African American Slavery - Free Essay Example

All over the U.S. there are people from all different backgrounds and all are being exposed to discussions about there race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and their culture. Now a day we cant allow to have these tough conversations to be ignored (Boland/Hemmler). Its hard for kids now a day to feel comfortable in these conversations especially being in the room with another human from a different race but it needs to be done. It is important for schools to discuss these principles of all different backgrounds so that kids can grow up feeling comfortable about talking about what may have happened in the past. Everyone comes a background that gives us our identity that shapes us to see ourselves and others. Our social and cultural backgrounds do just only influence our experiences, its also the way we view the world for the rest of our lives (Boland/Hemmler). The differences in each humans identity is apart of the United States History and it has been real struggle to have mutual respect for people that come from different religious, racial, and ethnic group that has came into the United States back than and now it still goes on. The same goes on for humans that are different gender, sexual orientation, and people with disability. The way you look at another human comes from where your background and how you were raised. Americans dont always view themselves as being privileged because of there social status. They dont see what their societal privilege is really worth. The term societal privilege is commonly used in the use of describing someones social inequality, usually in regard to age, disability, ethnicity, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and social class. One has societal privilege is having advantages that they dont earn. Unearned advantages could mean someone receives an advantage but just being born to a specific group it might be race, gender, religion, or even being wealthy. If you were born into a family that has a lot of money, you are simply born with privileges that other humans will never have. You get almost everything paid for you and you get access to a great education that will end up giving you an advantage of succeeding in the future as an adult. The advantage for gender would be born a male, being born male has many more advantages than being born a female. The most talked privilege today has to do with race and it is when people say White Privilege people use this term trying to refer to white people getting the upper hand on most things. Most people from other race think that white people are privileged when it comes to the law. While on the other hand people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are always the race that people think of to be criminals or potential criminals until they show they are not (Johnson,2006). When it comes to school, the white race is still privileged base race in many ways but the obvious one would be in discipline. It is hard for people to look past of what happened in the past and in school it is hard for teachers and administrators. They often show their bias opinion when engaging in disciplinary practice. The disciplinary practices unfortunately fall under race and continues to be the criminal behavior from African American and Latino students (Boland/Hemmler). It obvious that colored people had it worse than white people and some can argue that they still do. Throughout history the African American people have had it far worse than any other race and they are still discriminated today for the color of there skin and what went on in the past. The African American people were treated so poorly back thousands of years ago and it went on for thousands of years and to this day they still get discriminated against for the color of there skin. African American people have been discriminated by whites all they back to 1619 when the African Americans came over on a Dutch and arrived to the United States off the coast of Virginia and thats where they when they were bought for victualle (Guasco). There were only a few African slaves that came over but it wasnt until about the 17th century, that European settlers that were in North America than turned this African slaves into cheap servants used for labor source. The African slavery didnt get real bad until about the 18th century when there was an estimated six to seven million African slaves were starting to deprive from the African continent where some of the strongest and healthiest men and women from Africa were brought over and started the hard labor. During the the 17th and 18th century, African salves were mainly worked for the use of the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations down in the south.