What is whites history in the united states

How did you develop that style, and what artistic inspiration did you pull from? Why was animation fitting to tell this specific story?

Ed and Jon : We are attempting to communicate some of our own cognitive dissonance with being animation artists in this culture. Animation dares to go to those uncomfortable places we all need to deal with. We dare to use animation to lift an audience out of the shameful ignorance of our own culture. Ed : The visual universe of The History of White People in America is born from the visual media that the creators grew up with. As an African American boy I lived for comics, manga, games, New Yorker covers and animated features.

Stamped, in part, by powerful visual propaganda throughout the 20th century. But some of that same media pointed me to profound truths that opened my heart and increased my empathy. So this is what the artist does with their life conditions — we use the existing tropes to express our pain and passion.

We see it in all its glory and ugliness, and make it our own. So we make them colors on our digital palette and paint the picture the historians plugged us into. Constitution strongly encoded the protection of property within its words. It is within these twin founding documents that the paradox of liberty - the human right to freedom and the socially protected rights to property - became the foundation and essence of the American consciousness.

The question s of who could - and can - claim the unalienable rights has been a question for America through time. After prevailing in the American Revolution, our founders created the U. Constitution, which contains strongly-worded property rights. It is within these twin founding documents that the paradox of liberty - the human right to freedom and the legally protected rights to property - became the foundation and essence of the American consciousness. The question s of who could - and can - claim unalienable rights has been an American debate since our inception.

America would come to be defined by the language of freedom and the acceptance of slavery. Along with the revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality, slavery concerns began to surface as black colonists embraced the meaning of freedom, and the British abolished slavery within their lands.

The fledgling United States sought to establish itself and had to wrestle with the tension borne from the paradox of liberty. It became necessary to develop new rationales and arguments to defend the institution of slavery.

How does one justify holding a human as property? Major political leaders and thinkers of American history promoted theories of difference and degeneracy about nonwhite people that grew in the lateth century. Their support of inferior races justified the dispossession of American Indians and the enslavement of Africans in the era of revolution.

It was this racial ideology that formed the foundation for the continuation of American chattel slavery and the further entrenchment of anti-blackness. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture. The successful American Revolution and the new Constitution resulted in fierce debates about the future of slavery and the meaning of freedom.

However, the nation did not end slavery nor the uses of racial ideology to separate groups, choosing to maintain the existing hierarchy. Boosted by the Louisiana Purchase, cotton agriculture made profitable by the invention of the cotton gin , and seized American Indian lands, a new internal slave trade reinvigorated slavery, justified by 19th-century pseudo-scientific racist ideas.

How did the revolutionary ideas of equality and rights of man also harden ideas of race? Scientists argued that Africans and their descendants were inferior - either a degenerate type of being or a completely separate type of being altogether, suitable for perpetual service. Like the European scholars before them, American intellectuals organized humans by category, seeking differences between racial populations. The work of Dr. Samuel Morton is infamous for his measurements of skulls across populations.

He concluded that African people had smaller skulls and were therefore not as intelligent as others. Both Nott and Agassiz concluded that Africans were a separate species. This information spread into popular thought and culture and served to dehumanize African-descended people further while fueling anti-black sentiment. Nott and Geo. License: Creative Commons Attribution 4. Proslavery spokespeople defended their position by debasing the value of humanity in the people they held as property.

They supported much of this crusade through the racist scientific findings of people like Samuel Morton, which was used to argue the inferiority of people of African descent. It was in this philosophical atmosphere that the Supreme Court heard one of the landmark cases of U. Dred Scott and his wife claimed freedom on the basis that they had resided in a free state and were therefore now free persons. The Supreme Court ruled that Scott could not bring a suit in federal court because Black people were not citizens in the eyes of the U.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney also ruled that slaves were property based on the Constitution, and therefore owners could not be deprived of their property. Taney wrote in the majority decision, "[black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

IV, no. Source: Library of Congress. The nation fiercely defended slavery under the guise of property rights because the forced labor of black people was extremely profitable to the entire country.

