“Do not let anyone call you a minority if you are black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You are not less than anybody else.” The Native American and African-American groups have suffered from economic, political, and landholding troubles in the past and to this day. From the beginning of American, we see how these two groups have transformed into society as part of civilization. The Native Americans had their land stolen by the Europeans and got nothing in exchange but supposedly they had become civilized by the Europeans who believed they were savages because they lived free and together as a society. Then the African Americans were brought into a new world by the Europeans by force to work for other people who treated them as property and not as people and did not give them any rights. To this day I still see some of this mistreatment happening where the Native Americans and African Americans are still struggling to be seen as equals to the “superior” race.
Firstly, I would like to explain how the Native Americans have transformed into part of America from the beginning until today with a message from President Andrew Jackson on Native Americans. When the Europeans came into the land of the natives, they brought new experiences and ideas were made them believe it was necessary to own property before the Indians believed the land was a common resource, not an economic commodity. Women could engage in premarital sex and choose to divorce their husbands, and most Indian societies were matrilineal. Since men were often away on a hunt, women also saw the agricultural duties, as well as the household duties. President Andrew Jackson excluded the Indians from the era of assertive democratic nationalism causing The Creek Indians to initially sell the early settlers their slaves, generally, war captives and their families but the expansion of cotton and slavery forced the relocation of Indians. During his administration, he led the Indian Removal Act providing funds for uprooting the Five Civilized Tribes with a population of around 60000 living in the North. From his message, he states, “It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their way and under their rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually...to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community....”. The president believed that Indians were savage monsters who were not part of the white population because they were not the same religion and had different customs. The law marked a repudiation of the Jeffersonian idea that civilized Indians could be assimilated into the American population. The Cherokees went to court to protect their rights. To this day we see how the Indians are still being removed from land that they have resided in forever for society to create a new factory.
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Secondly, I would like to inform African-American lives as part of society from the beginning until today with a message from a slave Josiah Henson who has his biography as live as a slave. The spread of tobacco led settlers to turn to slavery, which offered many advantages over indentured servants. Africans were seen as alien in their color, religion, and social practices. Slavery developed slowly in the New World because slaves were expensive, and their death rate was high in the seventeenth century. Slavery became connected with the color black and liberty with the color white. With the consolidation of a slave society, planters filled the law books to protect their power over the slaves. Race took on more and more importance as a line of social division and the liberties of free blacks were stripped away as “free” and “white” had become almost identical. Slaves were considered property and had few legal rights. Slaves were not allowed to testify against a white person, carry a firearm, leave the plantation without permission, learn how to read or write, or gather in a group without a white person present, although some of these laws were not always vigorously enforced. Masters also controlled whether slaves married and how they spent their free time. Said in a slave's own words, “The fact of the sacrilegious act of lifting a hand against the sacred temple of a white man's body” Because a white person was superior to the blacks the slaves were not even asked why they would commit the crime even if to protect his wife from rape. I believe this is still happening today because an African-American girl who was trying to protect herself from being raped killed her rapist and was sent to prison although it was self-defense
Thirdly I will give my opinion on the Native Americans and African Americans have transformed over history with examples of Eric Foner explaining the life of these groups. I believe that the Natives and African Americans are still being treated like a minority because since the beginning of time, these groups were not allowed to vote for being poor and now groups from lower backgrounds cannot vote because they are not given the same education to be informed of the importance of voting. Free blacks were excluded from new economic opportunities. Barred from schools and other public facilities, free blacks laboriously constructed their own institutional life. Free blacks were confined to the lowest ranks of the labor market. Free blacks were not allowed access to public land in the West. Since the beginning of history when the white Americans came into a mess in the lives of the native Americans and African-American land, they have treated them like the lower part of society like animals who could not have a say in their own lives because they were not the same color. Foner stated, “ It powerfully reinforced the racial definition of American nationhood and freedom”(Foner 397). The states had a completely different definition of what an America is, and people of color are not free or part of the society, for example, Foner states, “…the court ruled, was not a ‘woman’ in the eyes of the law. She was a slave, whose master had completed power over her person” (Foner 419) because the women were a slave who had disrespected her master she was killed and had no rights to fight her liberty.
In conclusion, I would like to restate how the lives of the natives and African Americans have been impacted throughout history. Although the times have changed and these groups seem to be free, they still struggle through some of the same racism from centuries from past generations. The native Americans are thrown out of their homes and placed in different areas and left to figure it out. Then the African-Americans are killed by the police who should be protecting them for the color of their skin. These groups have been through a lot of racism and the world needs to treat everyone the same and not look at color as an obstacle and think that the white race is superior to any race.
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