Question

Do you agree that racial discrimination against African Americans might be related to economic stratification? Justify your position with specific examples.

Answer 1

In a sense, the discrimination against African Americans is related to economic stratification. In the 17th century colonial Virginia, the concept of race was adopted and used as a justification for social classification for groups of people. This was a result of a violent uprising known as Bacon's Rebellion in which lower class African and Europeans both who were denied land holdings in the Virginia frontier. The rebellion was so destructive that the Virginian governing body set in place strict segregation between Africans and Europeans in a way to prevent them from collectively joining forces again to create another violent uprising. Since then, those of African have gradually lost certain rights and liberties in comparison to their Caucasian counterparts, to the imminent point in which Africans were nearly all reduced to the role of slaves. Even after the abolition of slavery, those of African descent were continuously denied abilities to obtain better economic and financial assets by a southern states that were still upset of losing their right to own slaves. This is evident by sharecropping being used as a way to keep African Americans on estates to work off for their freedom, as well as terroristic tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan, as well as forms of institutional racism that barred African Americans from the same working establishments as White Americans. In various ways, economic stratification has been a tool for discriminating African Americans throughout American history.<span />