As recent ex-slaves, how long will it take before black men are more accepted and functional in high society?

Question

i.e. when will there be no more need for affirmative action, etc. It seems we black men and all others, minority men, women, white men, are competing for the same job. how long before things like affirmative action aren't necessary. In other words, until black men are more entitle, and we are all more entitled I guess.

Answer 1

The last man to be a slave died in 1979.  He was 137 years old.

Answer 2

Although I wish you had said "decendants of slaves" instead of "recent ex-slaves," I agree that there's still a long way to go, and I think there will be a day when we won't need programs like Affirmative Action. But the civil rights movement was only 40-50 years ago, that's not a long time in a historical context. And things have slowly been getting better ever since. I don't think it will be much longer now until African Americans are accepted effortlessly, maybe another 30-40 years. If Obama turns out to be a good president after he's elected, maybe that'll speed things up a bit! :)

However, the important thing to remember is that race and class are very separate statuses, even tough they are very well-correlated in America. Affirmative Action is one attempt to balance economics and racial prejudice, but it is not targeting the main cause of racial inequality. There are influences on your life experience from the moment you are born that affect your class status in later life, and affirmative action tends to only help those that bypassed these disadvantages through their own birth chances. If there was a program that could insure that young children experience the same quality of education, regardless of how much their neighbors are giving the schools in property taxes, that would be a good start to developing more racial equality in later life. The sooner something like that happens, the sooner we'll achieve racial equality, my friend. But we'll still get there eventually.

Answer 3

I agree with Andy.

Answer 4

Black and other minority men have received a lot of acceptance. Look at our current election, a black man was chosen to be the front runner of a major political party.

Black men are in positions of major power such as Secretary of State with Colin Powell and Michael Steele who is the director of a political action committee.

It all boils down to the content of each individuals character. As a Hispanic male, many people stereotype me as an individual who has many children and drinks a lot.

I believe that the time to eliminate all Affirmative Action is now. I don't like labels such as African-American, or Hispanic-American. I believe we should all identify ourselves as either American or Non-American.

Answer 5

In the UK is will take around 200 years at the rate we are currently going for ethinic minorites to be represented in politics!