One of the topics Professor O’Malley touched on, after introducing the Minstrel Show, was race and the classification of race by the american government. The specifications to be considered white and a citizen were outrageous and unjustifiable. Judges based criteria for citizenship on their own standards and how a person looked. A citizen’s legitimate technicality of being classified as a citizen wasn’t being taken into consideration but by a person’s shade of white. Anyone who wasn’t white enough was considered foreign even if they were born in the U.S or had European blood. There is even a list of what races were considered white and which weren’t, and if you were mixed then there was no chance of becoming a part of the white community.
I find it really ridiculous that segregation and racism were a factor of how you would live your life or how high up in society you were because of skin color. I question how that all began because the end goal for everyone, despite their race, is to live and survive. So it is puzzling to even think that how you look determines how you survive or if you survive. This leads to the topic of lynching and how it was ever seen as amusing or appropriate or even necessary. It is disgusting that people used it as a marketing strategy: taking pictures, making postcards, announcing/promoting gatherings, and advertising products. This idea of what whites think was bringing justice to “their people” is highly disrespectful. What’s even scarier is that racism is still existent in the 21st century. Sure it has gotten better and more justice has been served, but the fact that it still exist and how people could have so much hate for a race is mind blowing.