America further developed its concept of race in the form of racist theories and beliefs - created to protect the slavery-built economy. These beliefs also resulted in the establishment of widespread anti-black sentiments, which would influence the American consciousness long after slavery ended. I have no country. What country have I? The Institutions of this country do not know me - do not recognize me as a man.

Reconstructing Race in the Nadir When the Civil War ended slavery, the entire nation shifted its economic reliance to free labor.

White society, particularly in the South, were reluctant to shift their views of black Americans and sought ways to continue exploiting the labor of African descended people while simultaneously remaining privileged. The debt-bonded labor system called sharecropping and hierarchical social order of segregation called Jim Crow would lay the foundation for a deepening racial divide.

Segregation was a formal system of separating people in U. Jim Crow Laws The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three-quarters of a century beginning in the s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants.

There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, many localities and states enacted laws and social norms that would re-establish the social order where whiteness was supreme. Ferguson Supreme Court case [see video below].

By law, Americans could lawfully separate people in society and discriminate against black Americans based on race. The Plessy v. It resulted in the creation of a multitude of new racist laws and practices whose ramifications are still impacting the country today.

American society drew upon centuries of racist ideas to justify this new form of exclusion and exploitation, especially that of scientific racism and Social Darwinism. At a minimum, the gap should not have widened as people aged. That is, however, exactly what happened. Blacks in this age group had 24 percent of white wealth in the same age group in —the largest share over the past three decades.

By , this share dropped to only The widening gap can be attributed in part to the foreclosure crisis, which had a devastating effect on communities of color, who were disproportionately targeted for subprime loans. Indeed, black families lost 48 percent of their wealth during the financial crisis. That is, blacks have encountered mounting systematic obstacles—such as mortgage-market discrimination and labor market segmentation—that increased the wealth gap as they aged and neared retirement.

Much of the wealth gap can be traced to blacks having significantly less access to important savings vehicles—such as housing and retirement accounts—than their white counterparts. Table 4 summarizes the shares of blacks and whites with specific assets such as residential housing and retirement accounts, as well as the median amounts that both groups own in those categories. In , only 41 percent of blacks owned their homes, compared with The data in Table 4 show similar differences for retirement savings.

Only Further, blacks were less likely to obtain other nonretirement financial saving options—such as savings bonds and mutual funds—than was the case for whites.

Most blacks and whites had some of these savings, but the median savings of blacks were just Finally, the data show that in , blacks were less than half as likely to own private business interests as whites.

Blacks thus have less access to savings and have built up fewer assets than whites, even when comparing for the same types of assets and regardless of the type of assets.

The gaps in the likelihood of owning specific assets—such as retirement savings, a home, or a business—and in the median values of such assets are large. That is, the black-white wealth gap is in part a pervasive difference in asset ownership.

On the other side of the ledger, debt tends to be more detrimental to blacks than for whites, largely because the types of debt they owe—such as car or student loans—are more costly. Despite blacks being slightly less likely to owe money than whites; only slightly more than three-quarters of blacks owed any debt, compared with 85 percent of whites. The total amount of debt that African Americans owed in was approximately one-third that of what whites owed.

Relative to their incomes, blacks generally had debt payments that were almost as costly as those for whites— More costly debt—such as car loans, student loans, and credit card debt—is the main driver for the discrepancy between outstanding debt and debt payments when comparing blacks to whites.

Though federal student loans have generous repayment options, they are a more expensive type of debt than other instruments such as mortgages. Blacks are particularly less likely to owe money on a mortgage or home equity line of credit, which tend to be a comparatively less expensive way to borrow.

Yet blacks are slightly more likely to owe installment loans such as car and student loans than whites. Similar to the wealth gap, the income gap has worsened over time. According to a Economic Policy Institute report, the income gap between blacks and whites has grown since the s.

In , college-educated black women with more work experience actually earned slightly higher wages than college-educated white women with the same experience.

