Racism 2.0

Welcome to the next installment of my “What the Hell is Going On?” collection drawn from my first book and various new essays that I have been sitting on and am now ready to publish. You can read the whole collection.

Racism is something that I’ve been lucky to be somewhat insulated from. As a bi-racial person, I am light-skinned. As one college professor put it, “There’s passing, and then there’s passing, and you’re not passing.” Fair enough. However, I have had the privilege of walking into places most black people don’t get to go to. Because of my white mother and her white husband, I’ve been able to sit in restaurants where the only other colored face was from the wait staff.

I have this friend who always brings up racial politics. I think it bothers him. He’s from a poor background and has done well for himself in technology. He and his wife live in a fashionable Denver loft. He’s tall, good-looking, and white. Broadly, he is liberal. He is the ideal Democrat voter, educated, and urbane. When we meet up, we talk about racial politics most of the time. His friend group isn’t terribly diverse, and         I think he feels safe bringing up the topic around me. I’ve known him since midway through Obama’s first term in office. Our first conversation had to do with America’s “myth” of racism. The complications of racial politics in America were something he thought was fairly well solved. During the Obama administration, he boldly declared that racism was solved. Later, he nearly cried when I was begging him not to vote for Trump. “I just want people to stop dying,” I told him that he was voting against me and my existence. He rebuffed the remark, and I walked right out of his loft. He chased me to the elevator, begging me to come back in. I was tired of the conversation, hugged him, and escaped to my car. Three months later, he sent me a simple text about Trump. “That was a mistake.” Our conversations on race were not to end any time soon.

Another time I told him that in his hiring process as a developer, he should be “color brave” and try to hire someone of color or a woman or both. “Why should we go to all that work when we already know a white guy who can do it?” I tried to explain the lack of diversity in technology and how he had an opportunity to give a much-needed chance to someone looking to break into the industry; however, my reasoning fell on deaf ears. “It’s just easier to hire the guy we know.” The last time we met, the discussion again turned to race at some point. We talked for over an hour until he stood up and stomped his foot and said, “I don’t want to be associated with slave masters.” I shrugged my shoulders, “Sorry, I replied, “That’s the legacy this country was built on. It’s why you have an advantage, and many others just don’t.”

He did not accept this, and many still don’t. The reality is that racism and the idea that black people are different, dangerous, or inferior are built into the fabric of this nation.

The idea that racism is some archaic institution that only existed when white men in hoods stood around lynching black people is what I call racism 2.0. It is the entire erasure of the experiences of people of color and the genuine and yet very subtle way in which American racism still exists in our society today. Racism is not just biased opinions or ideas. Racism, as it has occurred in the United States and other places like South Africa, is the systematic subjugation of a people based on their skin color or other characteristics. Racism excludes these people from jobs, voting, and other institutions, creating a system of oppression and exploitation.

Racism is much less overt than it used to be. Racial epithets are rare in most instances. Racism 2.0 is far more subtle and far harder to find. Racism 2.0 is that black families, who leave poverty and enter the middle class, often watch their children and grandchildren slip back into poverty. Racism is much more institutional than it used to be. That is what makes racism so unique in the United States. The country is built to disadvantage black and other people of color. American racial attitudes and subjugation have not been limited to African descent. Almost all non-white groups in the United States have had to endure some sort of discrimination in this country. This has been reflective of a general idea of “white first” policies that have radically affected the success of people of color.

Racism toward Asian People

Asian immigration to California began as early as the 1820s. By the 1850s, Asian immigrants arrived in the thousands per day. Most of these immigrants were Chinese looking for a better life in California. However, America was not as welcoming to these immigrants as it could have been. Asian people, specifically Southeast Asian people during the 19th Century, were often shut out of certain professions, causing them to start businesses and work in more feminine perceived jobs like food and laundries, which contributed to the cultural emasculation of Asian men.

The contribution of Chinese laborers to the construction of the transcontinental railroad is not talked about nearly enough in the historical discourse about its construction. No Chinese faces appeared in the famous “Golden Spike” photo taken in Utah upon its completion in 1869. So many Chinese people came from China to the United States that Congress banned Chinese immigration outright in 1882, and the ban was not repealed until 1943. An even worse blow was the ban of Chinese female immigration in 1875. This was the first act by Congress to ban immigration for a specific ethnicity of people.

Japanese people were interned during World War II for no other reason than their heritage and the fact that they might be working for the enemy or might be a spy. For many of those people, they lost everything. Their land and farms were often not returned in California unless a neighbor or someone else could help them. The Japanese internment is one of the darkest moments of American history, and descends, like George Takei are still alive to tell the story of America’s homegrown concentration camps.

Although Asian-Americans in political science circles are the “model minority” against which Hispanics and African-Americans are judged, they have not been free from stereotypes similar to the racist caricatures that black people have suffered from. Cartoons from early film and characters from early silent motion pictures depicted Asian characters as short, small, incompetent, and with exaggerated accents.

Hispanic Racism

The United States purchased most of the southwestern states and California in various purchases from Spain and later Mexico, except for the annexation of Texas (a sovereign nation). Descends of Spanish settlers and native tribes lived in the region. White settlers often pushed out these people, especially once a firm border was established between the United States and Mexico at the Rio Grande river. The border is one of the longest in the world, stretching from California in the west and the Gulf of Mexico in the east. This heritage has not stopped racism toward the people native to these areas.

Hispanic/Latinx people have been discriminated against, particularly in the southwest. Even now, the illegal immigration debate has caused the worst racial attitudes toward people with a diversity of backgrounds from Central and South America to be laid bare in public view. Hispanic diaspora people have also fought against stereotyping and exotic caricatures in the media. Film and television have often portrayed them as lazy and constantly taking a “siesta.”

Hispanic people have also had to fight for rights as farmworkers. In the early 1970s, Cesar Chavez helped create the first farm workers’ unions. In California and elsewhere, Hispanic people were often the only ones willing to take on the back-breaking farm labor. They have also been on the front lines of the debate on illegal immigration. President Trump has trafficked in the idea that immigration from this part of the world leads to crime (which is not backed up by data) or disease and that these people are taking jobs from good Americans and pressing down wages. There is a perception that all immigrants are bad people and criminals who, rather than merely arriving in the United States looking for a better life like so many people before them, are actively coming to the United States to destroy the country. These statements are not new either. Irish and Italian immigrants also suffered from public officials’ same perceptions and negative statements, especially in the 1890s during the 2nd great wave of immigration.

In the recent past, Hispanic people have been discriminated against for jobs and employment through housing and redlining policies. Like many immigrants, they come here speaking another language, and the sheer amount of them has added Spanish as the 2nd most spoken language in the United States. The increase of Hispanic immigration since the crackdown following the Vietnam war has changed Americans significantly. Spanish language media bloomed in the 1980s to cater to these audiences. However, the popularity of Hispanic diaspora celebrities and Hispanic foods has not reduced the racism that has been targeted to this community, a racism that is evident in almost any debate about illegal immigration.

