Decide by yourself Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Decide by yourself - Essay Example This is evident in the calls that concerned individuals and private institutions, foundations and sectors that address anti-racism and anti-discrimination in the national and international setting. The book "Myne Owne Ground" showed, racism was once blatant in the US. Slavery, especially in Virginia was all highly visible manifestations of racism committed with the sanction or even active participation of the authorities. Although overt manifestations of racism today would be unacceptable to the majority of US citizens, the country is still struggling with ongoing racial and ethnic divisions . (Vaughan, 1995) Major steps taken over the past 50 years to end institutionalized racism have not eliminated the inequalities which many members of racial minorities continue to face in daily life. The black-white divide on racial matters is one of the most profound and enduring in American society. For decades, public opinion polls have shown that blacks and whites differ fundamentally as to what constitutes the race problem, how severe it is, and what to do about it. The segregation and discrimination of the black urban community is the result of politics and economy in the mainstream history of the United States. Millions of Africans were brought to the Americas and traded there as slaves (Vaughan, 1995). This mass movement of people led to a new social and economic system; with the color of the skin as a determining factor whether one would live as a slave or as a free citizen. By the 1640s and 1650s, England thus had five substantial areas of overseas settlements--the Irish plantations of Ulster and Munster; the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland; Bermuda; the New England colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Haven; and the West Indian colonies of Barbados and the Leeward Islands. The predominantly English people who went to these areas all intended to one degree or another for the new societies they were creating to be fundamentally and recognizably English. Yet the new research into the cultural dynamics and socioeconomic and demographic configurations of the two major centers of English settlement on the North American continent has made it clearer than ever before that during these early years of settlement the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland differed profoundly from the principal New England colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine how any two f ragments from the same metropolitan culture could have been any more different (Vaughan, 1995). About the only characteristics they had in common were their ethnic homogeneity, their ruralness, their primitive material conditions, their remoteness from England, and, after their first few years, an abundant local food supply. In virtually every other respect, they seem to have been diametric opposites. Along with the strong cohesive force exerted by the church, village, family, schools, and visible and authoritative leadership structures that characterized the New England villages, the absence of exceptional economic opportunities inhibited the urge to scatter that was so powerful among the settlers in the Chesapeake (Vaughan, 1995). T