Sociology

The Black Diaspora

The ABC report evaluates the mechanization of cotton farms during the early twentieth century reduced the demand for farm laborers and gave many blacks the incentive to move away from southern farms to the industrialized north. The northern cities were home to many new black communities, which created centers of uniquely African American culture.

Every person is in a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important called race. People may classify one another racially based on physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, hair texture, and body shape. However, racism is the belief that one racial category is innately superior or inferior to another. Racism has also been widespread in the United States, where for centuries ideas about racial inferiority supported slavery. Many African Americans chose to head north when the need of farm laborers reduced. The blacks however brought ethnicity with them. Ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. The northern cities showed the strong heritage they brought with them.

Many African Americans had many reasons for traveling north, other than the reduced need for farm laborers. One major reason is because they are a large minority. A minority is any category of people distinguished by physical or cultural difference that a society sets apart and subordinates. Minorities have two important characteristics. First, they share a distinct identity, which may be based on physical or cultural traits. Second, minorities experience subordination. Also, many African Americans were trying to run from prejudice southerners. Prejudice is a rigid and unfair generalization about an entire category of people. Prejudice is unfair because such attitudes are supported by little or no direct evidence. Many African Americans were running from these