Race Relations in America Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Race Relations in America - Research Paper Example Thus, the eventful history of race relations in the Western Hemisphere, and in North America in particular, appears not only an important part of a larger trend worldwide, but also the genuine article of such relationships, insofar as three major human races – Europeans, Native Americans (or Indians, which appellation became much more familiar, albeit entirely wrong), and Africans – ‘met and mingled’ in the New World (Norton at al. 2). The centuries following the first Spanish campaigns in the Valley of Mexico, the marshlands of Florida and along the coast of California, have witnessed, according to Arthur Mann, both territorial expansion and massive influx of immigrants from almost all over the world (68). Having left their countries of origin for particular reasons – whether economic, religious or political, as well as in different manner – warlike, peaceful, group or individual – these immigrants inevitably got entangled in the canva s of what would slowly and obscurely evolve into the present-day multi-faceted society of the United States. A bit weird combination of two prima facie incompatible with one another motives – the aspiration of spreading Christianity around the world and a desire for the wealth of the East – appears to have driven the fifteenth-century European explorers of the New World, who, by the way, had obviously seen no conflict between the two (Norton at al. 10); just as their predecessors from the time of the Crusade. Not less bizarre notion of what the world’s size might be indeed brought Columbus to a Caribbean island on October 12, 1492, which he named San Salvador (Holy Savior), and made him to claim success in the goal of reaching the Indies. Quite understandably, the native inhabitants had been called ‘Indians’. Three more voyages to the west failed to dispel this delusion and till his death in 1506, Columbus remained blissfully unaware that he had actually discovered a new