The Principles Of Slavery And Discrimination - 1517 Words

Were the principles of slavery and discrimination actually a part of our nations birth and protected by the Constitution? Well, we live in a time where the topic of racial discrimination and things such as white privilege are a mainstay on the covers of many well-read newspapers all over the United States. Many people are torn on these issues and everyone is talking about it, and rightly so. Everyone knows that the United States was founded on the ideas of justice, fairness, and freedom – or was it? Of course our founding fathers perceived this as the ideal tenets for the country to be appropriated by and are still the ideologies we follow today, but the question arises: Did the founding fathers have everyone in mind for these tenets?†¦show more content†¦This can be shown and ultimately fueled by Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution which says: The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importations, not exceeding 10 dollars a person. (Article 1, Section 9) This law effectively states that the institution of the foreign slave trade in the United States is completely legal under the Constitution. The foreign slave trade is defined as the import of slaves from Africa or countries that happened to be selling slaves in general. This meant that the United States could import slaves from out of country allowing for the slave population to go on the rise. The 10 dollars part means that there could be no more than a 10 dollar tax that could be applied per slave brought to America aboard the cramped, squalor filled slave ships. These are clear ideologies in the Constitution that proves that slavery was here at our founding and that the practice was legal. This type of legislation is what lead to the inequality in between the races rather than follow in ideologies that the American patriots fought so desperately for. To add insult to injury, the African Americans were also