There is much discussion about whether we are a racist society. Systemic racism is not something that we can easily measure or prove, but we can get a better sense of the state of our society today by looking at our history, especially that history that we generally ignore.
Were we a racist society …
— In 1776, when we declared that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” but denied those rights to 20 percent of the population because of the color of their skin?
— In 1787, when we adopted a constitution that allowed Black people to be owned and counted as just three-fifths of a person?
— In 1857, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that all Black people were in a “slave class” and “had no rights which the White man is bound to respect”?
— In 1860, when 80 percent of the nation’s gross national product was dependent on slavery?
— In 1865, when President Johnson’s emissary reported from the south of the “sickening, unbearable stench of decomposing Black bodies hanging from limbs, rotting in ditches and clogging the roadways”? The President did nothing.
— In the late 1800s, when southern states enacted “Black Codes” that required Negroes to sign annual labor contracts and those without such a contract or who left their jobs would be charged with vagrancy and auctioned to the highest bidder?
— In 1877, when the Supreme Court ruled in Hall v. DeCuir that a state could not prohibit racial segregation?
— In 1880, when a series of decisions by the Supreme Court provided clear guidelines on how to constitutionally exclude Black people from juries?
— Between 1882 and 1968, when 3,446 Black people were lynched in 37 states in events sometimes publicized as occasions for family picnics, and severed body parts became souvenirs?
— In 1896, when the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation of Black Americans was constitutional?
— In 1898, when armed White people stormed prosperous, majority-Black Wilmington, N.C., murdered dozens of Black people and overthrew the elected city government?
— Between 1916 and 1920, when those who came south to offer Blacks employment in the north were fined and jailed, and Blacks were prevented from leaving?
— During World War I, when Sen. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor that he feared sending a Black man to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.”
— In 1919, when a 17-year-old Black boy from Chicago inadvertently swam past the imaginary line that separated White from Black water in Lake Michigan and drowned after being stoned?
— In 1920, when the U.S. census dropped the category of “mulattoes” and formally adopted the one drop rule so that any person with African heritage, regardless of how many generations removed, is classified as Negro?
— In 1921, when Greenwood in Tulsa, Okla., known as Black Wall Street, was burned by White citizens aided by the National Guard? Approximately 300 Black people were murdered, 8,000 were rendered homeless and 35 blocks burned. City officials purged every record of the raid.
— In the 1930s, when Nazi Germany used our laws to develop their Aryan supremacy laws but were astounded that an internationally respected country like the U.S. could so severely restrict Black Americans?
— In 1934, when Congress created the Federal Housing Administration that reduced interest rates and down payments, but would not issue those loans for neighborhoods with Black people?
— In 1944, when southern states were so effective in using poll taxes, literacy tests and good-character clauses that only 5 percent of eligible Black voters were registered?
— In 1945, when Major League Baseball barred Black players from its teams?
— In 1947, when a group of White men came to Elmore Bolling’s home in Alabama and shot him seven times? Elmore Bolling had a general store, a gas station, a catering business, a fleet of trucks and employed 40 people. The shooters didn’t cover their faces because everyone knew who had done it and why. “He was too successful to be a Negro.”
— In 1949, when St. Louis opened the largest swimming pool in the country and a crowd of 5,000 people formed to keep all Black people from using the pool?
— In 1963, when southern states refused to obey the Supreme Court so that only 1 percent of Black students were in a public school with White students?
— In 1963, when, not long after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I have a Dream” speech, an FBI memo urged the bureau to “use every resource at our disposal to destroy him”?
— In 1964, when U.S. immigration laws declared “that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the White race”?
— In 1966, when it was legal to outlaw marriage between Blacks and Whites?
— In 1968, when the Kerner Commission concluded that White racism was the genesis of the urban violence that shocked our country in the 1960s?
— Between 1986 and 2010, when Congress mandated a minimum five-year sentence for distribution of five grams of crack cocaine, a cheaper form of the drug mostly used by Black Americans, and the same five-year prison sentence for distribution of 500 grams of powder cocaine, a more expensive drug used mostly by White Americans but with the same effect as crack cocaine?
