Ethinic Groups And Discrimination
Ethnic Groups and Discrimination
Lisa K. Roberson
Axia College of University of Phoenix
Personally, I belong to two ethnic groups, which are Black American and Native American. The one I identify myself to is African American (Black American). Most American blacks are largely the descendants of captive African slaves--people who were brought from their African homelands by force to work for whites in the New World. Others who are considered African American by the US government include voluntary immigrants from Africa, South America, and the Caribbean who self identify as being of African descent. They have made basic and lasting contributions to American history and culture. (Wikipedia) The first African slaves brought to the English colonies in North America came on a Dutch privateer landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619. The English settlers treated these captives as indentured servants and released them after a number of years. (Wikipedia) Gradually this practice was replaced by the system of race-based slavery used in the Caribbean. As servants were freed, they became competition for resources. Additionally, released servants had to be replaced. This, combined with the still ambiguous nature of the social status of Blacks and the difficulty in using any other group of people as forced servants, led to the relegation of Blacks into slavery.
Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641. Other colonies followed suit by passing laws that passed slavery on to the children of slaves and making non-Christian imported servants slaves for life. (Wikipedia) In the 1770, the American Revolution happened, and by 1860, there were about 3.5 million Africans enslaved in the United States because of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Three years later, in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the United States that seceded from the union were free. Although this was a...
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