We are a nation of immigrants and it is in our nature to
look down on anyone different than ourselves. Anyone that is different in color
or anything else is subjugated to innate racism in order for people to compensate
for their own insecurities. It’s not necessarily a part of human nature but it
is a part of a racist culture that America has been. For example, when the
Europeans came over they diminished the fact that in Native Americans were on
the land first. And what’s interesting to me is that we were immigrants before
becoming native.
Another
example would be during slavery. The African people were discriminated against
because of the color of their skin as well as being from a different country.
It was a part of American culture to have slaves, what you did with them was up
to whoever had them. So when the war ended and the slaves were freed, how were
the people supposed to change their behavior over night when they had been
living with it for two hundred years? There’re are still people today who are
brought up on the same principles from the 1960s. There aren’t that many, but
they are still around.
In my
opinion, it is a part of human nature for people to make someone lower than
ourselves. That sounds really bad, but it’s true. It’s apparent throughout
history. Even though many minorities have the same rights as the majority, they
are still treated as lower class citizens. The only way for it to stop is to
make this kind of behavior illegal and looked down upon. Why? Because treating
people as someone lower than yourself is wrong. Now, convincing people of this
will be more difficult than creating laws to ensure that no one will treat
another human being that way.
Ensuring
equal rights for all is a challenging task. It took Abraham Lincoln two years
to pass the Emancipation Proclamation and deem slavery illegal. But it took
over a hundred years for African Americans to have equal rights in America. The
way that the government handles establishing equal rights is a slow and monotonous.
As it has been demonstrated in history, people who do not have a particular
right have to be protesting in the streets in order for their message to be
heard. It has been only ninety five years since women have gotten the right to
vote.