Native American Racism

Native Peoples, on whose land the United States sits, have also suffered terrible genocide and terrible portrayal in cinema and television. Most people are popularly aware of the “Trail of Tears,” where the Cherokee and others were forcibly removed from their lands and moved farther west to make room for White-European settlers. Despite the Cherokee setting themselves up as a European style nation with a written language in the Latin alphabet (with a few extra letters), a newspaper, and a legislative body, for most of the 19th Century, Native Peoples in the United States were viewed as a nuisance in the way of Manifest Destiny to stretch the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific. There is a long tradition of moving Native Peoples to reservations with poor land making basic agriculture difficult. Many tribes were nomadic or semi-nomadic. Forcing them to live at a fixed location was a terrible way to destroy a people and an entire way of life completely. Even the reservations system was often not an insurance policy. If a white settler desired a piece of land, native tribes were simply removed, resulting in a long line of broken treaties between the United States and the Native Peoples. Despite the political implications of these policies, there are also cultural implications of the terrible racism toward the native populations already in place in North America.

In many movies, including the iconic Stagecoach (1938), Native Americans are referred to as “savages.” Native communities had to endure decades of residential schools that did their best to erase their language, stories, and culture altogether. There is currently a movement to investigate an epidemic of missing Native American women. Native American people suffer higher rates of suicide and poverty than most other groups. This is despite Native groups having sovereignty over their reservations (with their own courts, police, and elections). Although there are terrible flaws in the system, billions of dollars have been poured into the community. One might think that Native groups would be highly successful with those types of resources, yet the high rates of poverty and suicide continue to exist.

Native American groups have had to suffer from racism deeply embedded in culture through athletics as well. Team names like the Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians, or the Chicago Blackhawks reveal quite accepted racism and cultural appropriation of native peoples. The racism against Native groups came into sharp focus again in 2018 with the Covington High School scandal. A protest of white students was interrupted by a Native group with the predictably incendiary results. Although the media didn’t portray the situation as somewhat accurate, one thing was clear: the image of an elderly Native American man speaking against a smug white student who showed no empathy toward the man. Pile on the fact that they were there to protest abortion in the nation’s capital, and a political storm resulted.

The Native American movement rose up in the 1970s in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and alongside the Farm Workers’ Movement. Native Americans often suffered degradation of voting rights and other abuses. Their interaction with the Federal government is intrinsically bureaucratic.

Native groups must work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to handle the relationship between the sovereign tribes and the United States. This relationship has not often been fair to tribes. Native representation Congress has been sparse throughout the 20th century.

Native Americans have also been poorly portrayed to children. Songs like 10 Little Indians and the culturally appropriative nature of children’s toys toward Native culture, with tomahawks and headdresses, were the first ways in which two generations of children were exposed to Native cultures. National Museum of the American Indian curator, Cécile R. Ganteaume, pointed out in the National Museum of the American Indian magazine in 2017, “American Indian imagery has been used by the Federal government to distinguish the United States from other nations and to define the nation for its citizens, by U.S. armed forces to express military might, by American corporations to signify integrity, and by designers . . . to add luster and cachet to commercial products.”

The same ideas of inferiority have affected most non-white groups in this country. People who are not white have had to endure the “white” culture, standards of beauty, and perception as the standard. Everything that isn’t Anglo-Saxon is being viewed as something else, something exotic, and something to be fetishized.

Jewish Anti-Semitism

Jewish immigrants pre-date the founding of America or even the founding of some British colonies in the New World. When New York was Dutch and called New Amsterdam, Jewish immigrants had already immigrated to America. When the British took over New Amsterdam and changed the name, the British inherited these immigrants.

Jewish immigrants continued to flow into the country from Europe throughout the 19th Century. In contrast to the restrictive laws of the United Kingdom and France, the United States, due to the Constitutional assurance of freedom of religion, was often free from restrictive laws making America an attractive place to immigrate. Most Jewish immigrants had valuable skills to help build the country. Jewish people frequently went into the professions like lawyers and doctors. Yiddish language newspapers opened, and Jewish people did their best to assimilate American culture and customs. Jewish immigrants were often highly skilled and took jobs in textile manufacturing and other industrial factories. These immigrants also started businesses and often were quite successful well into the 20th Century and today.

Although American and Soviet troops would go on to liberate camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald at the close of World War II, the American record is not perfect when it comes to the Holocaust. In 1939, President Roosevelt turned back the SS St. Louis because the ship carried 939 German Jews seeking asylum in America from Germany’s new policies and anti-semitism. Initially, FDR planned to allow the boat to dock despite recent restrictive immigration laws passed in 1924. However, FDR was pressured by anti-semitic elements within his party to stop the ship from docking. FDR denied the ship entrance to the United States. The boat had to return to Europe, and everyone on board eventually became victims of the Holocaust.

The Jewish experience of racism in America has been different yet still profound. Most Jewish immigrants have done very well in America. Jewish society groups often held fundraisers and opened hospitals (like National Jewish in Denver) and did other crucial social work throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries, as well as today. They opened businesses and gained a fair amount of wealth. This did not mean that they were accepted in social circles, especially social circles of the elite. Until recently, many private social clubs and even golf courses of the rich and powerful excluded Jews. It was such a standard policy among these clubs that it even reached popular culture through television shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. Although not as overt, discrimination based on simply being Jewish was quiet and commonplace, especially in elite circles where peers were expected to be Protestant or Catholic but most certainly, not Jewish. This subtle racism also plays in many historical tropes about Jewish people.

Historically, Jews have been used as a convenient scapegoat for economic problems. Hitler was not the first person to consider blaming Jews for the financial problems of a nation. Both Lenin and Stalin, through pogroms, attempted to eliminate Jewish people from their countries, branding them as bourgeoisie that had to be eliminated. In America, white supremacist groups have blamed the Jewish people for controlling banking and the media. Many journalists attempting to interview leaders of these groups will receive hate-filled responses stating that they refuse to talk with people from the press because Jews own it. Jewish people have also been quite successful in entertainment as well. Many prominent Hollywood stars, directors, and producers are Jewish. Jews have had an enormous impact on making America what it is today; however, that has not shielded them from anti-semitic attacks.

Jewish people still suffer from those old tropes that “control the government” or “control the country in secret through banking cartels.” Due to the outsize influence on Hollywood and entertainment, Jews have also been accused of using entertainment as propaganda. Synagogue attacks continue. In 2018 and 2019, two separate synagogues were attacked. Some synagogues even charge their members a fee to contribute to the cost of private security so that Jewish people can attend their regular services in peace with less fear of another deadly attack.

