Racism in the World free essay sample

Many people in America like to believe that racism is no longer apart of today’s world. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the twentieth-century, racism seemed to hit an all-time high around the world. With America trying to cope after the Civil War and Europe facing genocide, discrimination seemed inevitable, but can the problem of racism be solved? When looking back on America’s history after the Civil War, racism is apparent throughout in the form of segregation. Segregation truly started in 1865 with the Reconstruction of the United States, â€Å"A period from 1865-1877 immediately following the Civil War in which the federal government set the conditions that would allow the rebellious Southern States back into the Union† (â€Å"The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow†). A Reconstruction Policy was presented to the Congress by President Andrew Johnson but he supported white supremacy in the South and favored pro-Union Sothern political leaders who had aided the confederacy in the war. We will write a custom essay sample on Racism in the World or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Southerners, with Johnson’s support, attempted to restore slavery in substance if not in name. One way they tried to do this was with the construction of the Ku Klux Klan. In the beginning, the KKK was a secret fraternity club in Tennessee rather than a terrorist organization. Although, the Klan quickly grew and spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South. It attracted former Civil War generals and included mayors, judges, sheriffs, as well as common criminals. With all of this terror occurring in the south, the Republican-controlled congress was trying to protect blacks. And so, in1815, in a last-ditch effort to protect what remained of Reconstruction, the Congress â€Å"managed to pass a civil rights bill that sought to guarantee freedom of access, regard less of race, to the â€Å"full and equal enjoyment† of many public facilities† (The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow). Jumping ahead to 1970, the public is shown how blacks are treated and live in Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye. This book takes place in Lorain, Ohio at the end of the Great Depression. It is the story of three girls: Pecola, eleven; Claudia MacTeer, nine; and Frieda MacTeer, ten. They live in lower class houses and do everything they can to scrape by. In this story, these girls are faced with what is â€Å"beautiful† in the world, and in most people’s eyes that includes blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin. Claudia could care less if she were white and does not see what all the hustle and bustle about being white is. But Pecola, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to be white. â€Å"Pecola loves Shirley Temple, believing that whiteness is beautiful and that she is ugly† (Sparknotes). Pecola’s life is a life no one should have, nor deserves. Her father drinks, her mother is distant, and the two of them often beat one another. Her mother beats her and her father has raped her on more than one occasion, eventually impregnating her. She continually receives confirmation of her own sense of ugliness. When she buys candy, the grocer looks right through her. Boys constantly make fun of her. And she is wrongly blamed for killing a boy’s cat and is called a â€Å"nasty little black bitch† by his mother. Pecola believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. Around the time The Bluest Eye takes place, Europe was facing even harder times. The Holocaust refers to the period from January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe official ended. â€Å"During this time, Jews in Europe where subjected to progressively harsher persecution that ultimately led to the murder of six million Jews (1. 5 million of these being children) and the destruction of five thousand Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of all world Jewry† (â€Å"The Holocaust: An Introductory History†). In order to turn the European public against the Jews, the Nazi Party created a weekly newspaper called Der Sturmer  (The Attacker). â€Å"At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, The  Jews  are our misfortune!   Der Sturmer  also regularly featured cartoons of  Jews  in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and apelike. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly† (â€Å"The Holocaust: An Introductory History†). As Hitler’s rule progressed, the Jews were made to wear a golden star of David on all their clothing, they could only go to Jewish owned businesses, then finally, they could not own their own business and were only allowed to buy certain types of food. Soon, the Jews were isolated from the rest of the towns and had to live in ghettos. The living conditions in these ghettos were almost unbearable. What the Nazi’s did to the Jews next was unthinkable. â€Å"In June  1941  Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the Final Solution. Four mobile killing groups were formed called  Einsatzgruppen  A, B, C and D. Each group contained several commando units. The  Einsatzgruppen  gathered  Jews  town by town, marched them to huge pits dug earlier, stripped them, lined them up, and shot them with automatic weapons. The dead and dying would fall into the pits to be buried in mass graves†¦ Jews  were singled out for Special Treatment (Sonderbehandlung), w hich meant that Jewish men, women and children were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas. (The Holocaust: An Introductory History). The camps were liberated gradually, as the Allies advanced on the German army. One survivor of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel wrote an autobiography called Night about the different things he experienced during World War II and the Holocaust as a Jew in Europe. Only a teenager, Elie writes, after he and his father survive the first selection at Birkenau, â€Å"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never† (Sparknotes). Although these events happened more than sixty eight years ago, it is still in our close history. All around the world there are still people who experienced these events first hand. Although times may be different, racism is still and issue. Racism is a person’s individual feeling. We cannot change what people think. We could try to teach children that everyone is equal and have all integrated schools and not have so many schools that are â€Å"predominantly† one race.