African American Racial Inequality

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What is the first thing you worry about when entering your vehicle? Is my seatbelt working? Do I have enough gas to make it to my destination? Are my brakes well maintained? Well, for Nii-Odoi Glover and many African Americans its “Do I have all my papers and identification in an open place so than I can give them to a cop without making him think I am reaching for a gun?” (p. 178) This is one of many instances where people of color experience racial injustice in their day-to-day lives. Racial inequality is so pervasive in today’s society that it leads to African-Americans, Latinos to be falsely accused of crimes they did not commit, educational inequality, and hinders opportunities in workplaces. I believe that is important to study the historical …show more content…
In the 15th century Spanish colonists attempted to subdue the native populace to convert them to Catholics and subjects of the Spanish Crown. Their main goal, however was to extract as much wealth from the Americas. This led to enslaving the native populations. The harsh conditions of this enslavement led to an enormous drop of indigenous people. Because of this the Spanish Crown in 1550 outlawed the practice but it did not end the need for labor. The Spaniards then turned to Africa in their search for laborers. They began to transport African slaves in huge numbers to their colonies in the Americas. Consequently tens of millions of Africans were brought over between the early 1600s and the nineteenth century as slaves (p.12). As a result the notion of whites being better …show more content…
With the publication between 1853 and 1855 of Comte Joseph-Arthur Gobineau’s four volumes entitled “Essays on the Inequality of the human races where in he divided humanity into three races- white, yellow and black. His findings were in lined with Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who claimed the superiority of the European race explained its dominant position. Furthermore, Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) found that American Indians had the smallest skulls. An evolutionary scientist named Jay Gould re analyzed these findings and claimed that Morton came at this conclusion because he had included 155 skulls of Peruvian Incas who had an average brain size of seventy-five cubic inches, yet only included three skulls of Iroquois people, who had, on average a much larger skull. In contrast, in the Caucasian group Morton had eliminated the Hindus, who had the smallest skulls from his sample. Had Morton ensured equal representation from each of the American Indian and Caucasian groups he would have found no significant differences in skull sizes. Additionally when Morton compared the brain sizes of Africans and Europeans, his African samples was entirely female and his English sample entirely male. Of course he found that Europeans had larger brains. What is noteworthy about Morton’s research is not just that is if full of unconscious bias, but also that his biases are
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