Similarly, while the gap between college-educated black and white men in was slightly less than 10 percent, it rose to nearly 20 percent by Furthermore, blacks are more likely to be unemployed than whites.

In , in the aftermath of the Great Recession, black unemployment swelled to 16 percent, while white unemployment topped out at slightly less than 9 percent. Put differently, the black-white gaps in unemployment, labor force participation, and employment-to-population ratio cannot be explained by measurable factors such as marital status, education, age, or geographic location.

Both the Economic Policy Institute EPI and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reports suggest that the unobserved or unexplained factors that play a role in the black-white income and employment gap include employment discrimination, weak enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, or racial differences in unobserved skill levels—as opposed to measurable factors such as educational attainment or work experience.

There are several potential reasons why blacks experience higher rates of unemployment and earn lower wages than whites.

As the EPI report notes, blacks contend with labor market discrimination, which is not easily measured. Black workers are also more sensitive to the business cycle and thus are more significantly impacted by negative economic shocks.

Between and , for example, as the economy neared full employment, the income and employment gaps between blacks and whites shrank.

In , Finally, it is likely that disparities in employment may actually be underestimated because they do not account for the large number of blacks who have been negatively impacted by a criminal justice system that has aggressively and persistently targeted communities of color.

Policymakers should use the equity framework of targeted universalism to deliver solutions in closing the black-white racial wealth gap. The following recommendations should be viewed through this lens and aim to address historical and systematic barriers to equality. The analysis in the earlier sections of this report reinforces how critical assets are to wealth building and to intergenerational wealth transmission.

African Americans, however, face systemic barriers to acquiring, maintaining, and obtaining returns from assets such as housing, retirement and savings accounts, and business investments. It is therefore crucial to ensure that policies aimed at reducing the black-white wealth gap focus on African Americans gaining access to the type of wealth-building instruments that can help them build and transfer wealth over time.

Housing has always been and continues to be the main vehicle for families to build wealth. This is especially true for black families. Decades of public policies that have supported segregation and concentrations of high-poverty communities across the country have made it harder for black families to build wealth. While the government promoted homeownership and suburbanization among whites, it further entrenched inequality in inner-cities through slum clearance and the construction of public housing—originally constructed as temporary middle-class housing and later a permanent housing solution for low-income people of color.

Despite the illegalization of this process, the remnants of this practice in altered forms are still in place and active today. Because wealth is often built over generations, the legacy of these policies has made it even more difficult for future generations of black households to participate in homeownership.

Today, the disparity between white and black families who own homes is stark. Seventy-three percent of white families own a home compared with just 45 percent of black families. For example, black families are more likely to face predatory lending practices and to live in lower-income neighborhoods. According to a study conducted by Stanford University, when African Americans can purchase a home, they are more likely to be in low-income neighborhoods than their white middle- and low-income counterparts.

Not only is it harder for black families to purchase a home, but it is also less likely that they will receive a similar return on their investment.

While increasing homeownership rates can help narrow the wealth gap between blacks and whites, it alone will not close it completely.

A Demos study estimated that closing the gap in homeownership rates between white and black families would cause the racial wealth gap to decrease by 31 percent. Policies aimed at improving homeownership rates should focus on improving access to homeownership; lowering the cost of homeownership; and eliminating discriminatory practices and policies that prevent black families from seeing the same returns as white families.

Community Development Financial Institutions CDFIs are banks, credit unions, and other local financial institutions that support small businesses and affordable housing and provide other financial needs to distressed urban and rural communities that mainstream banks do not serve. CDFIs are critical to helping blacks purchase homes. As the data in this report reflects, making policy changes to close the black-white wealth gap must be an intentional process.

In , the Obama administration finalized a new regulation aimed at clarifying and strengthening a key provision in the Fair Housing Act that requires the U. Early this year, current HUD Secretary Ben Carson postponed the date by which jurisdictions are required to submit assessments to October Saving for a down payment on a home is a challenge for most Americans, and doing so becomes increasingly challenging for families who do not have access to affordable rental housing options.

