Stereotypes Racism and Racial Stereotyping
He states that not only educational and health issues are what they should fight for. The discrimination against African Americans was also done by the
government. He states that for thirty years, Southern legislators and legislatures had led a legal war against African American people.
They disfranchised the Negroes, denied them in school, hospitals, and access to tax-supported facilities and public accommodations. Golden,
1964: 38
He also tells about white men who lynched African Americans and who regularly
defiled African American women were not prosecuted, as the Southern government refused to. Those treatments were considered good things by the
Southern politicians as they “boasted of their parental love, knowing all the time that their strategy would help maintain the
status quo
” Golden, 1964: 39.
Furthermore, Golden writes another facts regarding racial discrimination experienced by African American people in daily life. In 1960, African American
people had to buy shoes in a store owned by Whites because there where no shoe stores owned by African Americans. They had to pay expensives price to buy
shoes. Another discrimination happened in church as they had no proprietary
rights, although they spoke the same language as Whites. Golden states that “the colored man’s church, mainly Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian, was
controlled and dictated to by white men who deprived Negroes of religious autonomy” Golden, 1964: 41.
African American people had to make their own way to fight the racial discrimination, so they made some of their people become lawyers. They had to
do that because it was needed to guide and guard their rights on the law and justice fronts. Again, Golden states that these African American lawyers were the
vanguard who initiated the legal study and interpretation of civil rights. By understanding the history of African Americans above, it can be
concluded that their struggle and fight for their rights could only pay off when they were accepted by Americans, especially White Americans. Their successes in
getting the freedom leads the Americans to realize that they also have powers, in many aspects.