HW 4/9

This video discusses how, although U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, Guam and America Samoa are considered benifactor territories for the United States, the people of those territories do not get the same American citizenship rights as someone who was born in the original 50 states. Biological determinist and evolutionary scientist which fueled scientific racism back in the time prior to the civil war and during reconstruction era definitely influenced white people to believe that black African Americans were either 1. an inferior race, 2. a races that would become dominant in the united states due to the forceful suppressing of equal rights prior to the civil war, 3. a race that was not even a race but a possible animal linked closer to monkeys, 4. a race that would naturally conflict with other races due to the forceful suppressing of equal rights, 5. a race that was naturally beast like and would rape every white woman he saw, 6. a race that was naturally everted to the white race, 7. a race that could not biologically prove a stronger self worth, which resulted in the stagnant class of bondage to whites through out the years, 8. a race that would abuse the powers of congress due to their growing animosity against whites. This scientific racism eventually started to look pretty bad when Nazi Germany started to put use to it during WW2. But before that, it had actually influenced law makes and politicians to rule certain ways in courts. Although not all law makers and politicians were influenced by these theories used by scientists and theorists such as Hoffman or Morgan, many were still influenced to the point to keep restraint on African American rights and citizenship. Just like in the video that we had watched with John Oliver, he mentions that a lot of these territories in the U.S. like Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa, and the citizens that were born in those territories all have titles that give them certain rights and establishment within the United States, but they do not have the same rights as everyone else that were born in the original 50 states of the U.S. If we compare this to the “separate but equal” ruling during the Plessy v. Ferfuson case, we could say that African American had the “title” of citizenship within the United States, but under the ruling they weren’t really equal. Although this ruling did not violate the 14th amendment, it would eventually be seen as constitutionally wrong, especially after the ruling of Brown v. Board of education. But again, most Americans didn’t really start to warming up to fact that civil rights was an imperative feat until the mid 50s.