Access to affordable rental housing not only helps families save for a down payment, but it also enables them to afford other daily essentials and to save for retirement without feeling strapped. Land installment contracts are an alternative to traditional mortgage options. Despite allowing buyers to make direct payments to the seller over a set period of time, these transactions can be problematic. Once the full purchase price has been paid, sellers are supposed to turn over the title—but that does not always occur.

This type of contract was used in the early s by black Americans who were excluded from the traditional housing market. To ensure that black borrowers are not once again defrauded by unscrupulous sellers, it is essential that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provide a set of guidelines for states to protect borrowers. Homeownership alone cannot be the only path to wealth-building for black families.

The housing crisis triggered during the Great Recession had a significant impact on black wealth, in part because blacks were more likely to have their wealth tied up in home equity. Slightly more than one-third of blacks have a retirement savings account, compared with nearly 70 percent of whites. The amount they have saved in those accounts is less than whites as well. Importantly, the program required state SSBCI applicants to increase access to capital for underrepresented groups, including communities of color.

The initiative was only authorized through , and while the Obama administration proposed reauthorizing the program in its final budget, 76 the Trump administration has not engaged in similar efforts. In , President Donald Trump proposed eliminating the Economic Development Administration as well as the Minority Business Development Agency, which would certainly make it more difficult for African Americans to start small businesses.

Blacks are more likely to own costlier debt than whites. As data from the Survey of Consumer Finances show, blacks are also more likely to miss a payment, postpone a payment, or borrow in an emergency. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau CFPB was established in the wake of the financial crisis with a mission to protect consumers from fraud, discrimination, and abuse in the financial marketplace.

Considering the disparate treatment blacks have received in the financial marketplace for decades, this agency is critical to protecting them from wealth-stripping products and policies.

The agency has targeted discriminatory lending in the auto loan, home loan, and credit card industries. It has also targeted payday lending companies—which are disproportionately located in predominately black communities—and defended vulnerable communities against large corporations in arbitration.

This protective effort should move forward. Policymakers and the public should be vigilant to ensure that it does not change direction to the detriment of borrowers.

Such efforts would most certainly carry negative consequences for consumers—particularly people of color. Policymakers should continue to monitor developments at the CFPB and, if new leadership fails to promote or enforce borrower protections, states should consider filling the void.

Eighteen percent of African Americans do not have a bank account compared with just 3 percent of whites, making them more reliant on and vulnerable to predatory lending.

Black and Hispanic households were also much more likely to report that they felt that banks were not interested in serving them. Better protections for prepaid cards and payday loans should ensure that companies compete on offering the best product—not on gouging consumers.

Finally, consumers need access to safe, affordable products that build trust with customers who may be disconnected from the financial mainstream. Blacks are much more likely to take on student debt in order to attend college and to default than their white counterparts. This is true regardless of whether or not the student completes their degree. The type of institution matters as well.

Black students are more likely to attend for-profit colleges, and among students who entered college in , three-quarters of black students who dropped out of private, for-profit colleges defaulted on their student loans. Leaving school with no education debt would also mean black students could start building wealth more quickly. The data above show that merely increasing educational attainment and improving employment outcomes for blacks will not close the racial wealth gap.

While a college education slightly narrows the wealth gap between blacks and whites, it remains quite large, suggesting that a college education is not the great equalizer it is often believed to be. It is important that policies addressing employment outcomes be focused on equitable access to the labor market and equitable returns to participation. The following recommendations focus on policies that will improve outcomes for black workers by strengthening bargaining power and lowering the cost of access to a variety of benefits, including health care, child care, paid family and medical leave, education, and training.

While it is difficult to measure how much labor market discrimination accounts for the low wages and employment rates among black workers, it is clear that it does account for some share of the disparity. As a result, black workers generally have lower wages and less workplace bargaining power than whites.

Academics such as William A. Darity Jr. Union density has been on the decline among all workers but has disproportionately affected African Americans, who are overrepresented among union workers.