Puerto Ricans and black Americans Essay Example for Free

Puerto Ricans and black Americans Essay In his memoir â€Å"Down These Mean Streets†, Piri Thomas searches for belonging in the racially stratified American nation of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Thomas explores how his race as well as his physical appearance compels him to seek identification with black Americans. Throughout the narrative Piri struggles with his father’s privileging of whiteness and rejection of their visible black racial heritage. Piri questions his father’s abandonment, as he sees it, of their racial identity and of Piri as he attempts to navigate the United States process of assimilation. While Piri struggles with his rejection by larger society as a Puerto Rican, he is conscious that he has another avenue open to him, identification as a black American, and despite his father’s objections he deliberately explores that option as a way to find some sense of belonging and acceptance. Piri was born at Harlem Hospital and is raised in East Harlem where he learns to identify himself along racial and ethnic lines with the other Puerto Ricans and black Americans that make up his world. When his father moves the family beyond Piri’s comfort zone to Italian turf, just a few blocks away, Piri becomes aware of himself as an outsider. For the first time, Piri must face the dilemma of being a darker-complexioned Puerto Rican and being labeled as black. At this point in his young life, Piri’s identity is firmly rooted in a Puerto Rican heritage reinforced by his mother’s desire to return home to the Caribbean. Piri remembers his mother’s sentiments: â€Å"Momma talked about Puerto Rico and how great it was, and how she’d like to go back one day, and how it was warm all the time there and no matter how poor you were over there, you could always live on green bananas, bacalao, and rice and beans. ‘Dios mio,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see my island again† (Thomas 9) Piri’s mother serves as a guide that emphasizes her homeland in Piri’s imagination. Although Piri’s family has no hope of ever returning to Puerto Rico, Piri holds onto his Puerto Rican identity and firmly resists anyone’s labeling of him as black American. Another factor in his resistance to a black identification is the white appearances of his mother, sister, and brothers. Piri shares the darker complexion of his father who negates his African heritage by stating that his dark complexion is due to ‘Indian’ blood and even on occasion exaggerates his Puerto Rican accent to emphasize his ethnic difference from black Americans. Even at a young age Piri recounts feeling as though his dad favored his lighter-complexioned siblings and treated him in a harder and rougher manner: â€Å"Pops, I wondered, how come me and you is always on the outs†¦How come when we all get hit for doing something wrong, I feel it the hardest? Maybe ‘cause I’m the biggest, huh? Or maybe it’s ‘cause I’m the darkest in this family† (Thomas 22). As a child Piri can already sense the difference in the way his father treats him. As an adult he confronts his father about his behavior and associates his bitterness toward him to the racial self-hatred that his father experiences after his arrival in the United States. In an interview, Thomas acknowledges that although he was conscious of the difference in his appearance at home, it was outside of the home and initially at school where he felt the real impact of being Afro-Latino (Hernandez, 5). In his memoir it is after his father moves Piri outside of his comfort zone again and crosses boundaries by moving his family to a majority white community in Long Island that Piri begins to experience exclusion by his peers. At a school dance after he overhears a group of white students expressing disgust and resentment at his audacity in asking a white girl to dance with him, he comes to understand his outsider status at school and refuses to return, which eliminates his only educational resource for obtaining higher paying legal employment later on in life. In addition, Piri recounts another instance in Long Island when he was treated as a trespasser also because of his expressed romantic interest in a white woman. In this situation a white man bombards him on a train with racial epithets for being accompanied by his white girlfriend. In anger Piri transfers his hate for his racial predicament to his girlfriend during sex. He remembers, â€Å"In anger, in hate, I took out my madness on her† (Thomas 90). Piri’s actions following this racist experience complement his father’s use of white women to ease the pain of racism. Piri associates his father’s marriage to his white mother and later infidelity with another white woman as an attempt to nullify his blackness. Piri does not verbally claim that this is the motivation for his father’s attraction to white women. However, Piri acutely senses that Poppa correlates whiteness to superiority and advancement because of his father’s harsher treatment of him in comparison to his fairer siblings and the gradual removal of his family from the barrio and communities of color. Sanchez hypothesizes that while in Puerto Rico, â€Å"Poppa protects himself against his ancestral black blood by marrying Piri’s mother, whose white skin gives him racial privilege and cultural capital† (122). From his father, Piri