The US and Israel

The questions around American support of Israel are ongoing. Although it seems like the United States and Israel are pretty close, that’s only been the case for about 50 years. Military aid to Israel didn’t begin until 1961, and the relationship has grown and changed with different administrations. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s recent comments regarding the financial power of the Jewish lobby, through AIPAC (American-Israeli Political Action Committee), have once again raised the discussion of American backing of Israel with military equipment and intelligence, especially given their behavior toward Palestinians and their control of the Gaza Strip and their occupation and settling of the West Bank. Questioning the United States’ backing of Israel is somewhat a political “third-rail,” not only because Israel is one of the few democracies in the Middle East but also because groups that often criticize Israel are also anti-semitic. For evangelicals,

a main voting bloc of the GOP, there is a sincerely held religious reason always to back Israel. This has made supporting Israel through money and weapons a prime issue for GOP candidates. Anti-semitism lives on in 21st Century America, making Jews a unique case. Jewish people have enjoyed some white privilege due to being of the right skin color. Yet, despite this, their privilege often ends at the point of being safe in a place of worship or within very elite circles where they are still not welcomed despite their wealth and contributions.

Slavery and the African-American Experience

The first enslaved Africans arrived in North America in 1526, and the first enslaved people landed in Virginia in 1619. All the major European sailing powers were involved in the slave trade to support the cash agriculture developing in their New World possessions. Enslaved people were used for agriculture, especially cash crops like tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and indigo. The trans-Atlantic Slave trade increased after 1619, with approximately 6-7 million people brought over before the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans were imported from West Africa. Despite the popular idea of white men searching the forests for people to enslave, slave traders frequently bought enslaved people from other slave traders engaged in the business throughout Africa. Conditions on board a slave ship were abysmal. The “cargo” was stacked like cordwood on large racks with straw. No bathroom facilities were provided, leaving the enslaved people to urinate and defecate where they were. Rates of disease and death were high. The slave trade was highly profitable for the British Empire and later for American traders despite the terrible conditions. By the beginning of the Civil War, enslaved people were a large part of American wealth. Enslaved people were taxed, insured, and notarized like any other property.

The conditions of enslaved people on the plantation varied throughout the New World, but enslaved Africans had to endure were far worse than ancient enslaved people or medieval serfs. Very little was provided for their care. Enslavers provided only enough clothing and food to keep the enslaved alive and working. Housing was sometimes provided; other times, enslaved people had to provide their housing and build it themselves from logs or left-over lumber. Enslaved people were often given a few pieces of coarse underwear a year. Their food consisted of cornmeal and fatty meats. Some enslavers allowed them to grow their gardens to supplement their diet. Enslaved people were not allowed to engage in wage labor and were dependent entirely on their masters for their survival. Slave conditions depended entirely on the owners and their management style. Conditions varied due to this decentralization of power. Enslaved people had little legal recourse. They were property and generally considered inferior and less evolved than their masters. This led to a dependency that reinforced the power structure of master over enslaved person and white over black. The treatment was inherently paternalistic. Enslaved Africans were considered inferior simply,d this attitude persisted into Reconstruction and even today. 18th and 19th-century writers used the debunked theory of phrenology to show that the skull shape of Africans showed they were less evolved than Europeans. A variety of literature was produced on both sides of the Atlantic to “prove” that Africans were inferior to Europeans despite evidence throughout the African continent to prove otherwise.

Urban enslaved people were rare, but they enjoyed better conditions than rural enslaved people. Urban enslaved people were often employed or hired out for private projects, like building railroads. Enslaved people worked from sun up to sundown on a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. schedule. Punishment for infractions against the master were often swift and severe. Beatings were commonplace, and enslaved people could even be sent to jail. Enslaved people were not allowed to learn to read or write, and knowing such a thing could subject the enslaved people to severe punishment or even death.

In keeping with the idea of enslaved people as property, enslaved people were bought and sold, often at auction, without regard to where they were from or their families. Mothers and Fathers could be separated from their children, and married couples were also split. Enslaved people had no right whatsoever, and marriages were not legally recognized. If a plantation had too many enslaved people and too little work, children could be sold off like excess cattle. Many enslaved people went looking for their families in the days right after the Civil War. Enslaved people sold would beg their new owners to buy their entire family so as not to split up.

Enslaved people had little bodily autonomy, especially for women. The story of Sally Hemmings has been brought into the popular consciousness. Thomas Jefferson had a relationship with the women that bore his children, the descendants of whom are still alive today. This kind of relationship was likely more common than we think. However, much of this has been erased by the sands of time.

Although slavery was commonplace, the importation of newly enslaved people was a contentious issue on both sides. The importation of enslaved people was banned constitutionally in the United States after 1808. The United Kingdom banned it in 1807. In contrast to the United States, slavery on English soil was not supported by law; however, it did allow it to thrive in the British colonies until Britain banned the practice in 1833. The question of slavery and its morality was present at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and extended well into the 19th Century. The United States began divided on this issue with the 3/5 compromise, which allowed enslaved people to be counted for representation in the South, with each slave counting for three-fifths of a person. The Three-fifths Compromise was added to the Constitution despite the fact enslaved people were not allowed to vote for the men who represented them as three-fifths of a voter. Not only did the Constitution not outlaw slavery, it tacitly allowed it by mentioning it as little as possible to appease southern delegates who did not want their way of life, and their economic power undermined.

Cash crops became a big business for the United States. A full quarter of white southerners enslaved people, and cotton soon represented 59% of exports by the beginning of the Civil War. Much of the cotton for export was sent to Great Britain to power the Industrial Revolution textile mills that dotted the landscape in the midlands and north of England.

Underground Railroad

Although laws had been passed to stop enslaved people from escaping, making a big business of their capture, many enslaved people attempted to run with the help of formerly enslaved people and white abolitionists. These people used a secret network of people to help enslaved people escape the plantation and escape to the North (non-slaveholding states) and Canada, where they would be out of the reach of the slave catchers. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman became quite famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. Select older homes from Indiana and Ohio to Maryland and New York used basements and secret passageways to shuttle escaping slaves away from the slave catchers and safety. These homes and corridors can still be seen today. These bold abolitionists helped enslaved people escape far enough north to escape professional bounty hunters. Northern states tried to make bounty hunting of enslaved people illegal, but the Supreme Court struck down those laws, especially in the controversial Dredd Scott decision. The legend of this railroad spread quickly, and by the 1840s, the term Underground Railroad had become common parlance. Those who disagreed with slavery and wanted to end the institution would begin the Abolitionist movement.

Abolition

The Abolitionist movement began to gain steam in 1831, and by 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was born. A religious fervor of revivalism had spread throughout the United States. The movement was called the Second Great Awakening. These converted revivalists were committed to ending the sin of slavery. The campaign was not popular at first. Violence often broke out, leading to the death of Elijah Lovejoy, a popular abolitionist editor of a popular newspaper. Mailbags were burned that contained abolitionist literature.

