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Finalwritingproject 3 Essay

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Greenbush, Curtis
Professor Scott Guenthner
ENGL Comp 1. 1027
11/22/14
Declaration of what?
We as a nation and as one single group of people, known as Americans created the Declaration of Independence which states that “all men are created equal”. Although these words are what seem to be the backbone of our country, it seems as if we have completely and unconsciously forgotten what our forefathers wrote regarding the fair treatment of all human beings. Going back in time, history has proven to us that a persons’ experiences in life may indeed differ vastly depending on the color of their skin. Weather it was the African Americans being enslaved by white settlers in the eighteen hundreds or the Native Americans being driven out of their lands and forced into labor at the beginning of our country. Even the author of the most politically and socially influential document, Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves. There have been a plethora of authors who have written to this issue. One being George Lipsitz, Ph.D and author of “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness”. In his article, he talks about how race is a constructed only on what our society thinks it is and how we have completely undermined minority groups in the U.S. Many scholars also put forth their ideas in the PBS documentary, “Race: The Power of an Illusion”, aired by the California Newsreel. They spoke about how the majority of our nations influential populace, including our founding fathers were racially favoring towards white Americans. Also, when looking back at history, people believed race was a biological inheritance. Both the article, and the film tie in to a single problem which is still very prevalent today; racial inequality. The social hierarchy our society set up with White European settlers on top and every other race below is seen by many people to be the reasoning behind why race exists today. If you were to ask George Lipsitz what race was, looking at his article, he would probably tell you, “Race is a cultural construct, but one with sinister and structural causes and consequences. Conscious and delibe...

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