learns to use white women as a tool to ease his own racial discomfort. Piri is attracted to a fair-complexioned Puerto Rican woman named Trina who becomes his girlfriend. However, unlike his mother who rejects the notion of racial privilege among her family members, Trina is aware of the power position she holds as a white Latina. After a party, Trina comments on her position and the privileges it allows her, â€Å"I can drink anytime I want to†¦After all, I’m free, white, and over the age† (Thomas 112). Piri picks up on her claim to racial privilege and the difference Trina acknowledges between their disparate situations within the American racial hierarchy. In response to Trina’s drunken statements, Piri attempts to assert a dominant position over her by punching her in the face but instead he injures his hand. Facing racial discrimination as black men is a disempowering and emasculating experience for Piri and his father. Affirming superiority over women is one way that they are able to reaffirm their masculinity and reject a black identification. The association of â€Å"black† with the position of inferior social status in the United States and the correlation between women and inferiority in Puerto Rico converge within the context of the Puerto Rican American experience to equate black to woman. Asserting superiority over women aid Piri and his father in rejecting a black identity. Claiming this position over white women in particular implies that they are capable of transgressing a racial line that black men cannot. In Thomas’s narrative, female characters are repeatedly used by Piri and other men to assert their own masculinity and superiority over women and therefore, through substitution, to assert their humanity and negate their inferior racial status. In his narrative, Thomas juxtaposes his family’s home in Babylon, Long Island to Harlem in order to portray Long Island as the mainstream American community that he is excluded from and Harlem as a peripheral community to the dominant one that rejects him. After Piri realizes he is the victim of racial discrimination at a job interview, he decides that he will no longer pursue employment and acceptance in mainstream American society. Instead he finds self-employment and comfort selling and using drugs while living in Harlem. Thomas writes: â€Å"But I was swinging in Harlem, my Harlem, next to which Babylon was like cotton candy white and sticky, and tasteless in the mouth† (Thomas, 105). Thomas contrasts Harlem to Long Island: the former where he finds belonging and safety among the racially marginalized and underground drug culture where he can alleviate the pain of non-belonging and the latter as exclusionary and unwilling to allow him to pursue upward mobility through legal societal structures. Despite the handful of lessons that Piri picks up from his father that allow him to retain some sense of self and manhood in the United States, Piri is furious at his father for abandoning him by rejecting the racial plight of Afro-Latinos and aligning himself with whites and a non-black Puerto Rican identity that causes him to exaggerate his foreign origins and deny any African ancestry. Piri confronts his father and expresses his anger at him for rejecting their shared racial identity before he leaves his family on a journey to the southern states: â€Å"Poppa, don’t you know where you at? Or are you seeing it, Poppa, and making like it’s not there†¦You protect your lying dream with a heavy strain for a white status that’s worthless to a black man† (Thomas 151). Even though Piri leaves home without his father’s support, he has already internalized several of his father’s coping strategies for dealing with American racism which he attempts to employ during his travels and which help lead him to his own survival strategies. Ironically, although he criticizes his father for emphasizing his foreign status as a Puerto Rican, it is the same device that Piri makes use of in the south. Piri’s brother Jose has the white appearance that Piri and his father both covet. Because of this, Piri believes that his father favors Jose and his other fair-complexioned siblings. He is jealous of Jose’s relationship with their father and the ease with which he is capable of assimilating among the white community in Long Island, which represents mainstream America. Because of this, Jose with his white skin, nearly blond hair and blue eyes, represents the image that Piri once felt he embodied but learns that he does not. In an effort to try to gain some sympathy from his family about his racial position, he attempts to force Jose to see how he is like him and that they share the same African ancestry. In a discussion with Jose about his plans to go on a journey south with his friend Brew, Piri is determined to make Jose aware that his black skin is also a part of his brother’s heritage. In an angry response, Jose defends his claim to whiteness and insists that Piri is making the choice to identify as black: Jose’s face got whiter and his voice angrier at my attempt to take away his white status. He screamed out strong, ‘I ain’t no nigger! You can be if you want to be. You can go down South and grow cotton, or pick it, or whatever the fuck they do. You can eat that cornbread or whatever shit they eat. You can bow and kiss ass and clean shit bowls. But – I –am white! † (Thomas 145) Jose’s outburst