Petitions against slavery were banned in Congress. By the 1850s, the Abolitionist movement had taken a back seat to great questions around the spread of slavery to the West. This spawned the “Free Soil” movement, which held that newly created states should be free and not have slavery. The Compromise of 1820, making the “Mason-Dixon” line, allowed slavery to continue in states south of the line and conditions created north of the line to be free. Even this came to a head in 1845 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The territories were created to make Nebraska accessible and Kansas slave-holding. However, this entire plan fell apart due to the Civil War. Tensions were inflamed again with the Dredd Scott decision where the Supreme Court held that enslaved people were not citizens, had no rights, and could not petition the court for any requests. By 1857, it was clear the United States was headed for war. One of the earliest conflicts regarding slavery was the raid on Harper’s Ferry to free enslaved people in Virginia (now West Virginia) by John Brown. The raid failed spectacularly, resulting in his hanging for treason, further inflamed tensions.

Abolitionists supported the Republican party as the Democrats and Whigs (what was left of that party that died out by 1865) split. Abolitionists supported Abraham Lincoln in 1860, delivering him the White House. The 1860 election had slavery firmly in its debate which also interplayed with a discussion of Federalism and States’ Rights.

It is important to note that the Republican party was strictly anti-slavery at this time. At the same time, the Democrats were pro-slavery and very much into the supremacy of white people over black people. Most African-Americans would vote Republican in the days after the war. African-Americans supported the Republican party because of its history with Abolition and the beginnings of the modern Civil Rights movement.

This racial dichotomy within the American political landscape would be the political trend until 1928. In that year, the flood of the Mississippi River and a slow response by the Coolidge Administration and the Hoover administration would change how many African-Americans voted in the 1932 election. The inherent racism within the Democrat party would persist well into modern times until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

The 1860 Republican party platform was steeped in anti-slavery and “free soil” principles. By 1861, the Civil War had broken out. Abraham Lincoln decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring slavery illegal in the United States and freeing all enslaved people within the United States. However, it took quiet legislation by some states like Maryland and Rhode Island to finally eliminate all slavery. By April 9, 1865, the bloody conflict that killed 640,000 people was over, and the nation had to get about the business of stitching itself back together as well as handling 2.5 million new African-American citizens. This effort was called Reconstruction.

Reconstruction

By many historical accounts, Reconstruction was a terrible failure. The Civil War had plunged the national government into debt, despite Congress’s various taxes to wage war. The expenses continued into Reconstruction, as destroyed railroads and other infrastructure destroyed by the war were replaced. However, the dust of battle was still settling when many men, like Thaddeus Stevens, thought that the time to enfranchise African-Americans into the American story was now present and saw Reconstruction as an opportunity for a “second founding” that would erase the mistakes of the past and make all citizens, regardless of race or previous condition of servitude, equal in the country and under the law. However, while Reconstruction was an opportunity, it was a wasted one. Reconstruction started as a progressive movement. However, by 1877, much of the promises were never delivered.

The central question of Reconstruction was simple; how could 2 million uneducated enslaved people become productive citizens. Racist attitudes of the day largely determined that no, they certainly could not. Progressive abolitionists resisted this notion, and much of the political tension around the time centered on that question. Many people at the time viewed Andrew Johnson as trying to keep the unruly, unkempt, and inferior blacks from ruling the nation. Efforts were made to keep the formerly enslaved from voting or holding office. Much of the racial policy of America in the decades afterward would center around this tension.

There were three problems during Reconstruction:

• How to reunite the country
• Who should set these policies (Congress or the President)
• What to do with the formerly enslaved people

The first problem continued to be contentious until Reconstruction, when federal troops finally returned to their barracks and weren’t actively patrolling southern communities. Instead of bringing the country back together, most Northerners, tired of the racial politics, simply gave up the fight for any sort of equality for blacks in the South. Although voting rights had been extended in the years during the active occupation, once federal troops returned to their barracks, voting rights were rescinded. Black members of Congress (and one Senator) were elected in 1866 and later were voted out by 1878- 1880. The second problem, who should control Reconstruction, ultimately resulted in the impeachment of Johnson. The effort failed in the Senate. Congress did its best to maintain its power over the process, but Congress and President Johnson had constant and infamous debates. The third problem was solved with what is commonly called “the Reconstruction Amendments.”

The Reconstruction Amendments

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed by Congress and ratified by the states to do the significant work of extending civil liberties in the years after the Civil War during Reconstruction. These amendments enshrined equal protection under the law (14th), universal male suffrage (15th), and abolishing slavery (13th), except as a prison sentence, into the Constitution. It is on these amendments much of our modern civil liberty cases rest. These amendments were meant to supersede whatever laws the Southern states might pass to disenfranchise formerly enslaved people. These amendments began the legal framework to include formerly enslaved people in society. Lax enforcement in the South meant that it would be 100 years before the descendants of the enslaved would begin to enjoy these rights truly. However, one thing that was not abolished was the Poll Tax.

Southern states used the poll tax to keep the electorate small and disenfranchise black voters. Although the fees for voting seemed small, ranging from

$1-$2, the cost at the time, made it so only those wealthy enough to have disposable income could vote. Other states had onerous record-keeping requirements, which disenfranchised sharecropping farmers, often moving from farm to farm. Literacy tests were also standard and intentionally challenging to trick black voters into failing the tests. White voters were often given a different test or slipped the answers. Literacy tests and poll taxes would not be made unconstitutional until 1964.

The Klan

The first Klu Klux Klan was crushed in 1872; however, between 1866 and 1872, they operated a reign of terror throughout the South. It started as a Tennessee social club that soon took to horseback, wrecking terror on formerly enslaved people throughout the South. Pleas for help from newly formed black communities fell on deaf ears in the North. The KKK or the Klan used esoteric symbols on long white robes and even adorned their

horses with these symbols and covered their horses in long black robes. Their reign of terror was illustrated in the incredibly racist silent film Birth of a Nation (1915). Their focus was on putting the fear of the white man into a race of people they considered to be inferior. They primarily focused on political assassinations during their period of operation. Although this iteration of the Klan was not long-lived, it would lay the groundwork for a revival of the organization in the 1920s, which still exists today.

Failed Opportunities

Ultimately, Reconstruction failed. Most of the racist, confederate leaders, with a few exceptions, ended up back in power. The result of Reconstruction was the firm entrenchment of white power in the South. President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded President Lincoln after his untimely assassination in 1865, pardoned white southerners, except a few wealthy plantation owners and a few select leaders. However, even those leaders were granted pardons eventually. Johnson is remembered as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. He was the worst person to be in charge of the critical work of reuniting the country and creating opportunities for its new citizens. John Wilkes Booth, much like other assassins like Gavrilo Princep, changed history with a single bullet.

