Slavery in the United States had come a gradual way from its chattel form to ghettos. Jim Crow laws segregated the African Americans and raised the motto “Separate but equal.” The one-drop rule supposed that a single drop of the black blood referred to black ancestry. The African Americans or “all black” were widely used terms. Since during the whole history of the United States, several institutions had controlled and supervised these people, it led to the formation of the theory of racial domination in the country.

People tend to differentiate black and white people according to their ancestors and their blood. However, there are many kinds of black and white persons. It is a matter of thinking. As usual, people are defined black legally or socially. A person may be an African American, but he or she may think as a black or vice versa. The one-drop rule reflected the question “Who is black?” This rule goes back to Jim Crow laws, which segregated the African Americans. They announced the motto “Separate but equal”. The government separated the African Americans from white people according to the race at work, school, on a bus or in any public place and it is a food for thought in thesis of many dissertations https://top-dissertations.com/buy-coursework/

Considering the one-drop rule, the term “mulatto” meant the offspring of the African Americans. The word “colored” became a euphemism for this group. An octoroon has seven pure white ancestors out of eight. The majority of black leaders have white parents. For instance, Robert Purvis, James Augustine Healy, Walter White and Philip Randolph are the most obvious examples. Homer Piessy case in the Supreme Court served as a situation of segregation on trains. People who had black ancestry were considered African Americans.

Furthermore, slavery and racial discrimination contributed to mass incarceration. The first institution that controlled slaves in the USA was the chattel slavery system, which had lasted from the Colonial Era to the Civil War. It was based on the plantation economy and division according to the race. The second stage was Jim Crow laws that foresaw discrimination from the cradle. They mostly influenced the South agrarian society from the period of Reconstruction to the Civil Revolution. Ghettos were the third breaking point in the slavery history in Northern metropolises. Urbanization and proletarization only contributed to this process. African Americans were protesting against caste exclusion. The fourth final point was dark ghettos and the remnants of the punitive confinement apparatus. This stage connected slavery with mass imprisonment. They are genealogically related to each other. The first three institutions mainly focused on labor. Slaves were gradually deprived of freedom and the right to vote.

These events led to the formation of racial domination in the USA. Moses Finley distinguished a society with slaves and a genuine slave society. In the first one, slavery is inevitable. It is a kind of typical labor. In the second, society, culture and self are integrated and developed. The lack of political power was the main concern for Americans. Each stage of racial domination controlled the African Americans. Such stereotypes were difficult to ruin, and despite protests and general discontent, African Americans were perceived black. Even white ancestry did not prove that a person was not African American. These stages have led to the theory of racial domination in the United States.

To summarize, the four stages of racial discrimination have set a standard stereotype about African Americans and have led to the racial domination theory in America. The one-drop rule only worsened the attitude to the African Americans. Institutions that supervised them created gradual segregation and imprisonment.