February 21, 2017
Dear American People,
Slavery has been an issue in America for a prolonged period of time, and it is my belief that it still exists today. In the past, every time one form of oppression was outlawed, another version of it took its place.
In the documentary “13th,” the sequence of African American suppression is outlined. It began with slavery. African Americans were sold as property and forced to do unpaid labor and live under extremely harsh conditions.
When Abraham Lincoln outlawed slavery with the 13th Amendment, it was thought that that was the end of suppression for blacks. However, when the 13th Amendment was written, it included a clause that states it is constitutional to be held as a slave if the said party is a prisoner. This allowed for the creation of convict leasing. African Americans were put in prison for petty crimes and then leased to plantation owners to be used as laborers, essentially as slaves.
Once that was outlawed, the Jim Crow Laws took its place. These allowed for segregation to occur in the Southern United States. African Americans and whites were not allowed to sit together, use the same bathroom, drink from the same water fountains, etc.
The most recent form of African American suppression is mass incarceration, which began in 1970 and is still present today. 35% of the American prison population is African American. This may not sound like that much, however proportionally, there are a lot more African Americans in prison due to the fact that there are significantly more whites living in America than African Americans.
We need to stop the suffering of the African American people by ending their oppression.
Even those African Americans who aren’t in prison are still suffering too. One of the most important catalysts of slavery was creating broken African American families. This was important because it helped them further break the spirits of the slaves. If they had no one to turn to support, they would be less likely to ban together and rebel. This then allowed for plantation owners to have better control over the slaves.
The broken African American family is still seen today even though it has been 150 years since slavery was abolished. This is showcased in the play Fences by August Wilson. Troy is a part of the third generation since slavery, but he still has a broken family. This is because it is hard to fix the families if nothing is done to help them be fixed.
When people are raised in a broken household they are far more likely to have a broken household when they grow up. In Fences, Troy talks about how “my daddy ain’t had them walking blues!...He stayed right there with his family. But he was just as evil as he could be” (Wilson 51). Troy’s dad had a lot of children with a lot of different women. However, he still stuck by his family and didn’t run away when life got tough. This is exactly how Tory behaves when he has a child with a woman who isn’t his wife. This is a perfect example of how the cycle of broken families repeats due to how a person is raised.
So it is hard to reduce racism when we still have mass incarceration and nothing is being done to help fix these broken African American families. We were the ones to cause the problem, therefore we need to be the ones to fix it.
Sincerely,
A Concerned American
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