Racism in the United States has existed since the founding of the state. A society founded by white people, differing in their national and religious characteristics, was very different in their attitude to other groups. The main victims of racism were non-white indigenous people - Indians and blacks - slaves , that is, African-Americans. Legally, civil rights extended only to the white population. But, despite this, the non-Protestant white population - Italians , Spaniards , French , Greeks , some Germans , Dutch , Irish , Poles , Jews - became victims of xenophobia by Protestants at the household level. Their Protestant majority was considered "alien whites."
In the 16th-19th centuries
Before slavery in colonial America was completely based on skin color, thousands of African slaves served European colonists along with white and Native American slaves. Sometimes blacks after working off the term of slavery received freedom and land allotment, that is, they became landowners.
In 1676, an uprising began against the Governor of Virginia and the system of exploitation of poor colonists by wealthy landowners, led by Nathaniel Bacon . After his death from illness, the revolution lost its leader, but Bacon received widespread support among the slaves, and as a result, they nevertheless achieved the fact that now only blacks could be used as slaves, and the white were promised different benefits.
These decisions marked the beginning of a long period of “black slavery”, when blacks were used for agricultural work, especially in the production of cotton and tobacco .
In the North, slavery was much less common - usually in the form of domestic servants.
Although the US Congress banned the importation of new slaves from Africa in 1808 , this practice has existed for at least another half a century. In 1844, responding to the protests of European states against the slave trade, US Secretary of State Calhoun answered that these sciences allegedly testify to the fundamental differences between blacks and whites, and therefore the "existing relations between races" are most favorable [1] . Slavery was nominally abolished in 1865 by Abraham Lincoln , and in fact the 13th amendment to the US Constitution, which was adopted in 1865 . But even after the abolition of slavery, racism existed for a long time in the form of separate education, places “only for whites,” the laws of Jim Crow , etc.
In the second half of the 19th century, the ideas of social Darwinism and eugenics were spreading in the United States (as in Europe). In the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, allegations of the inability of some races and nations to cultural development and the “selectivity” of others were not uncommon in American scientific literature. A series of acts were issued encouraging the immigration of representatives of Germanic peoples. Interracial marriages were banned in several states [1] . A pronounced racist character was worn by the policy of granting US citizenship in the XVIII - first half of the XX centuries. Initially, in the XVIII century it was established that among migrants only free representatives of the “white” race could obtain American citizenship [2] . In 1870, the right to obtain citizenship was also granted to immigrants from Africa [2] . However, persons belonging to the Mongoloid race , as well as Indians, were for a long time legally prohibited (including the 1870 law) from granting American citizenship. In 1922-1923, the US Supreme Court banned naturalization in the US, first to the Japanese (as non-white), and then to the Indians , specifying that white is “white in the generally accepted, but not scientific sense” [3] . In 1917, immigration from the “restricted Asian zone” (60 ° east longitude, 165 ° west longitude, 26 ° south latitude) was completely prohibited [4] .
In the 20th century
Significant progress in overcoming racism in the United States was evident in the 1960s, when, as a result of the success of the civil rights movement, significant political and socio-economic measures were taken to ensure the equality and bridging of the age-old gulf that separated African Americans, American Indians, and other minorities currents of American life.
See also
- US Racial Unrest
- Lynch Court
- Ku Klux Klan
- Black Legion (political movement)
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 M. Levin , Y. Roginsky , N. Cheboksarov . Anglo-American racism. // Soviet ethnography , 1949, No. 1. - P. 18-47.
- ↑ 1 2 Filippenko A. A. Problems of US immigration policy in the period 1990—2015. The dissertation for the degree of candidate of historical sciences. - M., 2015 .-- S. 25.
- ↑ Filippenko A.A. Problems of US immigration policy in the period 1990—2015. The dissertation for the degree of candidate of historical sciences. - M., 2015 .-- S. 39.
- ↑ Filippenko A.A. Problems of US immigration policy in the period 1990—2015. The dissertation for the degree of candidate of historical sciences. - M., 2015 .-- S. 37.