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The United States Has a Long History of Racism

What Really Happened During Civil Rights

By Iria Vasquez-PaezPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Nothing shocks me more than what I saw in the newspapers following the Charlottesville protest, pictures of white men with torches marching in a long line, a few inches deep, thick and foreboding. The United States has a long history of resisting equal rights for all since we have a history of slavery in our remote past. Slaves were branded on their physical body if they were owned or ran away. There may not be such thing as equality in the United States if we are still marginalizing people who aren’t white. If we are mistreating people for being gay and refusing them service, in particular, this is what is contributing to the breakdown of our society.

If we don’t reign in our racist impulses, the United States may wind up in an all-out struggle, a cultural civil war if you will. The civil rights struggle in the 1960s helped the real situation somewhat but with the recent influx of Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, and other immigrant groups coming to the United States, people of color are facing more racism than ever before. We are talking about people getting paid less than whites, females getting paid less than men if you go towards equal work for equal pay, but a moment.

The civil rights movement at the time didn’t have resources to focus on long-term strategies. Integration was a battle that had eventually been won. As far as the marches go, each march led to some progress. Remember how primitive human race is because we segregated a group of people for merely having a darker skin tone than the rest of us. In 1961, they were dealing with angry mobs attacking black and white freedom riders alike.

If that doesn’t scream primitive species, I don’t know what does. In modern times, the fight for civil rights deals with protesting police brutality. A pivotal situation that ignited the civil rights movement was the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four little girls. There were voter registration drives in the Deep South that were worked on vigorously by the activists. Older activists have problems with modern activists of today because they have a difference of opinion. There is also the matter of health care activism in this day and age but this article is focusing on civil rights although health care is a civil right.

Blocking traffic is not necessarily a peaceful solution to radical extremist violence directed at any one group of people. What we have to remember is that right now, things are hardly just or fair if children are being separated from their mothers while entering the United States illegally. If something is unfair, it is best to fight for fairness. Nobody is going to come around to make it fair unless there are genuine protests or you protest to the person being unjust to you. Some people think life is by its nature unfair, sure, those are the people oppressing you although yes, life is unfair at times.

There are still people in the South who feel that non-whites should not have equal opportunity. They don’t want equal work for equal pay for anybody of any race. The United States is emboldened to be openly racist right now. They want to perpetuate Jim Crow laws as well as continue to enforce segregation rules. Some people really don’t get it. When I watch a video on Facebook of a white woman using a racial slur on an innocent person who has a white mother and who was sitting in a parked car in front of a store, I’m offended. Stuff like that goes viral these days. The good fight must continue until someday, we have real equality.

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About the Creator

Iria Vasquez-Paez

I have a B.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State. Can people please donate? I'm very low-income. I need to start an escape the Ferengi plan.

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