African Americans are citizens of United States of America forming an African American ethnic minority group whose ancestral land is Africa. Perhaps one of the poignant questions to ask is on how these African descendants arrived in America. From the age period of 1620 to around 1865, there was massive slave trade taking place in Africa to the west especially in countries like France, Belgium and England. In the west, these captives intermarried themselves and with white people, hence siring the African American ethnic group.
As captives, the group faced serious challenges composing of racial discrimination, prejudice and segregation. The white Americans took them as tools and elements of hard labor with poor or no pay in return. Moreover, these African Americans had no right to do anything leave alone airing their own views or making their own decisions.
The dual labor market hit them hard as most of them were not educated and even if the white Americans allowed them to go to school, education was expensive for them. In addition to that, the white Americans did not allow black American children to sit in the same class with their white counterparts. Redlining became common in those days (Kolchin, 1994, pp.78-83).
The American history denotes that, even if the labor market became decentralized, African American ethnic minority group had little knowledge on the operation of these markets. Low level of knowledge meant derailment of African Americans from acquiring high stake office jobs perceived to belong to white Americans only. The only place for work available for the African American minorities was hard labor jobs like digging and other manual activities (Beijborn, 1996, Para.5-7).
The environmental setup of the black people in America did not allow them to question the deeds of the white man and the inequalities they met. In unison, the African Americans struggled in vain to meet their liberties albeit a myriad of obstacles. In return, the white Americans fought mercilessly to deny them civil right liberties.
For example, they had no right to neither vote nor choose a leader of their own. Segregation became dominant right from education to food to clothing and accommodation. In the south of America, segregation laws applied strongly eliminating black Americans from schooling in white schools. The white Americans barred African Americans from achieving federal rights like employment rights as a form of discriminating them (Magar, 2009, Para.2-8).
Another issue of concern was affirmative action, which violated the rights of women. Sexual harassment to black women was common, leading to race ethnic clashes. Race ethnic sex generated racism imperfectly. Consequently, racism took precedent so strong to quicken liberation front then civil war escalated.
In fact, for every three white Americans killed, about fifty African Americans died as well. To prove these facts, during the electoral process of 1867, a gang called Ku Klux Klan terrorized, maimed, and massacred black Americas with authority from the elite white Americans.
There was prejudice and segregation to any African American who dared to vote or take formal education. However, not all white Americans were happy with the ongoing discriminations, prejudices and racism attacks. A quite high percentage of white Americans supported the move while others rejected it vehemently and hence subjected themselves to attacks.
African American prejudice, discrimination and segregation exist even up to today in America. To end these vices, African Americans formed civil rights movements to liberate them and assign them freedom. Through liberation, mass murder and execution of civil rights kingpins like martin Luther King and others, the war became almost a success. However, even up to today the prejudices and discriminations including still hold is an American society (Hooker, 1999, Para. 6, 8-9).
In conclusion, the civil rights act of 1964 rescued African Americans from incessant segregations in employment bureaus, political, economic arena including involvements in doing business hence, stabilizing their economic standards. The climax of their liberation and perhaps the greatest achievement of black and white supremacy in United States of America is the election of Barack Obama as the as the first black president.
Reference List
Beijbom, U. (1996.) A Review of Swedish Emigration to America. European Emigration. Web.
Hooker, R. (1999). African-Americans in the American Revolution. Web.
Kolchin, P. (1994). American Slavery: 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang.
Magar, P. (2009). Racism against African Americans. Buzzle. Web.