As a result of these tensions, Democrat legislatures swept across the South and quickly stopped any chance for the newly freed slaves to become a part of society. The cultural attitude was to replicate slavery as best as possible without slavery. Jim Crow Laws were passed to keep black people as far from public life as humanly possible and maintain that black people were fundamentally different from white people. Blacks were restricted from the professions and had no money to buy land. Many enslaved people ended up right back where they had started. This lack of help for newly enslaved people began a 150-year cycle of poverty that persists today. If a national education program had been instituted and more had been done to bring formerly enslaved people into society, things could have been much different. However, that was simply not the case. What to do with the formerly enslaved was a question that was never solved to the satisfaction of anyone other than former enslavers.

Formerly enslaved people asked for “40 acres and a mule,” but that never happened. The North resisted redistributing land from former enslavers to formerly enslaved people. This left most enslaved people unable to provide for themselves and back on the plantation for paltry wages or engaged in sharecropping. Sharecropping was an exploitative but straightforward business arrangement. The contract was simple; the farmer was given the land as long as they shared the crops with the landowner. Sharecropping persisted well into the 20th Century. Former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is the daughter of sharecroppers. My father grew up the son of a sharecropper in central Alabama, and in 1947, they were able to buy their land and start their own business growing vegetables, among other things.

While Reconstruction may have been an opportunity for a “second founding.” The promise of the period was never realized. Northern, non-slaveholding states achieved the abolitionist goal of freeing the enslaved people. Still, they could never follow through on helping formerly enslaved people create a future for themselves and their children. Fatigue set in, and due to the nature of Andrew Johnson and others, there was no political will to force the South to accept the new reality. Instead, the South created institutional, legalized racism through Jim Crow laws.

Jim Crow

Jim Crow, as a phrase, is an exciting piece of history. The name became synonymous with Negro. Jim Crow was a catch-all term to describe black people. The name was based on an 1832 routine by Thomas D. Rice, in blackface, that became a standard stand-in for any actual black representation. Jim Crow laws swept across the South after Reconstruction. Louisiana was the first by mandating separate rail cars. School segregation was next. Many formerly enslaved people had already set up their respective schools due to a lack of admission into local white schools at the time, and soon the separation was codified in law. The phrase “separate but equal” became the legal standard for separate black facilities, including schools, public transportation, restaurants, movie theaters, bathrooms, hotels, drinking fountains, and entrances to buildings. Many buildings were entirely off-limits to black people. The idea that black people should be kept separate from white people was the next incarnation of slavery: black people were less than white people and should not live as white people live and certainly should not live near them or interact with them.

This was not just a southern phenomenon either. These rules extended out west as well. Western cities, like Denver, had only one hotel where black people were welcomed. When Hattie McDaniels was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Best Supporting Actress in Gone with the Wind, she was kept out of sight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles until they learned she had won. They let her onstage to accept her award for her part in Gone With the Wind and promptly hustled her out of the building, award in hand.

Jim Crow policies controlled every aspect of life for black people. Although codified in law in the South, the idea that black people did not belong in specific public spaces would become a part of the American cultural fabric. People are often denied the right to exist based on skin color simply. African-Americans were often specifically targeted. These policies kept the descendants of enslaved people restricted from many opportunities in employment, housing, and straightforward enjoyment of life. Even in professional sports, the idea that Jackie Robinson could play baseball and someone who was white was, at one time, an innovative idea. The idea that black people were intelligent, capable, and excellent humans was a concept that had to be fought for repeatedly in various fields. The idea that someone of color could do anything is uniquely modern. The progress towards this was a road paved with hard work and sealed in blood.

Civil Rights

Rosa Parks made national headlines when she refused to move to the back of the bus to accommodate a white rider, an offense she was arrested for. By the late 1950s, there were various leaders agitating for an improvement in civil rights for black people. Martin Luther King Jr. made a name for himself, agitating for improved conditions in church throughout the South, starting in Alabama and spreading through Georgia and Mississippi. Malcolm X, considered more radical, made a statement by changing his name to acknowledge the loss of heritage due to the slave trade. He refused the last name of the people who had owned his ancestors. Before his untimely assassination, he advocated for a far more violent revolution than Martin Luther King. King preached peaceful resistance and a change to the economic system. Malcolm was more radical and more open to violence to achieve their shared goals. Both encouraged the early tactics of the Civil Rights movement by demonstrating and performing direct actions that flew in the face of the established rules.

The early Civil Rights leaders rode through the South on buses protesting segregation and rode in integrated buses that they had rented. They sat at segregated lunch counters and cafeterias. Those who broke those rules were often accosted, with food dumped on them. The police were often called. Protesters suffered bites from police dogs and were injured as the nozzles of firehouses were turned on the protesters.

Breaking the back of segregation was essential to work and could be deadly. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were killed in June 1964 by a local Mississippi lynch mob for registering black people to vote. They were part of an organization doing this work and are listed as martyrs at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their deaths and the resulting federal investigation were memorialized in the film Mississippi Burning.

Segregation eventually was abolished, but it came at the cost of blood and lives. Many of those who fought this racism, like Representative John Lewis (D-GA), is still alive, and their lives tell the story of how the United States finally put these laws behind us. However, it’s important to remember that these laws touched real lives.

My paternal grandmother worked at the University of Alabama as a maid, which she could not send her children to until 1965. There were many spaces where the only way a black person could appear was as a servant for white patrons. Movie theaters had separate balconies if they allowed black patrons at all. Lunch counters, restaurants, and a variety of public spaces were simply off-limits to specific people based on the color of their skin. It was against these sorts of regulations that the early Civil Rights movements sought to change. The proposal was simple. How could everyone be equal citizens if they were not treated equally in public spaces with equal access to schools and businesses? While most people thought of this problem as primarily a problem with the South, that was not the case. Segregationist policies had spread to the entire country. African-Americans were often subject to “separate but equal.”

During the Civil Rights movement, one of the ways the message of civil rights for everyone was spread was through music. By the 1960s, black musicians excelled in the medium despite the limited opportunities for general release. Artists like Nina Simone, James Brown, Miles Davis, and Sam Cooke all wrote and performed songs like “Mississippi Goddamn,” “A Change is Gonna Come,” and “Say it loud, I’m Black, and I’m Proud.” This music and these stories would become vital anthems for the struggle for Civil Rights. Music has the power to tell a story and express an experience that even the best MLK speech cannot evoke. Music makes it personal. As Malcolm Gladwell put it, “it’s specific to a people, a time, and a place.” This also corresponded to a change in popular music overall.

