Race Conceptions of Native Americans from 1820 until today

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography grade: 23 Free University of Berlin (John-F. Kennedy-Institut fr Nordamerikastudien) course: Slavery and Race in the Period before the Civil War (1820-1860) language: English abstract: Exactly 400 years ago English settlers founded the first settlement called Jamestown near the Chesapeake Bay in the state that today is Virginia. The following four-hundred years were filled with battles for land struggles for independence and the building of the myth of a new promised land that held life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everybody. Many books have concerned themselves with the history of the United States of America painting a glorious picture of a country which emerged to become one of the world''s leading countries in less than 200 years after its foundation in 1789 when the first 13 states formed the United States of America. Historians work on writing books about great wars like the Civil War about the great authors and artists that this so called ''New-Republic'' produced about the ups and downs in the economy and the promise of that new ''Virgin Land'' which had been given to the Europeans to form a new better country in which all men are considered equal and possess the same inalienable rights on life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those books report about the flawed system of the American South which was based on slavery and therefore on depriving a certain group of humans of just those promised rights. And they report about how the slaves were freed and integrated into the society over a century. They are mentioned as an integral part of this wonderful new country which after the civil War ended managed to unify again into one becoming today''s world''s most powerful country. Undoubtedly minority problems are mentioned there are the Jews the Chinese-Americans the Hispanics and all the other immigrant groups which are constantly b