Being as old as civilization, slavery has shaped the way people live their lives today. The first idea of slavery was prevalent after 1550 when English traders traded the slaves of West Africa. A big debate overtime, which is still not settled is the idea of race being constructed essentially meaning natural, biological and inherent OR being constructed socially which means humans create categories such as race and gender. Race has been constructed due to hierarchies and white people having power over African Americans. Back in the 1800's, if an African American could not speak a language similar to the Englishmen, they were considered to be illiterate resulting in that person becoming a slave. Due to the construction of racism, unconscious racism is a trait in today's world that has become socially acceptable to obtain. For hundreds of years, the idea of race and racism has come up in people's everyday lives. Living in a society where the idea of racism is accepted is difficult because I see it in my everyday life and do not know how to approach the situation or how to solve it. 1.
American Nativism is the hierarchies of whiteness. Nativism is a term used to describe a socio-political perspective of white Europeans who favored the "original." The hierarchy during this time was the English Americans, which was made up of protestants, Catholics and eastern European Jews.2 The white race was certainly dominant during this time. Anti-miscegenation laws were known as the suicide laws in regards to the African American slaves. Immigration intelligence tests were also put into place. This was a standardized test to see if the African Americans knew enough about the United States in order to become a legal immigrant. These tests were often too difficult for even the common white man to pass. These tests were set into place to "weed out the unfit". The idea of these tests originates from the Great Chain's idea that, "intelligence is a singular and innate property, ascertainable through standardized tests, and permitting the establishment of everyone's relative positions by their scores, or IQs.