By the 1960s, black music has already been spreading throughout the South. However, it had not yet become mainstream. Delta blues was the basis for modern rock and roll. The 1960s changed all that. With titular groups like The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas, The 4 Tops, and The Temptations, black music moved out of black-owned radio stations and mainstream American consciousness. Although the Supremes never enjoyed the cult success of the Beatles, at the time, they were just as marketable and often even more so than the iconic British band. They performed multiple #1 hits and bridged genres from doo-wop to early disco.

Black art was not limited to music; writers like James Baldwin published important books that exposed the black experience for the first time. He told the black American experience from his own NYC perspective, and you can feel the struggle, depression, and cognitive dissonance in every word. Before this period, it was nearly impossible for black writers to have their words read by a mainstream audience. The opening of publishing and art to diverse voices is still ongoing, but the trail was blazed by some powerful voices and told powerful stories.

American racism played out in the media. Opportunities for black singers, musicians, and others were limited. Black actors were rare in films, and they often only played roles as servants, like Hattie McDaniels. Many black singers only appeared on black radio stations. Many mainstream radio stations would not play their music. Segregation became more visible on a national scale with the advent of television.

When television arrived, segregation came with it, as well. Black actors and actresses were often separated until the late 1960s when people like Bill Cosby broke through with I Spy. Star Trek broke ground with a diverse cast of white actors, an Asian actor (George Takei), and a black actress (Nichelle Nichols). Even Asian and Native American actors were limited to being the help or one-dimensional roles. However, even as more and more black people appeared on television and even with other actors, small things could still cause a national scandal.

Vanity Fair recalls the story of Petula Clark touching the arm of Harry Belafonte during a duet on her unique, “Petula.” The move was so controversial that Doyle Lott, President of the Plymouth Division of Chrysler, sponsored the show and left the building. The story of his behavior hit the media, and at the outset, it seemed like he was uncomfortable with that much personal contact between the black singer and Petula Clark, a white woman. Public outrage ensued, putting Plymouth in the crosshairs

Because of the media coverage, the controversy grew to such a degree that Doyle Lott was later fired from his job due to the controversy around his seemingly racist behavior, and Plymouth quickly walked back his actions publicly. Media was not the only place where segregation had to be eliminated. The fight began in America’s public schools.

Brown vs. Board of Education

Education remains somewhat segregated to this day, despite 40 years of policy trying to fight it. Education segregation was legally binding until 1954 when the Brown family sued the Topeka Kansas Board of Education in 1952 for the right to send their daughters to the white school in their neighborhood rather than the black school farther away. The case wound its way to the Supreme Court, and in 1954, legal school segregation was struck down as unconstitutional. This set off a national firestorm. Southern states resisted desegregation immediately, and some, like Arkansas, flatly refused to deal with desegregation. The situation became so dire that President Eisenhower sent troops to desegregate the schools. Little Rock High School burst onto the national scene as the first black students gingerly stepped foot into the all-white school under protection. White students resisted outside, creating some of the most iconic photography of the changes America moved through in its efforts to become a multi-ethnic democracy.

However, despite efforts to integrate schools, the plan did not go well. Although some black students integrated with white schools, education remained stubbornly segregated. Rather than being integrated into white schools, Black teachers were simply fired. White parents did not want their children taught by black people. Rather than contend with integrated schools, many white parents moved to the suburbs where the neighborhoods mainly were white, ensuring that their children would not have to integrate. This contributed to the phenomena of White Flight, which left the urban core of cities empty of people and lacking in the tax base to support essential services, including education. As people left cities, property values plummeted, leaving buildings open, businesses empty of customers, and city government scrambling to fill the gaps. New York City famously declared bankruptcy in the late 1970s due to this very sort of change.   Other parents formed new school districts that only included white neighborhoods. To solve this problem, bussing was proposed. Bussing was a policy where black students would be bussed, often an hour or longer, to schools without diverse student populations. Cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles all employed this strategy. The idea was to give black students access to improved schools and improved teaching. However, this action never provided the promised results, and by the early 1980s, the policy was largely abandoned. To this day, schools are still relatively segregated. Even now, white parents continue to redraw school district lines to create intentionally less diverse schools.

The Second KKK

William J. Simmons, a native of Atlanta, saw the silent film Birth of a Nation (1915) and saw for himself a chance to recreate a fraternal organization in the same tradition of the KKK. He lit a familiar burning cross to announce that the Klu Klux Klan of Reconstruction was back in business. By 1925, when the group marched on Washington, D.C., the organization mustered a million men to march on the capital. The KKK

They held social gatherings, festivals, and other activities. They wrapped up their hate in the veneer of small-town values. The KKK had charity drives for orphans and opened Protestant-only hospitals. They donated Bibles and American flags to schools. Many hospitals at the time were Catholic-owned and funded, and they viewed these efforts as a way to counteract that influence.

That cross would go on to be a warning to black people. If a black person moved into the wrong area and found one on their lawn, it was a warning to flee. If somehow, a black person had run afoul of the strict social hierarchy of the South, it was a precursor to the violence to come. This version of the KKK saw this sort of behavior as necessary for good patriotism and a defense of white, Christian values. In popular cinema, members of the KKK are often depicted as poor, southern whites cavorting in pickup trucks. However, the KKK counted police, sheriffs, and other middle-class people among their number. Although the original KKK had been primarily in the South, this new Klan had members throughout the nation, even in Colorado and Ohio. The KKK became an organization through which powerful connections and networking were possible. The group backed political candidates at all levels, including senators from Indiana and Colorado.

The new Klan’s platform might sound familiar to some of the modern debates that rage in this country. The new Klan demonized the rise of Catholic and Jewish control in American life and stood firmly against the latest influx of Eastern European immigrants, which they branded as communists. The demonization of black people was expected, but they also added Asian and Latinx people. They also created what can be described as the first culture war. They stood against teaching evolution in schools (which would lead to the famous debate between Williams Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow), alcohol (prohibition had just been ratified in 1920), and birth control (the diaphragm had recently been invented in 1922). This “true Americanism” platform immediately led to violence. KKK members reported floggings, beatings, murders, and assaults throughout the country. Immigrants, black people, and women sitting with men in cars were all attacked. Doctors who performed abortions were tarred and feathered. Although most people did not condone the violence, the actions were viewed as upholding morally conservative values and the simple idea that the white race should reign supreme. As violent as they were, the main focus was to celebrate the people who were Protestant, native-born, and above all else: white.

The second Klan reached a peak in 1925 and retreated somewhat after that. The 1960s would be another halcyon time for the group, followed by a steep drop-off in membership. Federal intervention in the South to enforce the Civil Rights Act, school integration, and the ultimate repeal of segregation left the group fighting a losing battle. However, the Klan is still active today, although in far smaller numbers. The internet has allowed their ideas and ideology to thrive and find homes for hate on popular white supremacist websites and social media pages. Although most digital white supremacists are not Klan members, the doctrine has spread and resulted in real-world consequences, like the Charlottesville March 2017. Since 2016, the open racism against immigrants and minorities has gotten louder, and much of that allowance has stemmed from the tacit endorsements that have come from the White House. Both their Klan and their ideology of hate lives on.