reveals his understanding that being black is identified with the lower rungs of the socio-economic hierarchy. However, what he does not realize is that whereas he has the power to choose a racial identity, whether it is white, black, or Indian, Piri does not. Piri’s visible racial difference hinders him from assimilating into mainstream America, being socially accepted by whites, or pursuing economic mobility in the same fashion as Jose. Jose explains away Piri and their father’s dark skin by suggesting that in addition to their Spanish ancestry they also have some Native American blood. Native American heritage is seen as an alternative to the black and white binaries used in the United States and allows an individual a place above that of black Americans in the American racial hierarchy. Jose explains away Piri’s dark skin to his white friends by claiming a Spanish and Indian mixture, however Piri rejects this identification in favor of an Afro-Latino identity. Despite the racial rejection that Piri experiences by his father and brother, Piri comes to terms with his blackness partly through his friendship with two black Americans, Crutch and Brew. In a conversation about the racial politics of the south, Crutch piques Piri’s curiosity about the south by describing a similar dilemma to the one that Piri faces: Places like Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama. All them places that end in i’s an’ e’s an’ a whole lotta a’s. A black man’s so important that a drop of Negro blood can make a black man out of a pink-asshole, blue-eyed white man. Powerful stuff, that thar white skin, but it don’t mean a shit hill of beans alongside a Negro’s blood (Thomas, 120). Crutch describes to Piri the historical assignment of mixed-raced people to the black race, even if an individual’s ancestry is mainly of European origin. The image conveyed reflects Piri’s own background growing up with family members with the light hair, skin and eyes of Europeans. Crutch’s description of the importance that â€Å"a Negro’s blood† plays in assigning individuals to racial categories in the south initiates Piri’s interest in traveling there. His journey south serves as a quest to gain an understanding of the racial issues that plague him and his father. Although his father has abandoned Piri to experience life as a black man on his own, Piri continues on his travels with his father as an underlying motivator to discover a place of racial belonging that they both can fit comfortably into. In his southern travels, Piri feels more heavily the weight of his skin color in instances such as when he is forced to sit in the back of the bus despite his remonstrations that he is Puerto Rican or when he is refused service at a whites only restaurant. Despite his initial proclamation that he is interested in going to the south to discover his own identity as a black man and the socio-political constraints of that position, Piri continues to assert his difference and racial privilege as a Latino in the same manner as his father. Without his father’s guidance, Piri completes his travels down south and through other adventures before deciding to make Harlem his home, which is the only place where he really feels as though he belongs. Brown comments on Piri’s return to Harlem: â€Å"Only on the streets of Spanish Harlem, with his boys, does Piri have a sense of ‘home,’ even when he is strung out on heroin and literally homeless, crashing with whomever he can† (Brown, 33). Piri doesn’t make that transition to black American nor does he find a way to assimilate into mainstream America. In contrast to his father, he chooses to return to Harlem, a marginalized community on the fringe of mainstream culture where he is comfortable with his Afro-Latino identity and where he finds belonging among the same streets where he felt accepted during his youth. Piri remembers that the â€Å"world of the street belonged to the kid alone. There he could earn his own rights, prestige, his good-o stick of living. It was like being a knight of old, like being ten feet tall† (Thomas 107). The gangs and streets serve as Piri’s community as a youth; however, once he grows older, the drug underworld is where he turns to alleviate the pain of not belonging. The youth gang culture that Thomas romanticizes in his memoir has grown to unprecedented heights and takes on a new life in the writing of the subsequent generations. BIBLIOGRAPHY Thomas, Piri. Down These Mean Streets. New York: Vintage Books, 1967 Sanchez, Marta E. â€Å"La Malinche at the Intersection: Race and Gender in Down These Mean Streets. † PMLA. 113. 1 (Jan 1998) : 117-128. Brown, Monica. Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizens in Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Chicana Narratives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002 Hernandez, Carmen Delores. â€Å"They Have Forced Us to Be Universal†. Interview with Piri Thoma, 5/6 Mar. 1995. Retrieved from http://www. cheverote. com/reviews/hernandezinterview. html , June 4, 2009

Colgate-Palmolive :: Oral Hygiene Industry

