Throughout history the United States has implemented policies and practices that have not only disenfranchised African Americans, deprived them of basic human rights, and destroyed their families, but also these actions have humiliated and broken the will of this group of individuals. These policies and practices, dating as far back to the arrival of Africans from Africa to the colonies in 1619 have tyrannized African Americans for countless generations. The policies and practices implemented by the government has had lasting effects on the African American community even to this present day. African Americans have been negatively affected by oppressive and discriminatory policies and practices, such as the segregation of schools, mass incarceration, and the School-to-prison pipeline, which has detrimentally impacted the African American community today.
It’s important to know the history of the slaves that were shipped to North America, first and foremost Africans were taken from their homeland as slaves and brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. It has been estimated that 12.5 million slaves were shipped to the New World, and only 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, which disembarked in North America, the Caribbean, and South America, but only about 388,000 slaves were shipped directly to North America (Gates, Jr., “How Many Slaves Landed in The U.S.?”). Meaning approximately 2 million slaves died during the Middle, or for every 100 slaves that made it to the New World, 40 died in Africa or during the Middle Passage (“Middle Passage” Digital History). Slaves and their children, if they had any, once in North America were in a lifelong position of servitude to their white slave masters. These enslaved people were seen as property and dehumanized; slave masters used tactics, such as burning, castrating, branding, being shackled, and whipping to discipline slaves for offenses, like running away or disobeying orders. Slaves’ primary purpose was to aid in the production of tobacco, and in the 17th and 18th centuries slaves were used to build the economic foundation of the United States. Through hundreds of years of being bound by slavery, and enduring the strenuous work and hardships brought on by slavery, slaves were finally freed by President Abraham Lincoln’s issue of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Starting in 1877, just fourteen years after the issue of Emancipation Proclamation, and lasting until the mid-1960s would begin a time period that many people know today as, the Jim Crow era. The Jim Crow era ended only about 50 years ago, but it was detrimental to and part reason for the present condition of the African American community today.
According to Ferris, Jim Crow was a racial caste system that had rigid anti-black law which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s (“What was Jim Crow?” Ferris). The state-sponsored segregation in facilities and “separate but equal” precedent was set by the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The phrase “separate but equal” was very deceitful and was far from the actual truth. Facilities were said to be equal in terms of the conditions between blacks and whites, but they were very much separate. African American children were especially affected by the segregation of schools between blacks and whites. The segregation in schools negatively affected the psychological development of African American students, the constant exposure of racism and discrimination caused side effects, such as stress and depression to occur in students (“Physiological & Psychological Impact of Racism and Discrimination for African-Americans” APA). Segregation caused African Americans children to feel that they were second class citizens and inferior to whites, also that they deserved the animosity that they were receiving from white people and the poor conditioned supplies they received in school. The children’s psyches and developing minds were negatively affected by segregated facilities, which caused African American students to suffer from lifelong effects of inferiority to whites and damaged self esteems
Policies implemented in recent history by legislation, such as, Former President Bill Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which enforced mandatory life sentences (Three-Strikes Law) for low level offenses that greatly accelerated mass incarceration of many African Americans was and still is detrimental to the African American community. Mass incarceration destroys families of color, especially that of African Americans because mass incarceration disproportionately target black people, or more specifically black men. African Americans are more likely to be incarcerated and given harsher sentences for low level offenses, and for the same crime compared to whites. One effect of mass incarceration is that it destroys families by taking the father away from the home, leaving the children with various effects, such as, them being more likely to be aggressive and depressed, more prone to low self esteem, to do poorly in school, and to be incarcerated. Statistics show that African Americans are overrepresented in the incarceration population with a U.S. population of 13% and a prison population of 40%, while whites are underrepresented with a U.S. population of 64% and a prison population of 39% (Wagner and Rabuy, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2016”). Studies conclude by stating that 1 in 3 black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime (Knafo, “1 In 3 Black Males Will Go To Prison In Their Lifetime, Report Warns”)