Understanding African Americans Ethnic Group
Introduction
African Americans, commonly referred to as Afro-Americans or African Americans, are an ethnic group comprising primarily of people of complete or partial African descent. African Americans are categorized as the second-largest racial group and the third largest ethnic group of all ethnic groups in the United States of America. Some sources indicate that a majority of African Americans comprises of individuals who were forcefully brought from their African homelands to work as slaves for the whites in the United States. That indicates why any writing on African Americans must always highlight the subject of slavery. Other than slavery, African Americans have long struggled to cope with racial profiling. The white Native Americans disregarded the ethnic group, thus African Americans were barred from enjoying some of the privileges.
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Demography of African Americans and Reasons for their Migration to America
Demographically, most of the African Americans reside in the ten Southern states of the U.S comprising of more than one million people. 2016 Census Bureau estimates indicate that approximately 40 million or more African Americans are making up 13% of the total United States population. The figures have since drastically escalated as compared to 760, 000 African Americans in 1790 when the first census was conducted. While European vessels transported goods to Africa, on their way back, they brought with them Africans (Franklin, Hope, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. 1956). The goods were exchanged for Africans who were later transported to America as slaves. Upon reaching America, the African slaves were traded in exchange with agricultural produce or products. Most of the agricultural practice took place in the Southern states of the United States. Within the southern states were cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations where slaves sourced from Africa worked. This explains why a large section of African Americans resides in the Southern part of the United States. African Americans who found their way into the Western states such as California, San Francisco, and Sacramento primary infested those areas as farm owners (Wilson, 2005, 23-29). However, between 1916 and 1930, and 1940 to 1970, a whopping 6 million African Americans migrated from South to West of the United States (Carson, 2009, 739). Sources indicate that great migration was triggered by a lack of employment opportunities following the destruction of cotton plantations by weevils in the South (Tolnay, 2003, 209-232). During this time, World War I offered several job opportunities in factories and railroads in the North. Despite the continued migration of African Americans across states, their relocation back to South is attributed to familial ties (Stack, 1996, 4879 4901).
Challenges Faced by African Americans Ethnic Group and How they have Retained their Identity
America has become a peaceful and conducive place to reside in all, thanks to the democratic revolution that occurred in the past decades. All American citizens today enjoy the fruits of democracy that were hard fought for by revolutionists like Martin Luther King Jr. and human rights activists like Malcolm X. Some decades back, during the 18th and 19th centuries, African Americans were more subjected to inhuman treatment like slavery as compared to their white counterparts. They also lacked rights to impact American’s state of affairs directly, for example, through voting (Salas, Carracedo, Richards, and Macaulay, 2005, 677-679). During this time, African Americans alias Negros had no right to vote. If it were not for revolutionists, we would still have slavery, racism, and discrimination, to name a few dominant within American society today.
Just laws that guide routine action of the human race and defines the course of life all majorly resulted from political driven events. Martin Luther King Jr. championed for human rights and led the masses in disapproving specific laws that did not provide equal privileges to both the whites and the Negros (Selby, 2008). He termed such laws unjust and also defined what a just law meant. Dr. King referred to just law as any human-made law that correlates with the moral law or the law of God. Dr. King added that a just law is any code that uplifts human personality, while unjust law is a human law that is not noted in any external law, and that degrades human nature. This came to place after a long battle with racial segregation that denied the African Americans the constitutional right like the right to vote and undermined their freedom of expression just like any other American citizen. We must acknowledge the provisions of the First Amendment on the freedom of speech as one of the most precious rights. Blacks had been plunged into an abyss of despair for a long time, and Dr. King could take no more. The existence of unjust laws justifies the reason for a series of rebellious movements because unjust laws provoke one to disobey them, and anyone has a moral responsibility to do so as well to obey just laws. As an adult, I understand what it means to part of the decision making in state affairs and any law that denies an individual; such rights have to be condemned in the highest order possible. The biggest issue revolved around voting rights. In a nutshell, we can remember that before the enactment of the 19th Amendment, no woman was allowed to vote regardless of race or age. It was until 1920 that women were guaranteed a constitutional right to vote equally as their male counterparts.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 came with a myriad of goodies for the African Americans, all thanks to President John F. Kennedy’s efforts prior to his assassination in 1963 (Berg, 1964, 62). The provision of this Act relieved African Americans from racial segregation, as clearly stated, Jim Crow segregation legislation (Blumrosen, 1964, 397). Subsequently, the passing of the voting rights Act of 1965 was followed by a declaration that all American citizens were equal. The passing of the voting Act 1965 marked a tremendous victory to the African Americans. This legislation significantly transformed the distribution of political power among African Americans forcing the whites to defect to the Republican Party while most Afro-Americans joined the Democratic Party. It is for the same reason. Currently, the Whites and African Americans can freely share views on several issues and assemble in public places that were out of binding for the African Americans.
Over the past decades, racial profiling has been a major societal impediment on the African Americans in the U.S. Several African Americans have been left with devastating stories to tell owing to their life experiences and treatment by their white counterparts. Despite there being anti-racial profiling laws in the U.S today, African Americans remain plunged into fear of discrimination, unfair or unequal treatment, and inhuman stereotyping inclusive of generalized unlawful criminalization (Tomaskovic-Devey, & Warren, 2009, 35-38). The struggle to end racial profiling has lived with us for several years, tracing from the historical roles played by some of the African Americans and Human Rights campaigners and racial abolitionists like Martin Luther King Jr., who fought so hard to see the Negros free. Unfortunately, it has been impossible to eliminate this encumbrance as racial profiling still thrives within our institutions (Tomaskovic-Devey & Warren, 2009, 36).
Conclusion
Even though African Americans are the third-largest ethnic group, this group has long been disregarded by the whites. Despite the fall of slavery, this ethnic group is still struggling with racial profiling. However, there has been a steady population growth of African Americans over the past years. It is evident that most African Americans found their way into America as slaves. This narrative has since changed, and today, African Americans contribute immensely to the economic growth of the United States.
Bibliography
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Franklin, John Hope, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. From slavery to freedom. New York: Knopf, 1956.
Salas, Antonio, Ángel Carracedo, Martin Richards, and Vincent Macaulay. “Charting the ancestry of African Americans.” The American Journal of Human Genetics 77, no. 4 (2005): 676-680.
Selby, Gary S. Martin Luther King and the rhetoric of freedom: the Exodus narrative in America’s struggle for civil rights. Baylor University Press, 2008.
Stack, Carol. Call to home: African Americans reclaim the rural SouthSouth. Basic Books, 10 E. 53rd St., New York, NY 10022-5299, 1996.
Tolnay, Stewart E. “The African American “great migration” and beyond.” Annual Review of Sociology 29, no. 1 (2003): 209-232.
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, and Patricia Warren. “Explaining and Eliminating Racial Profiling.” Contexts 8, no. 2 (2009), 34-39. doi:10.1525/ctx.2009.8.2.34.
Wilson, Frank Harold. “Recent Changes in the African American Population within the United States and the Question of the Color Line at the Beginning of the 21st Century.” Journal of African American Studies 9, no. 3 (2005): 15-32.
