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African Americans: United States
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Many African American authors have written stories, poems, and essays influenced by their experiences as African Americans, and African American literature is a major genre in American literature. Famous examples include Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou. African American inventors have created many widely used devices in the world and have contributed to international innovation. Though most slave inventors were nameless, such as the slave owned by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis who designed the ship propeller used by the entire Confederate navy, but following the Civil War, the growth of industry in the United States was tremendous and much of this was made possible with inventions by ethnic minorities. By 1913 over 1,000 inventions were patented by Black Americans. Among the most notable inventors were Jan Matzeliger, who developed the first machine to mass-produce shoes, and Elijah McCoy, who invented automatic lubrication devices for steam engines.
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African Americans are still underrepresented in government and employment. In 1999, the median income of African-American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment, with the black underclass being hardest hit. The phrase "last hired and first fired" is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Nationwide, the September 2004 unemployment rate for blacks was 10.3%, while their white counterparts were unemployed at the rate of 4.7%.
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In today's society many racial groups are stereotyped; African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans are among the most frequent racial groups stereotyped against. American journalist Walter Lippman in his book "public opinion" first introduced the modern usage of the word stereotype in 1922. (Gray 1) The context of this paper will focus on African Americans in the United States and how they have faced many adversities and have struggled to gain equality in the United States. The degree of which white endorse negative stereotypes of blacks not only biases judgments of blacks verses whites as welfare recipients in criminal suspects, but ... affects the way they respond to counter-stereotypical information about the target. (Peffley 1) Negative stereotypes of African Americans have been deeply ingrained in Anglo American culture ever since Africans were first brought to this country in chains. The stereotypes served an essential purpose; they justified Anglo enslavement of Africans.
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In the midst of this, as African Americans were gaining some ability to live in the previous Confederate States of the South, terrorism began to strike. The Ku Klux Klan took hold in 1866 as the key white supremacist organization in America. Fear and murder were their key weapon. These white-hooded gownsmen took control of the local governments, and many laws were eventually changed on the state level in the South which kept African Americans from voting and living as Free Americans.
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In 1999, nearly 35 million African Americans constituted almost 13% of the total United States population. Most African Americans reside in the South (55 percent), 19 percent live in the Northeast, 18 percent in the Midwest and 8 percent in the West. In 1999, 33 percent of the African American population was under age 18, compared with 24 percent of the non-Hispanic White population. In March 1999, their unemployment rate was more than twice that for Whites (9 percent and 4 percent, respectively). Married-couple families were less likely than their White counterparts to have an annual income of $50,000 or more. The poverty rate is higher for African Americans than for Whites (26 versus 8 percent, respectively).
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According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, African Americans represent only 12% of the U.S. population, yet account for more than half of all new HIV infections expected to occur in the U.S. each year. African-American teens (ages 13 - 19) represent only 15% of U.S. teenagers, yet accounted for almost 61% of new AIDS cases reported among teens in 2001. Additionally, in a CDC study, Florida ranked second among the states with the most African Americans estimated to be living with AIDS in 2001.
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