WS1 CP Paper Colgate-Palmolive has been a leader in household and personal care products. In 1991 the company planned new product launches while planning to venture into new markets (Quelch & Laidler, 2011). The company’s plan worked and now the company offers products from oral hygiene products to dish soap to dog food. This paper will discuss the company’s mission. This paper will also discuss a SWOT analysis which according to Kotler and Keller (2009) is â€Å"the overall evaluation of a business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.† Mission A mission statement should be clear and thoughtful. A mission statement should also provide employees with a sense of purpose and direction (Kotler & Keller, 2009). According to Colgate (2011) the company’s mission statement is â€Å" to provide Colgate with a significant competitive advantage by reducing total delivered costs, extending technology resources and developing excellence in purchasing, logistics and sourcing processes.† The company has been successful in its mission and accomplishing its goals. Strengths Colgate-Palmolive has been a strong force in the oral hygiene industry. The company has many strengths that have contributed to the company’s success. The company has become a global leader with seventy five percent of sales coming from international operations (Colgate, 2011). The company has built strong brand recognition over the years. According to Sekar and Thomas (2008) â€Å"brand differentiation is now becoming an important tactic for combating competition in the hostile marketplace.† While price is important, brand is also an important influence for consumers (Chain Drug Review, 2010). Another influence is product positioning. Colgate-Palmolive has been successful in positioning their products in stores and displaying more skus than other brands. The company has a focus on new product development and innovation. Products range from oral hygiene products to pet foods. The company sells high margin products that they are able to produce at a low cost to the company (Datamonitor, 2011). Colgate-Palmolive’s financial strategy has helped the company to achieve great success. Weaknesses Although the company has many strengths the company does have some weaknesses. While the company remains the market leader in Ireland (Checkout, 2008), the company has experienced a decrease in sales in other European countries (Datamonitor, 2011). This decrease could be the result of less spending on advertising compared to the company’s competitors (DeSanto, 2010).

Minorities in Australian Literature Essay

Australian literature consists of many representations of the ‘Australian way of life’ that are constructed by numerous national stereotypes. Various critics argue that the current literary representations of the average Australian do not embrace enough cultural diversity through the incorporation of indigenous people, females and ethnic communities. The representations of Australian people have changed dramatically over a period of time. While the first Australian literary pieces consisted of only one specific brand of person, neglecting women and aborigines, during the nation’s development and the arrival of more ethnic people, there was a rise in the representations of these minority groups. Following this, in the late 20th century to current years, these minority groups have begun to express and represent themselves through writing. Despite the most common representation of the Australian person not including these minorities, there has been a significant change in their representations through literature and the version that does not include them, is predominately used through non-literary works. The common representation of the Australian people is a tough Anglo-Saxon male who works in labour intensive jobs. This portrayal has been used heavily to identify Australians, particularly by the current media, to build on the Australian image. The concept of this type of person representing the whole nation was formed from traditional texts in the 19th century, when the writers were almost entirely white European males and chose to write only of people like themselves. â€Å"When the ladies come to the shearing shed† and â€Å"Clancy from the overflow,† are examples of the types of literary pieces that were written in the 19th century, which focus on the white men of Australia who work in tough jobs in the outback. â€Å"When the ladies come to the shearing shed,† written by Henry Lawson in 1897 is about the reactions of Australian men when women are in their presence. The poem composes the image of masculine men who work in a shearing shed, and represents their job as noble, as women come from the city to watch them. Women are represented as delicate objects of affection that hold little importance to the story. The only time in which the women are described doing or saying something is when they comment on the appearance of the animals, â€Å"and they gush and say in a girly way, that ‘the dear little lambs’ are ‘sweet. ’† This being the only thing that women say, illustrates that they did not hold any real significance to the story, and their opinions were completely left out. The way in which the women are portrayed in the poem is not necessarily negative, but they are not particularly valued characters, and are seen as the ‘other’. This is due to the attempt of a white male providing his personal opinion on the way another type of person acts, which creates a distorted representation. The men and women in this text have an obvious separation between them, and it is express that they are on very different levels, which is not an accurate portrayal of real