Hanna Stokes

Race in America
Chapter 1

One of the first things that stood out to me in the text was in the section called,
“Colonization of the Americans” it mentions how the English were not willing to have people
intermarrying with Native Americans. To me this just goes to show how times have not changed
completely when it comes to racism and people being in relationships. Today racism in
relationships is still very prevalent especially when looking at racism from family members.
There are so many stories I’ve heard about people from older generations such as parents or
grandparents having such strong beliefs about a white male or a white woman not dating,
engaging with, or marrying any person of color. Which shows that racism hasn’t changed that
much over time although acts of racism may have decreased, it is still very obvious that racism is
still a very common thing in families, especially when looking at two people from different
backgrounds that may be different races and have different ethnicities.
When reading the section titled, “The Invention of Whiteness and Blackness” my mind
was honestly blown. I have always been somewhat familiar with slavery from learning about it in
history classes all throughout school but I never knew all of the details behind slavery and why
black people were only slaves and white people weren’t. Even people who were white and poor
still had more of an opportunity than black people. This goes to show that even way back when
slavery was allowed and secured by the Constitution, black people still didn’t get the same
opportunities to have freedom like white people did. That is why it is very frustrating in today’s
society when people don’t recognize that not every black person has the same opportunities as
white people and people make judgments and statements about how they think black people are
just as capable of doing anything a white person does but history shows that this is not the case.
It is so hard to change the minds of people who believe these things especially when all the way
back in time, slavery was legal and even poor white men got more opportunities than any black
person did. I find that the hardest part about racism is trying to get people to understand that just
because slavery was legal in the past, that does not mean it is okay for people to believe it should
be legal now or that it was okay that it was even a thing in the first place. People need to realize
that it was a huge problem and if slavery wasn’t a thing back in the day, we would not have
people still talking about it today and we might not even have as many people being racist.
To be honest, reading about the horrors of slavery seriously made me feel very sick. Just
reading about women and men who would get whipped and certain body parts would get cut off
made me feel disgusted. Also reading about black people not being able to defend themselves
against any white person. That makes no sense at all to me, any white person could kill any black
person and get away with it. Just seeing the image on page 63 made me feel sick, I could barely
look at it and the image is even in black and white so I can’t imagine what it would look like in
color. The way black people were treated in that era, it was like they weren’t even human beings.
They couldn’t defend themselves, women were getting raped, and they have absolutely no
freedom at all. It just makes me extremely sad that a time like this even existed. Reading
Elizabeth Keckley’s story about her experience with slavery and getting clogged, actually gave
me chills. If it makes me feel that sick by just reading about her experience, I don’t even want to
imagine what it was like to have to live through that experience.
Although some of the topics in this chapter were very serious and honestly hard to read,
at the end of the chapter, the section titled, “We the Past” explains how race wasn’t always as we
know it to be today. I think it is good to make a comparison of what race used to be versus what
race is today because it shows growth. Although issues with race and ethnicity or racism aren’t
completely gone, it is important to see that changes that is has made overtime in order to move
forward and grow even more in the future.