Black people in America

Places and forms of power is the subject I am to speak about. While “places” and “forms” are easily understandable, “power” has to be given an appropriate definition : in this context, “power” designs the influence people have or can get, whether in regard of the law or of what is customary.

I will process the particular case of black people in America, where African American have underwent slavery and where segregation’s spirit does not seem to have disappeared with slavery’s abolition.

The question I will try to answer is : “Have African American finally reached the power white people have?”

First, I would like to go back in the past to the fourth of July of 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was acted, creating United States as an independant country.

It states that “all Men are created equal, with certain unalienable Rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

We can notice the religious character of this statement with the word “created”, that also specify the equality is not necessarily respected during life.

The using of the word “unalienable” emphasizes the different rights listed and suggests they cannot be questioned.

During slavery, many black people were killed, captured, forced to work or tortured. All of those constitute violations of the unalienable rights given to humans by the Declaration of Independance. From here, there are two possibilities : whether considering that the founding document of United States is not respected by many rich and influential people of South America, or considering that black people are not humans, as they have no right that need to be respected.

At the time of slavery, black people were not even considered as humans ; they did not have rights and had no power.

Then, during the 1950’s, a movement of resistance to the legal segregation emerged as black people began to organise. It is called the “Black Movement”.

One of the figures of this movement is Rosa Parks, an African American women who is famous because she led the boycott of buses in Alabama.

She tells her story in a book entitled How It All Started, written with Jim Haskins. In the excerpt that concern this event, she presents a situation : In December 1955, she was sitting on the front seat of the black section of a bus. She has been required to give up her seat because the white section got full, but she refused to do so. No law existed prohibiting her behaviour but she got arrested because it was not all right with the custom in South America, where were encouraged segregation and racism. History teaches us she was sentenced to pay a 15$ fine but refused ; it was unfair and she raised a huge boycott up, leading, after more than a full year, to the abolition of segregation laws in buses.

As black people were persecuted, first with slavery and then with segregation, they began to organize in order to resist. As they made a movement, they became influent and acquired power.

Finally, nowadays black people are equal to white people according to the law. But if we take a closer look, we can discover recent events that send shivers up the spine.

An article of Barbara Liston, published by

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