Literature of the United States

Nobody Knows My Name (1962), a collections of essays, explored among others black-white relations in the U.S., William Faulkner's views on segregation, and Richard Wright's work. Wright had encouraged Baldwin when he was an aspiring writer but they never became close friends. The book became a bestseller as The Fire Next Time (1963), in which the author appraised the Black Muslim (Nation of Islam) movement, and warned that violence would result if white America does not change its attitudes toward black Americans. Baldwin's reports on the civil rights activities of the 1960s made him special target of the U.S. FBI, that alone accumulated a 1750-page file on him. In the title essay of Notes Of a Native Son (1955) Baldwin took examples from his own family and the Harlem riot of 1943 to describe the experience of growing up black in America.
His interest in what it means to be black and homosexual interrelation to mainstream white society is most fully and interestingly expressed in his third novel, Another Country (1962). The novel contains scenes full of lively detail and intelligent reflection, expressed in a manner that takes advantage of the novel’s expansive form. After the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 and drawbacks in civil-rights movement, Baldwin started bitterly to acknowledge that violence may be the only route to racial justice. Some optimism about peaceful progress would later return, but in the early 1970s he also suffered from writer's block. «Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent–which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it.» (Baldwin in Collected Essays, 1998)
Evidence of The Things Seen (1983) was an account of unsolved murder of 28 black children in Atlanta in 1980 and 1981. In his short stories collected in «Going to meet the Man» (1965) the racial terrorism of America as he perceived it made its own grotesque stylistic statement. The writer’s challenge was to maintain steady control in the face of atrocities that might otherwise disrupt the narrative’s ability to contain such events.
The main character, acting town sheriff, Jesse, has a racist beliefs, he thinks that he is a just, good man in what he does for the citizens. He informs his wife of Big Jim C’s attempt at making quiet a batch of black men who were singing; the account is intermingled with vehement racism, though the man is sure that he is doing the right thing. J. Baldwin describes the black people from the white man’s perspective: «…those faces, good Christ! they were ugly! They were animals, they were no better than animals, what could be done with these people like that?. their houses were dark, with oil cloth or card-board in the windows, the smell was enough to make you puke your guts out and there they sat, laughing and talking and playing music like they didn’t have a care in the world» (Baldwin, NA, 2510)
He then recollects when he was a child and his father took him to see a black man being tortured with fire to death. Jesse's father is also the sheriff of the town. The black man that is tortured was apparently running away and was caught and found. His genitals were cut off while the white townspeople stood around watching this black man hanging from a tree, his hands chained above his head, tied to the tree. The black man was naked and a fire was set beneath him.
«His hands were straight above his head; and he was a big man, a bigger man than his father, and as black as an African jungle cat, and naked…. The flames leapt up. He was lowered again; he was raised again. The head went back, the mouth wide open, blood bubbling from the mouth, the veins of the neck jumped out; The cry of all the people rose to answer the dying man’s cry. He wanted death to come quickly. They wanted to make death wait…What did he do? What did the man do? What did he do? – wondered the boy, but he could not ask his father. (Baldwin, NA, 2519) Both of his parents were watching this horrible and violent scene.
The Main themes of the story is racism and police brutality. The racial terrorism of America as he perceived it made its own grotesque stylistic statement. The Writer’s challenge was to maintain steady control in the face of atrocities that might otherwise disrupt the narrative’s ability to contain such events.
From the history we learned that between 1885 and 1910, about thirty-five hundred African Americans were lynched and when following the end of reconstruction, most southern states effectively disenfranchised African Americans.
Like Ralph Ellison, he experienced many pressures to be more than just a writer, but he nevertheless produced artistically significant novels and stories. No black writer has been better able to imagine white experience, to speak in various tones of different kinds and behaviors of people or places other than his own. In its sensitivity to shades of discrimination and moral shape, and in its commitment-despite everything-to America, his voice was comparable in importance to that of any person of letters from recent decades, as tributes paid to him at his death agreed.
Analyzing these two works we came to an idea that, racial prejudice is still with us and is a universal phenomenon. But more than simple racial prejudice, leading to injustice, are demonstrated in these works. It is easy to say that the injustice occurs because of racial and class prejudice.
