“The combined forces of legislation, racialist ideologies, violence and politics
ID: 3456571 • Letter: #
Question
“The combined forces of legislation, racialist ideologies, violence and politics within the United States have worked to discriminate against and silence early immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands. As a result, they have had little recourse on opportunity to challenge or change the oppressive circumstances and/or conditions that they encountered.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? “The combined forces of legislation, racialist ideologies, violence and politics within the United States have worked to discriminate against and silence early immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands. As a result, they have had little recourse on opportunity to challenge or change the oppressive circumstances and/or conditions that they encountered.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement?Explanation / Answer
I agree with the given statement that the legislative measures and the dominant or the mainstream ideological positions in the US society have created a situation of increasing racial paranoia and prejudice. Historically, The Confederation of States which constituted the United States was based on acts of imperialism and direct attack on the lands of the indigenous tribes of North and Latin America. The American society thus got formulated along the hegemonic ideology of racial differences where categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ had become crucial to the emerging nationalism of the United States. Then, with the immigration of slaves and labour from China, and later the Pacific Islands, as the American society became increasingly more heterogenous, it also began to raise ingroup biases and a sense of racial superiority of the Anglo American society or the White Christian population over the non-Christian, ‘yellow’ , ‘Black’, and the ‘brown skinned’ ethnicities from the New World. The latter societies were considered to be primitive and uncivilised in term states of their technological and theological belief systems. The immigrants from the New World were employed in labour services, were secluded and administratively confined within ghetto settlements outside the suburbs. The ghetto neighbourhoods soon emerged as major centre’s of poverty, lack of infrastructure and public health facilities, crime and violence. All this has culminated into a spiral effect as lack of economic opportunities to the immigrants further reduced their motivation to improve their social position such as by acquiring higher education, and they further face economic and socially marginalisation due to the negligence of the state policies in ensuring free or low cost public education to such communities.
However, the events of the past have continued to leave their skirmishes even in the contemporary era and one can continue to see the prevalence of draconian ideas about exclusivity, economic privileges as rights of only a handful (mainly the whites) of the American population and discrimination in the workplace,all of which have indeed made the United States as a land which divides the society along racial and cultural lines.
Related Questions
Navigate
Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.