The Civil Right Movement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Civil Right Movement - Essay Example In this respect the history of the Civil Rights Movement from the interwar period up to the late 1960s is characterized to be decisive in the democratic flow for the rights of African Americans. First of all, the origins of the Civil Rights Movement development start from the transatlantic slavery period when there was no mention of equality in rights and democratic development due to the economic controversy. Black people were highly oppressed in this case. Thus, it was consistent that such a situation could not go any further, especially when the Civil War gave no extrinsic results in the field of civil rights and freedoms. It is possible to start from Booker T. Washington who reinforced the movement against white oppression and in terms of the letter of the Constitution he amplified in his numerous speeches. As a former slave, he first refused to comply with s second-class citizenship.1Thus, along with his extremist attitude toward accepting inferior status of Blacks against the w hite majority, he was both criticized and appreciated in masses. He is especially compared to the figure of Malcolm X in his struggle against white oppression. Nevertheless, the movement pursued toward the need for equal standards of living, since African Americans were concentrated in ghettos. Disfranchisement was extremely evident between two wars, and it gave grounds for a group of Black leaders to gain momentum of the Civil Rights movement. In fact, W.E.B. Du Bois was another luminary of the movement who was the first Harvard-trained Black intellectual at the time.2 His contribution was in a rational suggestion on how race issues should be reconsidered notwithstanding disfranchisement and impediments of the law. Looking at the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, he sought to keep on moving against segregation in education as a prerequisite for segregated life in the near future.3 The apogee of the Civil Rights Movement development takes place with the activity of Dr. Martin Luther King and his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail and the speech I Have a Dream aimed at uniting African Americans in their need for equality by means of peaceful and religiously-determined ways. Along with the NAACP, Luther King strived to battle for open housing in cities around the United States.4 It was a holistic demarche against the unwillingness of the majority to come up with a new deal on the Black issue. As a matter of fact, the battle was sequential in events and persistent in the overall desire for freedom in human and civil rights. The main aim of the NAACP headed and impacted by Du Bois and Luther King was the idea of desegregation after the period of the Great Migration.5 It was an obligatory demand of all African Americans considered to have quite less opportunities in contrast to the majority. In fact, mass arrests, the bus boycott, activity of Ku Klux Klan, - all these events provoked Blacks to stand up for their rights and state of social equilibrium g ained through the even distribution of civil rights among the white majority and the black minority. On the other hand, the main leaders of the movement followed their own philosophy. In this respect Malcolm X was devoted to the idea of the superiority of Islam among Afro-Americans as a stronger religion to fight for civil rights.6 Booker T. Washington amplified the pivotal significance of the predominant economical self-reliance over the political equality.7 As it has been

SC1067C Trends in Contemporary Society Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

SC1067C Trends in Contemporary Society - Essay Example It is sad but true that one out of five in the Britain's population is affected by poverty. Nearly Thirteen million people live below poverty line in the UK. That is a massive amount to be dealt by government and non-governmental organisations. A new report estimates that over five million people live in absolute poverty in Britain. The survey took its definition of absolute poverty from a 1995 United Nations statement which defines it as "a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs." The UN statement defined anyone lacking three or more of the following items as living in absolute poverty: food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and access to social security benefits. "The survey, Breadline Europe: The Measurement of Poverty researched measurements of poverty across the continent and concluded that there were drastic levels of increase of poverty in the UK."(Robert Stevens, 2001) As per Oxfam, an NGO working towards elimination of poverty in Britain, "3.8 million children in the UK are living in poverty. 2.2 million, pensioners in the UK are living in poverty. 7.2 million, working age adults in the UK are living in poverty. 70% of Bangladeshi children in the UK are poor. Women are the majority in the poorest groups. London has a higher proportion of people living in poverty than any other region in the UK." These statistics are shocking but true. The UK is trying hard to fight against the social stigma called poverty. The question arises that what poverty means in the UK. An average family affected by poverty does not have enough to eat, unable to heat their homes, does not have adequate warm clothing, and enough money to cope with unforeseen events. They are struggling more than the rest of us to get a proper education, a decent job and make real choices about what they want to do with their lives. And to top it off, most of them face situations where they are being looked down upon and discriminated because of their situation. Poverty in the UK exists alongside high economic prosperity in a wealthy country. This has lead to large disparities in income and wealth. It has a negative impact on people living on low-incomes. The latest income inequality data for the UK suggests that over the last decade inequality has been pretty much unchanged. Analysis from the Office of National Statistics says the UK's Gini coefficient, which is an internationally accepted measure for measuring inequalities in household income, climbed in 2005/06 after falling between 2001 and 2005. The reason is more unequal distribution of earnings from employment and self-employment, rather than a result of changes in taxes and benefits payments. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has investigated some of the possible explanations for the higher level of inequality that has persisted since the late 1980s. They include an increase in the gap between wages for skilled and unskilled workers, perhaps because of technology change; the decline in trade union power; and falling participation in the labour market by male workers (who are higher paid on average than female workers). Poverty is caused by circumstances beyond an individual's control like gender, nationality, ethnic origin etc. All over the world, women and people from ethnic minority groups are likely to be poorer than the general population. The same is true in the UK. As per Oxfam, "Sixty-nine per cent of Bangladeshi and