It is important to look past the obvious racial injustice. Racial injustice continues today in this country and around the world, as does religious injustice. But what is behind this injustice today, as it was in these stories, is a powerful cultural myth that must be maintained at any cost. The mind has to be perfectly capable of holding diametrically opposed viewpoints in order to protect that myth.
Perhaps the most prominent and notable form of American racism (other than imperialism against Native Americans) began with the institution of slavery, during which Africans were enslaved and treated as property. Prior to the institution of slavery, early African and non-white immigrants to the Colonies had been regarded with equal status, serving as sharecroppers alongside whites. After the institution of slavery the status of Africans was stigmatized, and this stigma was the basis for the more virulent anti-African racism that persisted until the present.
In colonial America, before slavery became completely based on racial lines, thousands of African slaves served European colonists, alongside other Europeans serving a term of indentured servitude. In some cases for African slaves, a term of service meant freedom and a land grant afterward, but these were rarely awarded, and few former slaves became landowners this way. In a precursor to the American Revolution, Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt in 1676 against the Governor of Virginia and the system of exploitation he represented: exploitation of poorer colonists by the increasingly wealthy landowners where poorer people, regardless of skin color, fought side by side. However, Bacon died, probably of dysentery; hundreds of participants in the revolt were lured to disarm by a promised amnesty; and the revolt lost steam.
Slaves were primarily used for agricultural labor, notably in the production of cotton and tobacco. Black slavery in the Northeast was common until the early 19th century, when many Northeastern states abolished slavery. Slaves were used as a labor force in agricultural production, shipyards, docks, and as domestic servants. In both regions, only the wealthiest Americans owned slaves. In contrast, poor whites recognized that slavery devalued their own labor. The social rift along color lines soon became ingrained in every aspect of colonial American culture. Approximately one Southern family in four held slaves prior to war. According to the 1860 U.S. census, there were about 385,000 slave owners out of approximately 1.5 million white families.
In the early part of the 19th century, a variety of organizations were established advocating the movement of black people from the United States to locations where they would enjoy greater freedom; some endorsed colonization, while others advocated emigration. During the 1820s and 1830s the American Colonization Society (A.C.S.) was the primary vehicle for proposals to return black Americans to greater freedom and equality in Africa, and in 1821 the A.C.S. established the colony of Liberia, assisting thousands of former African-American slaves and free black people (with legislated limits) to move there from the United States. The colonization effort resulted from a mixture of motives with its founder Henry Clay stating; «unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off».
Although the Constitution had banned the importation of new African slaves in 1808, and in 1820 slave trade was equated with piracy, punishable by death, the practice of chattel slavery still existed for the next half century. All slaves in only the areas of the Confederate States of America that were not under direct control of the United States government were declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. It should be noted that the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to areas loyal to, or controlled by, the Union, thus the document only freed slaves where the Union still had not regained the legitimacy to do so. Slavery was not actually abolished in the United States until the passage of the 13th Amendment which was declared ratified on December 6, 1865.
About 4 million black slaves were freed in 1865. Ninety-five percent of blacks lived in the South, comprising one third of the population there as opposed to one percent of the population of the North. Consequently, fears of eventual emancipation were much greater in the South than in the North. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the civil war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South. Despite this, post-emancipation America was not free from racism; discriminatory practices continued in the United States with the existence of Jim Crow laws, educational disparities and widespread criminal acts against people of color.
The new century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Although technically able to vote, poll taxes, acts of terror (often perpetuated by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, founded in the Reconstruction South), and discriminatory laws such as grandfather clauses kept black Americans disenfranchised particularly in the South but also nationwide following the Hayes election at the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. In response to de jure racism, protest and lobbyist groups emerged, most notably, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909.
This time period is sometimes referred to as the nadir of American race relations because racism in the United States was worse during this time than at any period before or since. Segregation, racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. So did anti-black violence, including lynchings and race riots.
In addition, racism which had been viewed primarily as a problem in the Southern states, burst onto the national consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the Southern states to the industrial centers of the North after World War I, particularly in cities such as Boston, Chicago, and New York (Harlem). In northern cities, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynchings–mob-directed hangings, usually racially motivated-increased dramatically in the 1920s. As a member of the Princeton chapter of the NAACP, Albert Einstein corresponded with W.E.B. Du Bois, and in 1946 Einstein called racism America's «worst disease».