life. â€Å"Clancy of the overflow† was written in 1889 by one of Australia’s most famous poets, Banjo Paterson. The story shares the same representation of the Australian male, who works with animals out in the â€Å"bush. † In the poem Paterson attempts to personify the quintessential Australian, and who believes every man should be which is a strong worker who is in touch with life on the land. Through the eyes of an office worker the poem represents outback life as desired over city living and working, â€Å"I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall. † Clancy, and his outback life is represented as desired by the city dweller, â€Å"And I somehow fancy that I’d like to change with Clancy, like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go. † The poem does not include aborigines, women or ethnic people, which by today’s standard is frowned upon but in the time of the poems creation was common in texts. These two, and many more texts from Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson reinforce the argument that the personification of the Australian person was most commonly used in traditional Australian literature, and the opinions of the minority groups are excluded. Progressing from the prejudiced representation that they received from male writers, women have become just as equally common and successful as men in Australian literature. In today’s Australian society, women are in a better situation than indigenous and ethnic Australians in terms of equality, which makes their characterization in literary works more familiar. The liberation of women in Australian literature has given females the opportunity to write about and express themselves through their personal opinions, creating countless female Australian authors. â€Å"If I had a gun† is a poem written by Gig Ryan, that represents her confronting attitudes toward the men that surround her. The poem consists of Gig Ryan explaining the men that she would shoot because of their disrespectful attitude towards women. There is . She uses particular examples of the way men in society sexualize her and other women, â€Å"I’d shoot the man who whistled from his balcony. † She even writes about the smallest occurrences that frustrate her, illustrating that she doesn’t accept any form of gender superiority, â€Å"I’d shoot the man last night who said smile honey. † A woman writing about the men that she would figuratively murder, shows the growth that Australian literature has endured. Many years prior, women were only rarely written about and their true feelings and perspectives were silenced. Now, they have the opportunity to voice their opinions, even in a confronting manner and still be embraced by the Australian public. Throughout the 20th century, women, aborigines and ethnic people began to be identified and represented more regularly, however still commonly through the perspective of Anglo-Saxon males. Despite this improvement, the ‘others’ could not represent themselves, so someone else represented them. This obviously led to a one-sided representation, because no matter how sympathetic the author was, they were viewing things through their own perspective, which is particularly evident with the aboriginal representations in texts. The novel â€Å"Coonardo† written by Katherine Susannah Pritchard addresses the complex issues of ownership and the colonial enterprise that was present in its publication date of 1958. It contains the flourishing inter-racial relationship of Hugh, a non-indigenous landowner and Coonardo, an indigenous woman as the solution to these difficult situations. This was an early time in Australia for a topic like this to become a successful novel, especially because the author held a non-biased perspective throughout the novel, which would have limited readers to those who did not have a strong opinion on these matters. David Malouf’s â€Å"Remembering Babylon† (1993) deals with the problem of how to represent difference and reversing the representations of the ‘other’. The main character, Gemmy lived in an aboriginal community for 16 years and an eventual â€Å"rescue† of him by white settlers creates a â€Å"double consciousness† that does not allow for him to fully re-embrace his white culture that soon becomes the ‘other’. Malouf, despite his white heritage does achieve a very open-minded representation of the aboriginal people. He appears to show sympathy towards the indigenous community, which allows him to tell the story through their eyes, casting the white people and the things they did as bad. The point of view throughout the novel is mainly of the tribe that Gemmy belonged to, instead of himself. The novel, while containing a great racial tolerance and acceptance towards the indigenous people, does however, still support the notion of the unstable relationship between non-indigenous and indigenous Australians. â€Å"Remembering Babylon† provides a more in depth representation from the point of view of the aboriginal people, whereas â€Å"Coonardo† represents both races equally from an outsider’s perspective. Many ethnic immigrants have been left with the smallest amount of representations in Australian literature, due to the White Australia Policy lasting up until the mid 20th century, which has rendered their Australian legacy very young. This obviously has now left them struggling to be represented in key texts