Black or White

African American finally became the president of U.S.A. I love black music and interested in their history and culture. I am going to learn African American literature at college next term.I wrote this essay in eriting class.


Blacks and Whites in United States

United States is a country which contains various races and their cultures as a result of being immigrant country. In the history of United States, there are two kind of distinctive people who are always compared with. They are black people and white people. Not only their looks, but also those people’s historical background is a point which makes them so different.

White people are often considered as people who came from European continent or whose ancestors are European. In the 1607, first white people reached North-American Continent from Great Britain. After that, many people from European country tried to come to America searching for wealth and religious freedom in the new world.

Twenty black people reached America in 1619 first. They were taken to America from African Continent as slaves to serve for white people. They were not considered as humans, but considered as rather commercial products to run businesses, especially plantation. A lot of salves are needed for primary businesses of United State. That is why white people imported many slaves.

Inconvenient social class differences through history emphasized diverse of White and Black people’s life and Culture. Since black people are not considered as a human at first, they are officially segregated by law of United States. Through the long time of Civil Rights movement, black people were finally approved their rights officially in 1964. However they have right to live equal to white people, it took long time to change people’s thoughts. Today, there is no clear segregation as it was used to be, but from the point of education level and living, whites and blacks are still quite different. Blacks often have lower income and educational level than those of white people on average. These facts can be one of the reasons why a lot of Black people in United States commit crimes and other social problems such as Affirmative Action.

Mention to their religion, both black and white people are worshiping Christianity. In the Slave era, white people forced black people to abandon their culture and to worship Christianity. However they worship a same religion, black people were not allowed to step in white people’ s church, so they made their own church and worshiped Christianity by their own way. Black people sang a song to God with their own rhythm and beats from Africa in their church. This is the very primary of Gospel or Soul music and foundation of Jazz and Blues. From this church separation, black and white people started to practice different cultures although they are living in the same country.

In United States, Hip-Hop and R&B music which are usually considered as Black Music are very popular genre of music today among young people. In dance clubs, you can see Blacks, Whites, Asian and Native American are dancing together with hot hit tunes. It seems young people don’t care about racial differences, but in school, for an example, you still can see students who belong to their racial groups. In other words, white people tend to stick together and so do blacks and other racial groups. There are still historical forces which made people exclusive from other races, especially between Blacks and Whites.


I put this music video just because I like it and it fit my essay's title.