History and Racial Relations in the United States (Essay Sample)

History and Racial Relations in the United States
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Even with the abolition of slavery, which has traditionally been the fabric of racial relationships in the US, there are several racial prejudices directed by the dominant white population in the US towards minority communities including African Americans, Hispanics, and red Indians. In the recent past, we have seen ethnic prejudiced treatments of African American members of the US populations in separate regions across the country (Rentz, 2019). Some of the most viral incidents have been the Fergusson murder of an African American teenagers, the Baltimore as well as the Charleston incidents, all of which included harsh treatment of African Americans at the hands of white people.
Notably, these incidents of racial segregations of minority communities, mainly African Americans in the USA are connected with the story of Elizabeth Hazel, who was among the first students to be barred from entering school in the wake of the 1957 US Supreme court decision to prevent white students from integrating with black students in schools (NPR, 2011). In this light, this paper will investigate the history of racial relationships in the US as well as the connections between the recent incidents of racial discrimination/ segregation around the country with the Elizabeth Hazel story.
It was September 1957 when the US Supreme Court issued a law preventing black students from integrating with white students in classrooms. Among the first victim of this racial segregation legislation was fifteen year old Elizabeth Hazel, who faced harsh treatment in the hands of the racist white people demonstration in Arkansas; she and her fellow students known as the Little Rock Nine, were subjected to racial abuse, spat on and even physically violated during the demonstration (Rentz, 2019). The incidents demonstrate that the US has not evolved at any significant level as far as the treatment of minority African Americans is concerned. The Elizabeth Hazel incident resonates with recent events in the US, where young African Americans, unwary of the existence of racially discriminative systems in the US have faced brutal treatments, even deaths in some cases in the hands of racially biased white people. One of the most relatable situations is the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Fergusson by a police officer, who assumed that the Vitim was armed because he was