because of their short history. Ethnic groups who are represented in literary works that are accepted within the mainstream aren’t immensely common. However when these ethnic groups are personified, it creates a highly accurate representation of the average Australian communities. Carlos Tsiolkas is a Greek-Australian author, who wrote â€Å"The slap,† a popular, contemporary piece of Australian literature that was turned into a television series. This novel naturally integrates white, Greek, Indian and indigenous Australians into a friendship community, illustrating the genuine multicultural society of Australia. Tsiolkas’s heritage assists him in providing an accurate representation of what it is like for these ethnic characters to live in Australia, because he has the ability to write from experience and represent himself. â€Å"The slap† does not have an obvious focus on the inter-racial relationships that it contains, but due to the variety of ethnicity that is incorporated into the characters, it is clear to see that the author made a conscious decision to include a range of cultural diversity in his novel. Ethnic immigrants who become successful authors usually write about their experiences in Australia, that become popular within the Anglo-Australian community, as their pieces offer a different view point, that challenges the way Australians view themselves. â€Å"The ungrateful immigrant† is a poem by Yu Ouyang that is an example of an ethnic author challenging the common perception of the ‘Australian way of life’. The poem is Ouyang’s personal view on Australia and its people, challenging the common belief that Australians are friendly and welcoming people, particularly to immigrants. He speaks about many elements of the country that he does not agree with or particularly like, and the negative way that the Australian people have responded to him. â€Å"You think that because I came to and live in Australia, I should be grateful for the rest of my life. † He even says that his decision to migrate to Australia was an â€Å"irreversible mistake. † This poem, like â€Å"if I had a gun† speaks very negatively about certain groups of people and challenges many common ideologies that exist about the ’Australian way of life,’ however it is still recognized and appreciated as a passionate literary piece. It would be understandable for many Australians to get offended and disregard this text due to the challenging opinions that it contains, but the piece has been accepted into the community because it is seen as an Australian person giving his opinion on his country. Also similar to â€Å"if I had a gun,† â€Å"The ungrateful immigrant† shows the progress in Australian literature and the different representations of the ‘Australian way of life’ that it now contains. It is evident that these literary works provide evidence that supports the argument that, despite the common stereotype of Australian people still being an Anglo-Saxon male, Australian literature does provide an immense variety of representations of women, indigenous Australians, and ethnic communities. They also illustrate the progression of Australian literature, from when it contained an incredibly narrow group of representations, to now when it contains an abundance of different racial and gendered authors and characters that contribute to the production of literary pieces, and the representations of the Australians that they contain. It is important, when analyzing the national identity of Australian way of life to evaluate the state of its literature, and the representations that it contains and upholds.

The Slavery Of The United States - 1545 Words

Ranging from a necessary evil to a positive good, the perception of slavery proved to be a polarizing issue. Many northern citizens were indifferent to the idea of slavery, while southern plantation owners relied on slavery to support their economies. After the Second Great Awakening, the abolition movement was introduced and opposition to slavery began to receive attention. Due to political ideals, acquisition of new American territories, and religious influences, opposition to slavery grew rapidly in the United States from 1776 to 1852. Natural rights of life and liberty fought for during the American Revolution were extended to slaves in the North. One of the Articles of Confederation government’s greatest achievements was in passing the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which marked an early effort to contain slavery by prohibiting it in the Old Northwest. (Document A) The doctrine of slavery holds Africans in perpetual slavery as animals. The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Nathaniel Jennison upholds the abolition of slavery. The natural rights of life and liberty are protected for all citizens in the Massachusetts Commonwealth. It was stated that all men, regardless of race or physical attributes, are equal. The American Revolution created a sense of egalitarianism and a new ideal of government grounded in liberty and the natural rights of man. The legal system of Massachusetts codified an opposition to slavery. A growingShow MoreRelatedSlavery And The United States891 Words   |  4 PagesThe Unites States during the 1850s was a harsh time for African Americans, not only were they treated extremely harsh; but many of them were slaves as well. Slavery was the topic of every discussion during this time period and the United States was literally split on the issue of slavery. A lot of the Southern States wanted to continue slavery because it was a way of life. Many of the southerners depend on slavery to help grow and harvest crops that were on acres and acres of land. Northerns, onRead MoreThe Slavery Of The United States1449 Words   |  6 Pages â€Å"Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature; opposition to it on his love for justice.