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Question 1.

The development of industrialized and urbanized in the U.S. during the 20th century, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 8802 to ban discrimination in defense-related industries, the civil rights movement, the establishment of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. These four events together ended Jim Crow segregation.

As the United States industrialized and urbanized during the 20th century, a series of social, political, economic, and legal processes were set in motion that ultimately destroyed de jure segregation. The mechanization and modernization of agriculture in the South had a powerful effect on race relations. Machines replaced people gradually, it led to a reduction of the workforce, the power resources of African Americans were increasing. African Americans found it easier to register to vote and pursue other avenues for improving their situations in the 1930s, for example, President Harry Truman was reelected by the support of African Americans voters. Dominant–minority relationships change as the larger society and its subsistence technology change, “This enhanced freedom and strength fueled a variety of efforts that sped the demise of Jim Crow segregation.” (Healey 188)

In 1941, a group of African Americans, led by labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to march on Washington to protest the discriminatory treatment. To forestall the march, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order No. 8802, barring discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. The civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s was a ten-year-long struggle by African Americans to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement, and racial segregation in the United States. The Civil Rights movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964，this law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests. In 1965, President signed the Voting Rights Act, the new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

During the civil rights movement, leader Martin Luther King, Jr. made wise decisions in leading the nonviolent protests. They were able to rally the people to the cause and keep them focused on the goal. The civil rights movement embraced the traditional American values of liberty, equality, freedom, and fair treatment which were available to whites automatically. Thus, many whites did not feel threatened by the movement, the legitimacy of the goals of the movement also opened the possibility of alliances with other groups. In addition, “Widespread and sympathetic coverage from the mass media, particularly television, was crucial to the success of the movement.” (Healey 192) Many people could not believe what they were reading in the newspapers or hearing on the radio. When they witnessed the violence with their own eyes on television, this spurred many whites into demanding change along with the African Americans who demanded change. The significance of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act for ending state-sponsored racial discrimination and furthering the commitment of the nation to equality and justice is influential.

After the Civil Rights Movement, a lot of issues were left unresolved. Blacks are much more likely than whites to be living in highly impoverished neighborhoods, most of them are no job, no car, lack of basic resources, The greater vulnerability and social and geographical isolation of blacks is pervasive, and includes higher rates of poverty and unemployment. Prejudice and Discrimination still exist until today, “a 2013 nationally representative poll found that 68% of black respondents—two-thirds of the sample—thought the American justice system was racially biased. Only 25% of whites agreed (Newport, 2013a).” (Healey 201). Furthermore, the relationship between the black community and the criminal justice system is volatile and controversial, there are considerable mistrust and resentment of police among African Americans. This negative relationship between blacks and police remain unresolved today. For example, George Floyd was arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill in Minneapolis last month, white police knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, at the final three minutes Floyd was motionless and had no pulse. Floyd's death triggered protests in over 2,000 U.S. cities and around the world against police brutality, police racism, and lack of police accountability.

Question 2.

American Indian and Anglo-American society display a wide range of cultural variances relative to traditions, lifestyles, and religious beliefs, their shared experiences over the last several centuries, while not erasing their cultural differences. Firstly, the goal of many American Indian tribes was to live in harmony with the natural world, not use it for their own selfish purposes, views that differ sharply from Western concepts of development. Secondly, the concept of private property, or the ownership of things, was not prominent in American Indian cultures, “The land simply existed, and the notion of owning, selling, or buying it was foreign to American Indians.”( Healey 243) Thirdly, American Indian cultures and societies also tended to be more oriented toward groups than toward individuals. Lastly, many American Indian tribes were organized around egalitarian values that stressed the dignity and worth of every man, woman, and child. Women often occupied far more important positions in tribal society than was typical for women in Anglo American society. Because of these differences in values, compounded by the power differentials that emerged, these differences have hampered communication and understanding, usually harmed American Indians or weakened the integrity of their tribal structures, placed American Indians at a disadvantage when dealing with the dominant group.

American Indians faced the paternalistic reservation system, poverty and powerlessness, rural isolation, and marginalization. American Indians continued to lose land and other resources. Reservations were paternalistically controlled and corrupted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Federal policy was enshrined in the Allotment Dawes Act of 1887 which decreed that Indian Reservation land was to be divided into plots and allocated to individual Native Americans. This meant that the Act became an opportunity for land-hungry white Americans to acquire Indian land. The BIA also sent American Indian children to boarding schools far away from parents and kin, where they were required to speak English.

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 broke with the federal policies of the past. It rescinded the Dawes Act of 1887 and the policy of individualizing tribal lands. It provided means by which the tribes could expand their land holdings, dismantled much of the coercive Americanization in the school system, and proposed an increase in American Indian self-governance. In 1948, the Federal began a policy of relocating Indians to the cities where the job opportunities were better than on the reservations. However, many native Americans had found the adjustment to new working and living conditions more difficult than anticipated and it made the experience traumatic for many Indians. In 1975, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act increased aid to reservation schools and American Indian students and increased tribal control over the administration of the reservations, the Self-Determination Act primarily benefited larger tribes and those that had well-established administrative and governing structures.

In the early 20th century, the modern protest movement appeared, the movement has focused on several goals: protecting Native American resources and treaty rights, striking a balance between assimilation and pluralism, and finding a relationship with the dominant group that would permit more life chances without sacrificing tribal identity and heritage. The Red Power was a political movement in the 1960s, as more and more Indians became radicalized by termination, unemployment and police violence, American Indian developed their own Red Power. The movement set in motion a wave of American Indian militancy that ultimately resulted in the abandonment of the U.S. the government policy of termination and the adoption of a policy of Indian self-determination. The most important organization of the Red Power Movement was the American Indian Movement, founded in 1968. The goal of the American Indian Movement was to address systemic issues of poverty and police brutality against Native Americans. It developed a plan, including the restoration of Indians’ treaty-making authority, the abolition of the BIA, and that all Indians should be governed by treaty relations. “Part of the significance of the Red Power movement was that it encouraged both pan-tribal unity and a continuation of tribal diversity.” (Healey 254) AIM provided an urgently needed cultural revival for the American native peoples. By changing both the perspectives of individual people as well as striving to change written law, AIM has succeeded in improving the standard of living for Native Americans living in the United States.

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