Interminority Racism - Racial Hierarchy in The United States

Racial Hierarchy in The United States

By the last quarter of the 18th century, US' colonies were dominated by an English majority. The language, customs, and ideas of government were shaped by Anglo Americans. In this way, the standards of American life were set: to be politically recognized as American, one had to conform to the Anglo American model.

There were ethnicities in the USA other than English. European minorities included the Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Scottish-Irish, and German. Also living in the United States were Native Americans and Blacks. The Anglo American majority needed a kind of rubric in order to decide who could be granted citizenship and for whom it would be denied. The law of 1790 stated that only free white immigrants could become naturalized citizens.

"...all children born of any negro or other slave, shall be slaves as their fathers were for the term of their lives."

Anglo Americans made it most difficult for Blacks to become free. They, like the Native Americans, were not white and so could never become Americans. But they were higher than Native Americans in the hierarchy because they could speak English and so were suitable as slaves. This is a foreshadowing of interminority competition because the two minority groups are being ranked differently, compared to each other.

Every new ethnicity that came to the States had to be classified according to a hierarchy which held White on top Black on the bottom. It was the courts that decided in the end if a person was fit for naturalization. Therefore every court decision was different. During the first half of the 19th century, one's race could change simply by stepping over state lines. In Virginia a person was completely black if they had one eighth African descent or more. But in Alabama, any African ancestry made someone a non-white ineligible for citizenship, even if you were free. To appeal for a case for naturalization, a person had to conform as best he/she could to the White Protestant norm. Once of the best tactics in proving your American qualities was to compare yourself to "inferior" races.

The European ethnicities became accepted as American after a few generations, but Blacks, Native Americans, and Hispanic and Asian immigrants were minorities who suffered the most oppression. These are the groups that then and today face the most interminority racism.

Read more about this topic:  Interminority Racism

Famous quotes containing the words united states, racial, hierarchy, united and/or states:

    On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    ... the outcome of the Clarence Thomas hearings and his subsequent appointment to the Supreme Court shows how misguided, narrow notions of racial solidarity that suppress dissent and critique can lead black folks to support individuals who will not protect their rights.
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    In the world of the celebrity, the hierarchy of publicity has replaced the hierarchy of descent and even of great wealth.
    C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)

    Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.
    Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)

    The traveler to the United States will do well ... to prepare himself for the class-consciousness of the natives. This differs from the already familiar English version in being more extreme and based more firmly on the conviction that the class to which the speaker belongs is inherently superior to all others.
    John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)