The right wing media has long held the position that white-on-black racism in the United States is “dead.” Certain facts are thought to prove this point. The fact that, in 2009, a black man assumed the office of President of the United States is proof that racism is over. Also, black students now have an easier time getting accepted to college than white students because of Affirmative Action, proving racism is no longer a problem (Weissmann, 2012). And anyway, racial discrimination is illegal now – the Civil Rights Act took care of that over fifty years ago.
While it is true that explicit racism is on the decline thanks to modern taboos, racism takes many forms, and most of them are subtle. The legacy of racism can be seen to endure in our various social systems, including criminal justice, education, healthcare, and corporate governance structure. Far from being dead, institutional racism is alive and well, and it is subtly yet unmistakably ensuring the perpetual disempowerment of black people.
Racial prejudice in America has its roots in pre-colonial times. The first black people in America arrived as slaves from Africa in the early 17th century. Slavery introduced an understanding of society that was racially based, establishing the racial hierarchy whose shadow still looms over us (Stephens, 2014). “White” and “black” became the defining features of personal identity, as fundamental as being “male” or “female.” The concept of white supremacy emerged not long after the first black feet took their first steps on American soil (Smith, 2012).
The concept of race is now understood to be a purely social construct with no real genetic or biological basis (Smedley & Smedley, 2005). But for hundreds of years, it erected a wall straight through the heart of American society, relegating people called “men” to one side of it, and people called “property” to the other. A white person’s whiteness was his or her most valuable possession (Harris, 1993). Attributes like reputation, personal history, social role, and behavior were ascribed the quality of “whiteness” or “blackness,” and used to determine whether people were slaves or not, when it was not obvious from their skin color alone (Johnson, 2000). Even after slavery was abolished, the tradition of applying racial qualities to personal characteristics persisted (and still persists, as the still-common phrases “acting black” and “acting white” show). Race became as much a performance as a birthright, and society’s punishments for black people who did not act “white” enough were severe (Willie, 2003).
For nearly one-hundred years, race-based segregation and unequal treatment were ordained by the law and consecrated by the constitution. The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson established the precedent of “separate but equal” in 1896, and it remained doctrinal until the passing of civil rights legislation and subsequent constitutional amendment in 1964 (Kujovich, 1987). Having finally lost the backing of the law, the centuries-old racial hierarchy could at last be dismantled.
Racism is deeply ingrained in American culture. People are taught to see race from a young age. Being “white” or “black” is an aspect of our identity; it is a part of who we are. It is not as inconsequential as a person’s height or weight, as it would be if we were truly living in a post-racial society. We define ourselves by race and encourage others to define us by the same standard. This has the effect of promoting tribalism and stereotyping, as it emphasizes differences and pushes black and white people back into the safety of their respective communities. Even as people are taught that racism is bad and wrong, these teachings reinforce the black-white binary. Despite fifty years of equality, we still view the world through a racial lens (Omi & Winant, 2014).
Thus, although conscious racism is becoming a thing of the past, unconscious racism maintains its firm stronghold. Unconscious racism is the racism we tend not to be aware of because it is normal to us and therefore fails to attract our notice. Unconscious racism is subtler than overt racism and tends to manifest in the way our historic institutions are set up. As the slam poet Scott Woods explains,
“Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or notRacism is an insidious cultural disease” (Woods, 2014).
Institutionalized racism is directly responsible for the racial disparities seen in national average income, incarceration, employment, educational achievement, and health outcomes. A disproportionately high percentage of black people live at or below the poverty level, and a disproportionately low percentage of black people account for promotions. Black adolescents are 18 times more to receive sentencing as if they were adults than white children. Black adults are 30 percent less likely to be homeowners than white adults. Black children are more likely to be suspended from school, and black employees are less likely to hold high-paying positions. Black families’ median net worth is more than $200,000 less than white families’. Black people make up about fifteen percent of the population, but account for about forty percent of violent arrests. They are more likely to be pulled over, even when they are equally likely to break traffic laws. They are more likely to go to prison for drug-related crimes, even when they are equally likely to use drugs. Sixty percent of the children in our prisons are black (Nesbit, 2015).
These statistics provide compelling evidence of a systematic problem. There is a cause and effect relationship between the embedded racism of our culture and the hardships that black people are currently facing. There is something fundamental to the way society is structured that systematically favors white people while it punishes black people. It is woven into the fabric of our institutions and cannot be ameliorated by corrective policy interventions. It is older than our history as a country and it will take more than fifty years to undo its damage.
Some people argue that the reason for most of these disparities in achievement is due to individual attitudes toward and indifferences to accepting personal responsibility. Black people are arrested more often and promoted less often because they are more often criminals and less often ambitious go-getters. This argument holds that black people are alone to blame for their failures and that they write their own destiny. This belief would be justified, if it were not for the mountain of evidence that has been ceaselessly accumulating for the last four hundred years.
In the United States, most people know that racism is wrong, but they are unaware of the institutional racism that tips the scales in their favor. Institutional racism is a direct cause of the problems facing the black community. It is effective because we can’t see it.
Works Cited
Harris, Cheryl I. "Whiteness as property." Harvard law review (1993): 1707-1791.
Johnson, Walter. "The slave trader, the white slave, and the politics of racial determination in the 1850s." JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY-BLOOMINGTON- 87.1 (2000): 13-38.
Kujovich, Gil. "Equal opportunity in higher education and the Black public college: The era of separate but equal." Minn. L. Rev. 72 (1987): 29.
Nesbit, Jeff. “Institutional Racism is Our Way of Life.” U.S. News and World Report. 6 May 2015. Web. 14 April 2016.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial formation in the United States. Routledge, 2014.
Smedley, Audrey, and Brian D. Smedley. "Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race." American Psychologist 60.1 (2005): 16.
Smith, Andrea. "Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy." Racial formation in the twenty-first century (2012): 66-90.
Stephens, R. L. “How White People Invented Racism.” Orchestrated pulse. 4 August 2014. Web. 14 April 2016.
Weissmann, Jordan. “How to Think About Affirmative Action Like an Economist.” The Atlantic. 10 October 2012. Web. 14 April 2016.
Willie, Sarah Susannah. Acting black: College, identity, and the performance of race. Psychology Press, 2003.
Wood, Scott. “5 Things No One Is Actually Saying About Ani DiFranco or Plantations.” Scott Wood Makes Lists. Wordpress. 3 January 2014. Web. 14 April 2016.
