Racial Privilege in America Past and Present Essay -- essays research

The Blame Game a Prelude to Racial PrivilegeIn order to fully visit an advantageously debatable and highly controversial policy, much(prenominal) as racial privilege, one must first understand the political and social climates that lead up to it. Racial privilege has been practiced during two periods in the Statess past the post-reconstruction era, via Jim Crow laws, and today, by way of affirmative action.after Reconstruction in the American south, landowners reorganized their land in such a way that it could be farmed without the use of slaves. The around common social system employed sharecropping, in which the land owner divided his property into several(prenominal) plots of land, each farmed by different individuals who paid for the use of this land with a predetermined percentage of their harvested crop. At its onset, sharecropping was a raci every(prenominal)y diverse program. Boyer et all notes that By 1880 white sharecroppers now outnumbered black ones, although a higher ratio of southern blacks, about 75 percent, were involved in the system (597). Tenants, most having no capital with which to purchase farm equipment, livestock, and seed, offer yet another(prenominal) pre-determined percentage of their harvested crop as collateral and repayment for loans. Since both the landowner and the creditor were invested in the profitability of the farmers crops, they insisted that these farmers raise only easily marketable cash-crops, limiting crop diversification (Boyer 598). When supply began to exceed demand, survey of these crops rapidly declined. Sharecroppers, both white and black, were plunged heavily into debt and poverty.The failure of this system presented a window of opportunity for the Democratic leaders of the Old South who like to restore the power stru... ... Eds. Christopher Jencks, and Meredith Phillips. Washington, D.C. The Brookings Institution. 1998. 431-56.King, Jr., Martin Luther. I Have a pipe dream. March on Washing ton for Jobs and Freedom. Washington, D.C. 28 August 1963.Rai, Kul B., and John W. Critzer. Affirmative Action and the University. northeastward University of Nebraska Press, 2000.Skrentny, John David. The Ironies of Affirmative Action. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1996.Steele, Shelby. A Dream Deferred The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. New York HarperCollins, 1998.---. snow-covered Guilt How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. New York HarperCollins, 2006.Sterba, jam P. The Case for Preferential Treatment. Affirmative Action in the University. Ed. Steven M. Cahn. Philadelphia Temple UP, 1993. 286-90.