Temperance Movement Essay - 550 Words

Temperance Movement (Essay Sample) Content: The Temperance MovementName:CourseTutor:Date:The temperance movement which was "also known as the prohibition movement of the 19th and the 20th centuries, was both a political and a social movement" (Oviatt library ,2013). The movement was an organized and combined effort mostly from the Protestants who were also known by the name "teetotallers" to encourage restraint in the sell and consumption of alcohol. Later on, the movement went ahead to call for "complete end of the sell of alcohol in the United States, across all levels; state and national" (Bonnie Whitebread, n.d). This movement was majorly made up of women who had been left to suffer and experience difficulties with their children due to alcohol consumption among their husbands. Many of the social problems of the time such as unemployment, domestic violence among others, were attributed to alcohol consumption among the men. However, in many ways the temperance movement was racially discriminatory, "especial ly when considering the role of the black Americans and other races in the movement" (Lerner, 2009). Some aspects of racial prejudice are similar to those evident in the efforts of the state and local levels of government to control opium use among the Chinese in the 1870s.To begin with, the temperance movement was racially discriminatory in terms of its membership. The movement initially was helped and grew through racism whereby other races except the whites were not allowed to join in the movement. White Georgians for instance, rejected and opposed the idea of having a mixture of the races the temperance movement and its organizations. This was done "discriminatively with the intention of preventing or getting on the way of the African Americans of joining the movement" (Fletcher, 2007). "This resulted in the African-American community being reluctant to support the movement" (Lee, 2011). The African American community however made efforts to "adopt the values of this movement la ter on so as to earn the whitesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ respect" (Yacovone, 1988). This kind of racial prejudice is also evident in the efforts made by the government in the 1870s, when trying to control the use of opium among the Chinese. In these efforts for instance, the laws and the efforts to control opium were majorly necessary because the federal government to control or limit the whites association with the Chinese. This is because, the use of opium among the white population had gone high whereby some whites including women had started going to the Chinese opium parlours. This continued association with the Chinese was among the key factors that drove the governmentà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s efforts to control opium.Other instances of racial prejudice in the temperance movement include instances whereby the whites, especially the Georgians, were in support of illegalizing alcoholic beverages among the African Americans. This was also, a move that was racially motivated and was, therefore, prejudicial to the Africans. Similar traces of racial discrimination are evident in the efforts by the government while trying to control the use of opium among the Chinese. In this instance, the government treated the whites differently from the Chinese in its...