When someone says the word inequalities, everyone has a different meaning in their mind, be it inequality in gender, race, between rich and poor and several others. I would like to focus this blog post on race in particular. the main reason being this topic had the most recent development in America. In 1865, there was a civil war between the north and south halves of America. One was for equal treatment for slaves, the other against. the south wanted to continue to use slaves because they had been for so many years. They tried to paint it as something else but that is exactly what it was. Years later, it is still taught in all schools. However, many schools would change the truth as to what happened, they would paint the slave owners as good people, and say that the slaves were treated very well and were only punished for misbehaving but that is simply not true. Slaves were treated terribly and often beaten to death for not working hard enough and for other purposes. So why was this done? Why was the history of America painted over?
There is no right answer to this but there are one that is the most common. It is that most people whose ancestors were either slave owners or fought for the continued use of slaves in the civil war, don’t want to remember their families for this. they try to distance themselves from this, change what happened, paint their ancestor’s wrongdoings as less terrible than they actually are and this is what led to the change of written history in textbooks. they manipulated what information was given so that they wouldn’t have to deal with the truth. To put it in terms easy to understand, it is like finding out that one of your ancestors fought for the British and murdered several people during the various freedom movements in India. Naturally, we would try to distance them from this, we would try and justify their behaviour.
This, however, has led to long term repercussions across America. most people now believe what was written in textbooks to be true and think that equal treatment isn’t something difficult to achieve since most people already do it. They are unaware of the reality of the situation and do not understand the deeper problem that lies within this mindset. This is so widespread that there even was a clause in the constitution allowing continued use of slave labour that was removed only 34 years ago. However, people of African American descent are aware as to what actually happened to them and are naturally frustrated that their ancestors’ suffering is taken so lightly by others. This naturally sprouts tension among people and can lead to violent outbreaks among various groups.
Many politicians, police officers and people who are in high standing positions of power believe these twisted truths about what happened and respond violently to any outbreak. From their point of view, people are overreacting to discrimination. They often say that only a few people act badly, not all, so why are so many people upset over just a few cases? This is a terrible mindset to have for several fairly obvious reasons. this leads to large scale racism without much awareness about it. news outlets also often don’t talk about such issues, further leading people to be unaware of the truth. Something most certainly needs to change about this , but the truth is that it can’t. The damage has been dealt and now, undoing it is next to impossible. you would somehow have to convince half a country to go against what they had learnt for years and all that can be done is be patient, keep protesting and hope that someone sensible gets placed into power, who can bring change soon.
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