† This saying by Abraham Lincoln tells us that people are really different when it comes to their beliefs and attitudes. Some are so focused on wealth, which is why they have slaves to work for free, and treated them as properties instead of real human beings. On the other hand, some peopl e were against slavery because it violated the basic human rights like the right to life, liberty, and security.Read MoreSlavery And The United States848 Words   |  4 Pagesthe United States. During these years, many different topics were up for dispute and compromises were being negotiated. Unfortunately, it was hard for all of the citizens to come to a complete compromise for the disputes. Some states had similar opinions, while others were in a deadlock. One of the biggest disputes during this time were over slavery. While other disputes only involved a few states, slavery was a dispute that caused unrest between two distinctive regions in the United States: theRead MoreThe Slavery Of The United States953 Words   |  4 PagesEvery country has a dark past, whether it’s about conquering land from Native Americans, or mass genocide of a single race. The United States was no different from the rest of the world, especially when slavery was involved. The South had its reas ons on why to establish and justify the slavery system while the North rejected their beliefs. By focusing on the South’s argument, this will help to understand why they fought for their rights to keep slaves and understand how the African Americans wereRead MoreThe Slavery Of The United States1095 Words   |  5 Pagesattempted to cure their complete opposition on the regulation of slavery by using federal power to coerce an end to the feud, yet the movement increased tension between the divided nation. By invoking both legislative and judicial power, politicians used laws which included slave codes and freedom laws as well as court decisions like Dred Scott v Sandford (1875) to convince or force the population into acceptance of stances on slavery. Each party viewed their tactics and ideas to be righteous, andRead MoreSlavery And The United States1305 Words   |  6 PagesSlavery; An Issue Neglected to a Key Principle in the U.S. For 20 years slavery had existed in the United States of America despite its immorality and the objections of many citizens. Strides were made to correct this injustice around the time of the Revolutionary war; colonists started to demand their natural human rights from Britain. In 1766, our founding fathers were the first faced with a decision to abolish slavery; they felt the pressure from facing the purpose of their campaign due to theRead MoreSlavery And The United States1507 Words   |  7 PagesOver the centuries, slavery held a prominent factor in United States history. Slavery shaped and formed what society was in the United States. Slavery’s influence impacted the United States in various ways. The ways that slavery impacted United States history are the United States economy, society and politics. Some historians argue slavery is not an important factor in United States history. However, they are wrong because slavery brought many different political movements and t he Underground RailroadRead MoreThe Slavery Of The United States976 Words   |  4 PagesSlavery has played a very integral part in the development of the United States so far. It has taught people the importance of racial equality and moral discipline, which was lacked back in the time when slavery existed. Moreover, slaves were used mostly by farmers and business owners who wanted to maximize their profits and wanted cheap sources of labor. Slaves were first imported into the United States back in 1502 by a merchant named; Juan de Cà ³rdoba. The South was very interested in bringingRead MoreSlavery And The United States1673 Words   |  7 Pageshowever, when slavery existed, blacks were undermined and denied many freedoms entitled to them under the Constitution. There were many topics argued about, but slavery caused the most dispute within the country. In the 1850’s, the pro-slavery South and the anti-slavery North collided when the case of Dred Scott, a black slave who attempted to gain liberation, was brought to court. The North and South had vastly different views on the subject of slavery, Scott had resided in the free state of IllinoisRead MoreThe Slavery Of The United States1670 Words   |  7 Pageswedge between the nation. As the United States progressed into different industries, slavery benefited only one side of the country – the south. The north began outlawing slavery, deeming it as immoral and unconstitutional while the south needed and depended on slavery to maintain their economy. The opposing sides on the slave system lead to arguments between the North and the South as to decide what new territories would allow slavery, then leading on to outlawing slavery all together. Tensions increased