From 1981 to 1997, the United States Department of Agriculture discriminated against tens of thousands of African American farmers, denying loans provided to white farmers in similar circumstances. The discrimination was the subject of the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit brought by members of the National Black Farmers Association, which resulted in two settlement agreements of $1.25 billion in 1999 and of $1.15 billion in 2009.
Many cite the 2008 United States presidential election as a step forward in race relations: White Americans played a role in electing Barack Obama, the country's first black president. However, according to exit polls, over sixty percent of white Americans voted for McCain. Racial divisions persisted throughout the election; wide margins of Black voters gave Obama an edge during the presidential primary, where 8 out of 10 African-Americans voted for him in the primaries, and an MSNBC poll showed that race was a key factor in whether a candidate was perceived as being ready for office. In South Carolina, for instance, «Whites were far likelier to name Clinton than Obama as being most qualified to be commander in chief, likeliest to unite the country and most apt to capture the White House in November. Blacks named Obama over Clinton by even stronger margins – two – and three-to one – in all three areas.»
In the Pacific States, racism was primarily directed against the resident Asian immigrants. Several immigration laws discriminated against the Asians, and at different points the ethnic Chinese or other groups were banned from entering the United States Nonwhites were prohibited from testifying against whites, a prohibition extended to the Chinese by People v. Hall. The Chinese were often subject to harder labor on the First Transcontinental Railroad and often performed the more dangerous tasks such as using dynamite to make pathways through the mountains. The San Francisco Vigilance Movement, although ostensibly a response to crime and corruption, also systematically victimized Irish immigrants, and later this was transformed into mob violence against Chinese immigrants. Anti-Chinese sentiment was also rife in early Los Angeles, culminating in a notorious 1871 riot in which a mob comprising every other nationality then resident in the city.
In the ensuing inquests and trials, all the perpetrators either were acquitted, or received only light punishments for lesser offenses, because the testimony of Chinese witnesses was either completely inadmissible, or else considered less credible than that of others. Legal discrimination of Asian minorities was furthered with the passages of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the entrance of virtually all ethnic Chinese immigrants into the United States until 1943.
During World War II, the United States created internment camps for Japanese American citizens in fear that they would be used as spies for the Japanese. Currently implemented immigration laws are still largely plagued with national origin-based quotas that is unfavorable to Asian countries due to large populations and historically low U.S. immigration rates.
Americans of Latin American ancestry (often categorized as «Hispanic») come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Latinos are not all distinguishable as a racial minority.
After the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the U.S. annexed much of the current Southwestern region from Mexico. Mexicans residing in that territory found themselves subject to discrimination. It is estimated that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928 (this is a conservative estimate due to lack of records in many reported lynchings). Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic is second only to that of the African American community during that period, which suffered an average of 37.1 per 100,000 populations. Between 1848 to 1879, Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population.
During The Great Depression, the U.S.government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage Mexican immigrants to voluntarily return to Mexico, however, many were forcibly removed against their will. In total, up to one million persons of Mexican ancestry were deported, approximately 60 percent those individuals were actually U.S. citizens.
The Zoot Suit Riots were vivid incidents of racial violence against Latinos (e. g. Mexican-Americans) in Los Angeles in 1943. Naval servicemen stationed in a Latino neighborhood conflicted with youth in the dense neighborhood. Frequent confrontations between small groups and individuals had intensified into several days of non-stop rioting. Large mobs of servicemen would enter civilian quarters looking to attack Mexican American youths, some of whom were wearing zoot suits, a distinctive exaggerated fashion popular among that group. The disturbances continued unchecked, and even assisted, by the local police for several days before base commanders declared downtown Los Angeles and Mexican American neighborhoods off-limits to servicemen.
Many public institutions, businesses, and homeowners associations had official policies to exclude Mexican Americans. School children of Mexican American descent were subject to racial segregation in the public school system. In many counties, Mexican Americans were excluded from serving as jurors in court cases, especially in those that involved a Mexican American defendant. In many areas across the Southwest, they lived in separate residential areas, due to laws and real estate company policies.
During the 1960s, Mexican American youth rallied behind civil rights causes and launched the Chicano Movement.