way. However, until the day when we are truly a color-blind society, I think that we all are responsible for keeping the fight going for equal rights. Personally, I believe in viewing the glass as half full; we have come a long way and we will achieve this goal someday.