Brief discussion about Racial Discrimination in America
1291510314 Catherine
Introduction
America is a multi-racial and multi-nationality country. People from all over the world and from different races had come to America since its foundation. For a long time, people of all nationalities have made a great contribution to the development American society. However, the present situation is disaccord with what the American constitution had advocated, ”All men are created equal ”, and the racial discrimination still exist today. In the contemporary society, it is necessary for us to make a thorough understanding of the problem of racial discrimination in America. I would like to analyze the reasons of the racial discrimination in America from three aspects.
Main body
The reasons of the racial discrimination in America
1. The influence of American history
America has always been known as a nation of immigrants. Effect of immigration on USA may be more important than any other countries in the world. Just as President Carter put it in 1980: \"Our strength lies in her the hearts of people
and rich cultural diversity.”
Three times of American immigration in the history brought different racial and ethnic groups to America, which directly led to diversification of the population. Along with the population diversity, ethnic conflict between the newly arrived immigrants and Aborigines appeared: in the south, in order to meet the needs of plantation development, a large number of black people from South Africa were shipped for manual labor, and the discrimination against blacks was from then on. A large number of immigrants not only provided labor force, but also brought new skills and new technology to accelerate the industrialization. The three big waves of immigrants, America population was increasing at an alarming rate, the composition of the population was more diverse, and that also inevitably exacerbated racial tensions.
2. The roots of American cultural
As mentioned above, USA is composed of people of different nationalities. Every nationality has it religion, belief, life style and values, and these belong to the category of culture. Different cultures get together and collide here, to coexist and gradually to reach a compromise. Finally merge into a new culture -- American unique culture. But in fact, this compromise is hard to achieve, because it is almost impossible for two absolutely different cultures to completely fusion. Some theories suggest that the minority culture (including attitudes, values and language) is their barriers for successful social competition, so perhaps this is indeed one of the reasons that they can not enter the mainstream culture which
the white dominated. As a result, USA governments at all levels and all leaders overwhelmingly are the white. American political, economic, military, cultural and other fields of power are in the hands of the white hands, this is an undeniable fact.
2. The causes of American social structure
The third cause of racial discrimination is the American social structure, that mainly refers to the domination and oppression of minorities in the social political economic system. But compared with the individual discrimination against the minorities, it is more severe. From the very beginning, the black was considered inferior, and laws, customs, traditional made the situation worse thereafter. For example, when a person used \"Negro\mean to insult a black, but accidentally revealed his bias toward black. Although this is only the language itself, but from the example, we can see clearly the existing language, customs, laws, faith deny minority should be equal, and the bias is subconscious. We recognize that this discrimination has its historical roots, but the existing social system does not eliminate this kind of discrimination. So without the reform of social system, it is difficult to eliminate the institutional discrimination.
Conclusion
From the discovery of the American continent to the founding of the U.S. as an independent nation, and from the first settler’s exploration of the New World to today’s flourishing U.S. as a world superpower, the racial discrimination problem
has ever remained concern to American society. Such systems as politics, economy, culture, ect. are really improved racial discrimination could be dispelled to make sure that various nationalities are equally treated.
