The History of the Formation of an Equal America

In the United States of America, before it was even named as the USA, the norms that were made caused discrimination, and an equal prejudice is brought to each group or anyone that lives against it. The desire for power and high position in the hierarchy of the society drove people to construct norms, norms that defined a group of people with the purpose to degrade them and keep the ruling group strong; however, having multiple identities would also mean multiple prejudices. The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage, is called intersectionality; a theoretical approach based on such a premise. In America, since the construction of the Constitution up to today’s civil and protection rights, discrimination to the oppressed group within a race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth or other status occurs then and in the worse condition now. Although the United States of America has built countless laws and statutes since its birth, in order to break down its own walls, the lack of commitment and will of the people to enforce the declarations, due to a self-centered mindset, has and is preventing the people to achieve what everyone hoped when they paid their taxes to live in the so-called ‘land of the free’.

No one in the world wants to be oppressed, but because people got blinded by power, it got worse. Even white people in the early years of America were not exempted to discrimination; however, women experienced it more than white men did. Stated by the voting qualifications in the year 1763, within the 13 original colonies, it shows that only Christian white males with a certain amount of property were the only people eligible to vote. However, white Christian males could have bought properties if they desired to have a voice in the government. On the other hand, white women, or all women in general, were not allowed to vote because even though they are white and Christian, they cannot vote because they are women; moreover, they were not allowed to own property. As declared in the Lady’s Law, initialized in the year 1732, women were extremely infuriated as they did not have the right to own anything named after them by their fathers, and when married, their husband shall possess her properties, whether it is on the inheritance of states, jointures, and settlements, real and even personal of women. The book asserts limiting women to own a property, either by their father, their husband and if divorced or widowed, their next husband. The power granted to men, which was also constructed by men, has built male supremacy over everyone who was not white and not a man.

Nevertheless, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, a letter where she requested a limit in the power of men, and to be generous and favorable to women. However, it seemed that John Adams wanted to keep the supremacy of men, and so, he rejected his wife’s request. Stretching to the 21st century, average women of all races in the United States of America earn less than men, white men, in nearly every single occupation for which there is sufficient earnings data for both men and women to calculate an earnings ratio. The continuing male supremacy is not the issue, but the disregarded efforts, accomplishments, and contributions of women to the world. As Dolores Huerta asserts that it is not only important for women but it is also important for our whole society that women’s stories be told and that their victories and achievements be recorded in history.

During this era, these are just a few of the infinite forms of sexism’s extensiveness, including social, political, economical, and academic voices. After just a few decades, white women were given the opportunity to vote, officially own property, and other rights. It is not a secret that white people, then and now, are more privileged compared to other ethnicities present in America, and that only a few of them are suffering intersectionality. Despite being involved in multiple identities, such as sexism, LGBTQ, disability, poverty, and so forth, white people are more advantaged to multiple benefits and support programs; their whiteness is lifting most of the weight of intersectionality.

And yet, colored people are still stuck to where they were since their arrival, and for some cases, since birth. Truly that the white people without power in society were at the disadvantage since the first colonies, but accordingly, this places the men and women of color in the position of disproportionately suffering the worst consequences of intersecting sexism, racism, and poverty. At that time of the world’s dark history, an African American person is bearing countless social categorizations parallelling to multiple forms of discrimination. The African descent people were not allowed to vote for not being white and they had no property, for most of them were the property of a white person. In 1669, the ACT I of Virginia Slave Codes declared that, should a slave be killed as a result of extreme punishment due to resisting their master, mistress, or overseer, should not face charges for the murder. The African people didn’t have any choice but to follow their masters, and those who rebelled were killed. The legal murder to the exploited African people is what continued the exploitation in the Middle Passage or what they called, the trans-Atlantic slave trade from 1525 and ended in the year 1807, following the abolishment of Slavery in the year 1863. However, they reformed the discrimination to African people by constructing the Black codes.

Years after, African American rights came one after another up to the 21st century. However, while racism is on the way to disappearing, new forms of discrimination were developed one after another; the Jim Crow era, the segregation in public transportation, housing, schools, and so forth. The famous comedian in the 1980s, Chris Rock, who once lived in a segregated neighborhood, shared that there were only 4 African American people in their whole neighborhood. Moreover, he also mentioned the big difference in the social and financial status of the African American people and the white people in the neighborhood. As Rock stated, “the black men got to fly to get something that the white men could walk to.” The sad truth then, until now.

According to the 2010 statistics in the United States’ Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity, African American men and women have the highest amount of incarceration rates compared to all the other races, either wrongfully convicted or not. Moreover, black women are disproportionately more prone to experience multiple types of violence at home, at school, on the job, and their neighborhoods. Additionally, fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color. These examples are just a few of the many prejudices and discriminations that African American people experience, even while living in a world with written laws and declarations that are supposed to protect them.

In the whole world, in this current century, the United States of America is one of the most diverse countries, regarding racial diversity, culture diversity, and sexual diversity. This great deal of variety of people, and adding discrimination to each kind, is what resulted to intersectionality. Mexican people went through it too, same with Asian people; the Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, and so forth. And while people are arguing about racism et cetera, the Native Americans are quietly sitting in the reservation lands, silenced figuratively and literally, then until now. According to the American Pox, upon Europe's discovery of America, or as they call New World, a drastic drop of Native Americans’ population took place, from 90 million to 9 million. It was caused by the brought diseases from Europe like smallpox, measles, typhus, tuberculosis, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, mumps, and more, from the explorers and the animals, and horses, they brought with them. It was their advantage as a good settlement strategy that also involved fighting and killing off Native Americans for their land. Their guns and horses gave them a major advantage; as did their immunity. The single discovery led to mass extermination.

After a few decades, the colonies traveled west and discovered Native American Tribes, and battles were won and lost. Later on, the very few left indigenous people were subjected to cultural imperialism which extinguished most of the natives’ traditions and cultures. In addition, by the middle of the 20th century, all Native American languages had died or were on the brink of extinction. Over the years, the Native Americans were oppressed and stripped from their aesthetic being and stripped from their basic rights while they lived and are living in the reservation lands. The Natives are suffering poverty due to low employment, and if employed, earning below poverty wages, low quality and availability of houses, non-existent pharmacies and hospitals in some communities, and some other lows and less in social and financial status; only high poverty and violence. Furthermore, Native American/ Alaskan Native women are at the greatest risk of experiencing sexual violence than other women in America. All groups in America are struggling to see their written rights in action, while the government completely neglected Native Americans, living like outcasts in the land that was originally theirs.

There is a great power of self-centered human free will combined with immoral actions, which actually caused partial paralysis to the laws and declarations against every kind of discrimination. Nevertheless, this great power is nothing compared to the possible power of the declarations with the right will. Prejudice is and was everywhere to everyone, either white, black, yellow, brown or red. All races or ethnicities have, at least, once experienced discrimination for being themself. Wherefore, people belonging to multiple groups tend to hide and deny their true or other being to avoid, or at least lessen, the punishments of society to them. But in the midst of these commotions and debates are people who desired freedom, and so acted to it; Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Dolores Huerta, and a lot more, more than one history book could contain, including all America’s new freedom heroes today. Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights already stated in article 2, that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or another opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or another status. In fact, all the laws, declarations, and Constitutional rights for everyone are already set, and all America has to do is act to it. It is undeniable that America still lacks, and seems to overlook some important things, but America is not done yet. America could still grow bigger, freer, become more open and break its walls and borders, visible and invisible. All the white, black, brown, yellow, and red will become one; a country of light that will certainly go through transparent, translucent, and opaque troubles, but it will not have prisms to divide it.

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