The problem of the twentieth century in the United States of America revolves around oppressive institutions and practices that racially discriminated the blacks. The extreme structure of white prejudice, privilege and power has led to undemocratic foundations of the most human interactions in the country despite changes in laws regarding treatment of racially discriminated minorities across history. In order to bring American democracy to reality, initiatives should be taken to analyze the historical causes of the particular deep structures that have for a long time facilitated racial inequality in the US. As such, racism is created as a result of how people are treated and perceived in the mundane actions of everyday life in the contemporary society. African, Latino, American Indians and Asian descent have been on the receiving end regarding racial discrimination in the US history while the whites have become the privileged majority. One particular instance of racial discrimination happened in August 1955 when Mammie Till-Mobley of Chicago sent her only 14-yeear-old child Emmet Luis Till to visit his uncle in the Mississippi Delta (Beauchamp, 2005). Unfortunately, Emmet was abducted from his uncle’s home and brutally killed eight day later for whistling at a white woman. The documentary highlighting this event in history remains a perfect piece that is an eye-opening call for justice for Emmet Luis Till.
What made the situation worse was the fact that the orchestrators of the crime denied the late Emmet’s mother possession of the body. As a result, Mammie Till involved the Chicago officials in her quest to gain possession of her son’s already decomposing body. This was the consequence of the ordinary and routine racialization of the American society in daily lives. It is essential to realize that all people, regardless of race are born with natural and inalienable rights including the right to life. It is evident that the culture that existed lacked the civil responsibility to treat every citizen with fairness and respect. Moreover, the political systems should encourage the broadest possible involvement of all racially discriminated minorities in the decision making process as well as a criminal justice system that is impartial to everyone regardless of race.
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The climax of racism history in the US came in the twentieth century under the leadership of Jim Crow in the American South where there was an introduction of an overly racist regime. This characterizes the time during which Emmet Luis Till was lynched. There existed an extreme racist propaganda that represented black males as ravening beasts who were lusting after white women. The fact that Emmet whistled at the white woman at the Mississippi Delta was taken as a lustful act towards the particular woman. The racist propaganda against the black men greatly served as a perfect reason to rationalize the practice of lynching black males. Such extrajudicial executions by the white society were mostly reserved for blacks accused of offenses against the apparent color line. The killings were sadistic and brutal as the victims were likely to be tortured instead of simply being killed. This is demonstrated by the way Emmet was brutally killed. From the account of Emmet’s death, the decomposing body of the boy was found in a bayou of the Tallahatchie River with a heavy cotton gin fan tied to his neck with a barbed wire. The entire boy’s set of teeth but two were knocked out with one eyeball hanging on his chin. Furthermore, the boy’s body was missing one year with a bullet hole through the head. His skull had been chopped almost into two with the face being separated from the back of the head. The political disenfranchisement of American black males made it hard for them to advocate for their basic human rights by either running for public office or getting education. Existing local and state laws required the rigid separation of races in schools and public accommodations as well as the erosion of basic constitutional rights such as the freedom of expression and public assembly. The structure was further reinforced by mass violence and terror which led to massive lynching of black American males as an essential feature in the social exploitation of the Black American society.
The extreme brutalism against the African Americans in the South led to the establishment of the Northern Ghetto which provided solace for the downtrodden Blacks. Election of African Americans to the local and national offices was facilitated by the super-concentration of black Americans in specific American districts. Surprisingly, Chicago, Emmet’s mother’s city was the first major city to elect an African American, Oscar DePriest, to congress. This marked the most extensive pattern of racial residential segregation in the United States. This was followed by the establishment of race-based protest institutions as well as ethnically oriented consumer markets which served as a platform for minority entrepreneurship as with when they were in South America. However, the trend brought about devastating challenges to the Black society as concentration of poverty created a variety of social problems including crime and violence and growing social alienation of Black American youth. Therefore, the barriers to spatial mobility translated to barriers to social mobility as the confining of blacks to specific geographical location is a primary impediment to socio-economic progress 1 . Throughout the twentieth century, the African Americans along with their allies within the political white community relentlessly fought against the existing domains of racial inequality in the US both in the south and the north. The black Freedom movement in the South was executed in the form of nonviolent civil disobedience against the sociopolitical restrictions established by Jim Crow. The majority of the activists comprised the working class and the poor people majority of whom being women. Women have been in the forefront regarding the fight against protracted racism in the US history. This is demonstrated by Emmet’s mother who boldly fought against the discriminative forces of the white counterparts in the quest to fight for the rights of her fallen boy.
Organized efforts to eliminate structural racism in the Northern US were profoundly difficult as the Northern white liberals did not object to the Black Americans right to vote or eat in the same restaurants as long as they didn’t live next door. However, a problem began in early 1963 when a referendum on a local ordinance banning racial discrimination regarding all estate sales was defeated. As a result, Martin Luther King Jr. moved the focus of segregation to Chicago emphasizing the need to for employment opportunities and fair housing for African Americans. As a result, he encountered immense and fierce resistance from the white ethnics whereby thousands of white men, women and children threw rocks, bottles and even knives at unarmed and unarmed African American demonstrators. This particular kind of segregation regarding residential exclusion led to social isolation of the blacks from the rest of the American society. Moreover, the pattern of residential segregation of Black Americans was significantly different from that of Asian Americans and Latinos, who had a high likelihood to escape residential segregation by enhancing their incomes as well as their socioeconomic status. This and many other forms of discriminations against black Americans underscore the immense suffering they went through across American history.
Beauchamp’s nine years of investigation regarding the brutal killing of Emmet Luis Till is a clear indication of how the social, political and justice system of the United States of America has historically demeaned the status of the Black Americans. The fact that the Sheriff downplayed the seriousness of the murder incident as a matter of niggers bringing trouble shows that the rights of the Blacks were taken for granted. Therefore there is need to restructure the social, political and the economic landscape of the US to accommodate the African Americans.
Bibliography
Marsey, D., Denton, A., American Apartheid: segregation and the making of an underclass, (Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 45-87
Critical film analysis of the documentary, “The untold story of Emmet Luis Till” by Keith Beauchamp, 2005.
1 Marsey, D., Denton, A., American Apartheid: segregation and the making of a underclass(Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 45-78