— In the 1990s, when according to Harvard Professor David R. Williams, Americans had been exposed to sufficient negative messages about Black Americans that 80 percent of White Americans hold unconscious bias against Black Americans?
— In 2006, when Blacks comprised 15 percent of American illicit drug users, 37 percent of those arrested for drug violations, 59 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison?
— In 2018, when data from 800 cities and counties showed Black people were arrested at a rate five times higher than White people?
— In 2018, when a Black person was 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a White person, even though Black and White people used marijuana at similar rates?
— In 2019, when Black defendants were 22 times more likely to receive the death penalty for crimes whose victims are White, rather than Black, a bias the Supreme Court declared “inevitable”?
— In 2020, when the police report on the arrest of George Floyd read: “He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later”?
Without a video, this would have become one of the 99.3 percent of police killings that do not result in charges.
— In 2020, when Black women were three times more likely to have a maternal death than White women, and 66 percent of these deaths were considered to be preventable?
— Are we a racist society in 2021, when Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told senators that the greatest domestic threat facing the United States comes from “those who advocate for the superiority of the White race”?
When confronted with the specifics of these questions, yes is the only answer with integrity. Despite all the protestations to the contrary, our history reveals us to be a racist society.
For the first 90 years, systemic racism was enshrined in our constitution, reinforced by state laws and repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court. For the next 100 years, our country just ignored or found ways to bypass laws that were intended to reduce racial discrimination.
Using terror and intimidation, the era of Jim Crow left Black people without protection of their basic human rights.
Less than a decade after the Civil War, the southern leaders who fought to preserve slavery were put back in charge, so we should not be surprised that the treatment of Black people changed little when in theory they were given their freedom.
Until the middle of the last century, it was obvious that we were a racist society, since we did so little to hide it. The civil and voting rights acts of the 1960s were major accomplishments, but as history has taught us, changing laws does not change hearts and minds, nor does it change institutions.
Time alone does not reduce systemic racism, especially in a society that has been steeped in racism for centuries and has broadcast and learned all of the detrimental messages about Black people.
Racism does not just go away when it is entrenched in our educational institutions, our legal system, our police departments, our churches, our financial institutions and all levels of government.
Systemic racism does not end when a Black person is elected president.
If you identify as a White person, it is likely that you will not think of yourself as racist, but the reality is that to grow up in the U.S. is to grow up with racist attitudes.
That doesn’t mean we are all inclined to join the KKK. It doesn’t mean that we have a moral failing.
It does mean that we have absorbed all of the negative stories about Black people, and they are firmly implanted in our psyche.
To not be racist takes intentional action, individually and collectively, to repudiate these pervasive distortions that have caused so much damage and suffering.
It is the result of deliberate policy that the median family wealth for White people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for Black people. For most of the history of our country, Black people were punished for any attempt to make their lives better, and then we wonder why their lives are not better.
We will continue to be a racist society as long as those of us who have profited enormously from generations of accumulated wealth, which was methodically denied to Black people, do not recognize the injustices of those structures and actively work to change them.
‘We must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias’Systemic racism will end only with our intentional effort to see society for what it is and what it has done and is doing to Black people.
It is ironic that at this moment when it is critical that we learn the history of how Black people have been treated in our country, multiple state legislatures are passing laws that will make it illegal to teach that history.
Teaching this history is objectionable only for those who see the truth as a threat to the myth of White supremacy. Rejecting this history forces Black people to survive in an invented world that denies the reality that they live every day.
We can begin to remove systemic racism only when we begin to learn our history, not as we would like it to be, but as it is. With this knowledge, we must take the appropriate actions to correct the inherent bias in our current institutions that were established in a society that was defined by racism.
It will not be easy. It will not happen automatically. It will require structural change, but it is necessary if we are to be the country that we proclaim to be.
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