Essay On Race Hate

Words: 699
Pages: 3

The question of whether or not racism will ever end is one that will never have an absolute answer; however, I am convinced that the answer is mostly yes. Unfortunately, that is only in large part due to the fact that racism, the belief that one's race is superior to another's and therefore has the right to dominate that race, has converted to sheer race hate over the past few centuries. What must be understood is that even with all the awful facets of racism, racism as an institution is not malicious, has never had wicked intentions. While racism may have birthed race hate, they are not the same. Race hate is what hurts. It is what places shackles on the black community and tells individuals they do not deserve to occupy the space they are …show more content…
The new laws established by Lincoln were mostly unenforced and, therefore, vastly ignored or transgressed. For example, whereas any man should have been able to vote, very few were actually afforded the opportunity because of poll taxes or literacy tests required prior to voting. First of all, because slaveholders did not allow their slaves to learn to read or write, the chance of passing a literacy test was slim to none. Secondly, most could not afford a poll tax because of their participation in largely unfair sharecropping, which allowed them to feed their families and have a place to live, but that was it. Most or all of the money earned from crops was given to the owner of the field. So, in a way, while legally they were free, they were still slaves from a social standpoint. That is until the civil rights movement began in the 1960s, achieving "the greatest political and social gains for blacks since Reconstruction" ("Slavery in America" sec. ??).

In 1896, came “separate but equal” segregation, condoned by our very own Supreme Court (“Civil Rights Timeline” 1). Since discrimination in voting was outlawed by the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, segregation was practically the only (legal) way to openly practice racism and was the spark behind most of the fire