Race Politics Us

Race Politics Us

Why, nearly 150 years after the abolition of slavery, is race still such an important source of division in American politics?

America remains divided, geographically, ideologically and racially regarding race-related policies such as affirmative action and redistricting. Although slavery was abolished 150 years ago, it was only in the 1960s that the Civil Rights Movement outlawed racial discrimination in America and restored the suffrage in the southern states. Although a middle class of African Americans now exists, on the whole African Americans remain more likely to be poverty stricken, involved in crime, suffer health problems, and overall to have a lower quality of life. These statistics have opened up a widespread political debate and divided Americans. One school of thought as to why these social problems exist blames American society and history, and thus advocates affirmative action policies to help give African Americans a leg up and place them on an equal footing of opportunity with white Americans. Some Americans argue that social problems are more prevalent amongst blacks because the scars of racism remain from before the 1960s, and will take longer to heal due to the severity and institutionalized nature of racial discrimination which existed. Others argue that the liberal policies originally created in order to alleviate the plight of African Americans in fact made matters worse, and thus new policies are necessary to remedy the new problems created as well as the old ones left from before the 1960s. Some have even proposed that discrimination remained embedded in policies following the 1960s. The second school of thought believes affirmative action has gone far enough and that African Americans have been compensated sufficiently for past ills. This essay will begin by explaining why this division of opinion has persisted since the 1960s, and then move on to examine the nature of the divisions and why these characteristics remain. The division...

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