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African American Minority Group Essay

Decent Essays

As per the author, African Americans and other minority groups have always been a few steps behind the white population in the United States. The stage was set in the years before the civil war when African Americans were enslaved by the white families. For a very long time, African Americans were thought of as second-grade citizens and were treated as such. Slavery was widely prevalent, and it was common practice for black people to be treated as nothing more than property that could be used, cast away, traded or bequeathed to others without a second thought.
There are instances when slaves were treated kindly by their masters, but each time the misconception that they were treated as equals, or at least as human beings were shattered eventually. …show more content…

The author dictated a case wherein the same black slave mentioned before had saved some savings after much hard work. The mistresses asked the slave to lend the money to her, to which the slave obviously agreed. But the slave never saw her money again, and she couldn’t even make any claim against her mistresses for the money as she wasn’t supposed to have any money of her own in the first place.
Eventually, slavery was abolished, but the plight of African Americans and other minorities groups still remained. Be it extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) or the state institutions like the police, the discriminatory treatment is just as widely prevalent.
According to the Constitution, all of the American citizens are given the same rights and privileges regardless of their race and ethnicity or the color of their skin, but the reality is far from it. Evidence of this discrimination lies in the way the police department treats blacks. Ideally, the police should serve all of the citizens, and safeguard all the people under its care, but if you look closely, this is hardly the case. It can be easily observed that the police use excessive force and inhumane practices when dealing with African Americans, even for small offenses. Moreover, they have resorted to treating blacks as second-grade citizens,

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