Red Lining

After World War II, the federal government had a housing problem. Millions of men were coming back from the war, and almost no housing had been built during the war due to rationing. All of these men would need housing for their new families. Some city planners presumed that people would continue to live in cities, as they had done before the war, and others saw the empty land around cities as land for an opportunity.

While cities planned large housing projects to inexpensively house people, others, like William Levitt, saw an opportunity to own their own homes on inexpensive land near the jobs in the cities. In 1947, he began selling homes in his newly created town of Levittown, New York. The houses sold quickly, and he expanded. This model would start to dominate the landscape and begin to form the familiar American suburb. Construction was on an on-site assembly-line basis. Teams of specialized workers would go to each home site and perform their tasks and move onto the following home site.

The federal government offered generous housing loans to fuel the suburban expansion that began the (Federal Housing Assistance) FHA program. The federal government created maps of different cities, defining the neighborhoods by colors. Green neighborhoods where the residents were almost all white were the best places to offer loans and were given generous terms. Italians, Hispanics, and Jewish neighborhoods were restricted, with African-American neighborhoods being the least desirable and colored red. FHA loans were not available in red neighborhoods. Federally backed loans were not available to black borrowers, leaving them limited private market. This resulted in many black borrowers being unable to move to the suburbs, and those that did often found many neighborhoods were not open to them. Realtors would refuse to show homes to many black borrowers or use race-coded language in advertising.

In those neighborhoods where black homeowners were welcome, a system of contract housing was set up wherein the person selling the house would sell the house on time. A contract sale was pretty simple. A seller would create a contract where the purchase price was split over a set number of regular monthly payments. It was similar to a mortgage, but instead of borrowing money from the bank, the seller essentially held the note. The buyer was responsible for the upkeep of the building and the taxes over the life of the contract. Contract selling isn’t inherently wrong. However, these contracts were often unfair, and if the family missed a payment or had any other problems, they would be evicted with little notice and lose all of their equity. There was little recourse to stop this.

This policy still affects American cities today. Major American cities like New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, Seattle, Houston, Charleston, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, or any city with a significant NFL franchise, except St. Louis, bear the scars of redlining policies persisting, 40 years after a federal law made them obsolete. By and large, people still live in the same neighborhoods where they were forced to congregate in the 1950s. Despite this long-abandoned policy, the country remains relatively segregated thanks to equal housing protections. Much of this segregation has to do with income

but it also has to do with people sealing themselves off in sub-divisions and communities to keep them intentionally one race.

The economic consequences of this have also been dire. For the generations of people born after World War II, owning a home and earning long-term equity from the steep rise in house values was a prominent pathway to long-term wealth. For middle-class people, their biggest asset is their home. For African-American households, this chance to build wealth over the past 50 years was not an opportunity given to many of these households. This has resulted in racial wealth inequality that only now is being addressed.

Affirmative Action

Years of Jim Crow laws that not only controlled the behavior of black people and other races, depending on their location, left an unbalanced country where the white group had been able to take advantage of opportunities in employment and education that were restricted to everyone else. This was an imbalance that needed to change. The chief policy used to begin rebalancing these opportunities was called Affirmative Action.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 created Title VII, which made the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEPC), which set forth discrimination rules about federal contractors, education institutions receiving federal dollars, and other institutions receiving federal dollars. The EEOC also sets rules through the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and other laws meant to reduce the discrimination of people based on race, color, religion, and national origin. States and even municipalities have different rules that extend those rights to other groups.

The basic premise is that in employment and educational advancement, race, color, religion, and national origin should not affect the decision to accept someone to a college, university, or job. The EEOC requires education institutions to set up metrics for Affirmative Action and remedy any discrimination cases. Many private organizations have also created metrics for this. If discrimination is found, people have legal recourse if proven. Affirmative Action, as such, is the effort by many to remedy past discrimination by giving marginalized groups special consideration in employment and education to promote people who would not have been selected in an earlier time. Affirmative Action has a long history of controversy because there are people who believe that the only reason many people of color are in certain places or certain institutions is because of their race to the detriment of white people.

The purpose of Affirmative Action is to reduce the many barriers communities of color face in any sort of advancement and to be liberal with opportunities. Affirmative Action has a great deal of myth around the policy. The chief is that white people are purposefully disadvantaged by the process. Affirmative Action does not disadvantage whites, and studies of these policies have shown that white enrollment does not decrease due to Affirmative Action.

Inside Higher Ed cited an NPR survey that found that 55% of white Americans believe that there is discrimination against white people today and that 11% think that they have been discriminated against themselves while applying to or at college. California and Michigan have eliminated race as a factor in admissions. White people did not lose any slots in the universities; Asian enrollment increased, and black enrollment fell. When Gallup polled people asking if they favored Affirmative Action policies, only 51% of non-Hispanic whites were in popularity compared to 76% for blacks and 69% for Hispanics.

Affirmative Action is deeply rooted in the history of discrimination. Affirmative Action seeks to begin the undoing of that past. That is why it remains an integral part of decisions regarding employment and education. Society must acknowledge the shared history. We have to be honest about who we are and what we’ve done. The reality is that the United States has been built on the back of the poor, and many of these poor people have been people of color.

Black Lives Matter and Police Violence

The history of African-Americans and police extends well before the slavery period. Before 1965, men were regularly hired to work as slave catchers to capture runaway slaves. Police enforcement toward black people has remained harsh. Police were on the front line of enforcing Jim Crow laws, and black people lived in constant fear of police interaction in public spaces. Sitting and standing near businesses could earn citations for black people that often would not have been given out to white people. Class is also an element of these policies. The poorer someone is, the less desirable they are in a public space.

In recent days, there have been well-publicized social media scandals of white, usually a middle class or above, white people calling 911 on black people simply for being somewhere the caller thinks they ought not to be, including churches, pools, and elsewhere. The actual indictment on society is that this is not simply overbearing policing, but it is backed up by decades of legislation on the subject. Although the laws are supposed to apply to everyone, like many laws in this country, simply being white, wealthy, or both means that many rules simply do not apply to you. For black people, the fear of police and what they might do or how they might harm you is rooted in centuries of police violence. The familiar police motto to “serve and protect” often does not apply to black or poor people. The minority and the poor are demonized, arrested, and cited, while those with the privilege of wealth or skin color are given a pass. This extends into how the prison system works and how education works with the school-to-prison pipeline.

Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is the latest large-scale movement to highlight the police brutality tactics used by police forces around the country. BLM protests have nationalized the idea that when it comes to interactions with the police, black people are at a disadvantage and have a much higher chance of being killed

during the encounter than white suspects, even during a simple traffic stop. The media has done an excellent job covering some of the most recent behavior incidents.

After being pulled over for not using her turn signal, Sandra Bland died in jail. During a traffic stop, the police officer offered to remove her from her car and arrested her for something that would usually be handled with a simple citation. The circumstances of her death in jail are still being investigated. A similar story played out with Philando Castile, who was shot during a traffic stop. It was visceral as his girlfriend, at the time, live-streamed the traffic stop. He was shot reaching for his wallet. The police officer thought he had a gun. One of the most surprising but sad things about many of these stories is how many bullets are often fired.

In many cases, like Philando Castile, it is not 1 or 2 bullets; it’s multiple shots. In some cases, the officers emptied their weapons into the victim fired 7-9 bullets. If there are numerous officers involved, the number can range far higher. The argument from the police that they are using force to apprehend a suspect would stand better if they used that force more judiciously rather than simply emptying a magazine into a victim.

A classic and well-publicized case of police brutality took place in New York City. Eric Garner was killed for selling loose cigarettes in New York City and was practically choked to death by a team of officers right on the sidewalk. He was a crime, but no one should have died for that crime. His last words were, “I can’t breathe.” Protesters put those final words on t-shirts. The police did not view him as human, and the footage is gut-wrenching. There are dozens of more stories similar to these.

These killings have sparked protests against the poor treatment of black citizens in this country. The demonstrations have been active since 2014, causing many people to post “Black Lives Matter” signs on their cars and homes to support the movement. Clashes with police have caused the police to arrest people simply for protesting or standing in the street, complaining that the police have unfairly targeted the black community and that those clashes frequently end in violence. Like most people, the police are supposed to be subject to the same laws as everyone else. However, given the lack of indictments and convictions for police officers who often shoot unarmed people, it appears that the police do not have to subscribe to the same laws. The worst part is that the police are protected by law from being held accountable for their actions.

There are two Supreme Court decisions set forth regarding the standards for this; Tennessee vs. Garner and Graham vs. Connor. These cases hold that if the police are defending an innocent party, fearing for their lives, or trying to stop someone from leaving a violent felony, they are authorized to use deadly force. If any reasonable person says that the police officer feared for his life, then the violence is technically allowed. This has led police officers to simply say, “ I feared for my life,” as a defense. Often, police officers are free to return to the streets after an incidence of violence. In 2016, 1,092 people were killed by the police. The majority were white, with blacks and Hispanics making up the remaining 48% together. Black and Hispanic victims tend to be younger.

However, this is far higher than the average of other nations. Iceland has had one

police initiated killing in the past 71 years. In England and Wales, there have been 55 police shootings in the past 24 years. The population of England and Wales is 59 million people compared to 325 million in the United States. However, if those ratios stay the same, police in England and Wales, if the population of those countries were the same as the United States, would have only killed about 275 people. Canada averages around 25 police shootings a year in about 30 million people. With 80 million people, Germany is somewhat higher, with 15 shootings between 2010 and 2011. None of these countries even begin to come close to the United States in the number of police shootings. The facts are clear: the police are out of control in the United States. However, this is somewhat deliberate. The police have come to resemble a military force more than anything else in the United States in the last 20 years.

Police Militarization

The average time to train to be a police officer is around 22 weeks. The actual training time varies by municipality. Most cities don’t require anything more than a high school diploma, although some cities will require an associate’s degree or comparable college credits. A viral CNN story tells a sad tale: in many places, it takes longer to become a barber or hairstylist than it takes to become a police officer. More training has been a critical policy that policymakers have mentioned to reduce police violence; however, more training doesn’t address one of the chief problems with modern police: they are more like military troops than before.

One of the significant differences between the police forces of the past and modern police forces is the professionalization of the police force and the militarization of the police force. This is observable in the world. Modern police forces are armed with automatic weapons and Special Weapons and Tactics Teams or SWAT and are now common when performing a no-knock raid. Police will often arrive in a protest in riot gear. They will have helmets with shields for their eyes and medieval-like plastic shields for their bodies, which are also used to push the crowds back like a Roman Legion.

The War on Drugs has also contributed to the increase in the militarization of police. Drug dealers and networks are well-armed and often well-financed. When the police began to crack down on drugs in the mid-1970s and enforced the ever tighter regulations on drugs ranging from marijuana to cocaine and amphetamines, those who trafficked in drugs were willing and able to shoot back at police. The Federal government poured money and resources into the War on Drugs. Local police were often on the front line enforcing these laws and arresting drug dealers. Not only did the police increase their violence, but the myths around also instilled fear into the police. People on exotic substances like PCP were considered “uncontrollable.” Police began to keep more powerful weapons in their patrol cars. SWAT teams would raid drug houses like a military operation. Over the past 40 years, the United States has spent $1 trillion on the War on Drugs with little to show for it other than an increase in mass incarceration and a paranoid, over-equipped police force.

The narrative has promoted this weaponization of police that the police “are under attack” and need the necessary tools to “fight the war on police.” These false narratives have pushed police departments to buy or take increasingly militaristic

equipment. In 1991 the federal government created the program 1033, which allowed them to receive, often for free, old military equipment that is no longer needed. The maintenance costs can strain local budgets, so to keep the equipment, departments often feel the need to use the equipment to justify its existence. Cities with deeper pockets can afford vehicles built specifically for them that resemble armored personnel carriers. This has led the police to increasingly resemble military troops rather than peace officers or peace officers.

Race Riots

The war on police narrative has a long history, but its recent incarnation began in the 1960s as the nation made various social changes. Americans took to the streets to protest the Vietnam war and support Civil Rights. In multiple cases, the police were ill-equipped to deal with violent protesters. This was particularly true during race riots.

The 1960s were a busy time for race relations in this country, and the many social changes brought on a variety of violence. The 16th Street Church was bombed in 1963, killing 4, including three girls on their way to Sunday School. In Los Angeles, the Watts Riots of 1965 broke out as a result of the arrest of Marquette Frye for reckless driving. The officer arrested him because he was driving drunk. The confrontation started after his brother, who was also in the car, walked to their home and brought their mother back. After that, the situation is unclear. Someone shoved the woman, and she jumped the police officer. Crowds gathered, and the resulting riot lasted for six days. The bulk of the race riots that broke out in the 1960s stretched up and down the eastern seaboard, from Georgia to New York City. New Jersey had three riots taking place in the state in August of 1964, and riots would continue to break out until at least 1971.

However, in 1985, the activist group MOVE members populated a row house in Philadelphia. MOVE does not stand for anything other than the idea that to make a change; you have to “move.” The members all adopted the last name “Africa” to their names. MOVE had moved into a row house in Philadelphia. They had a contentious relationship with the city already stemming from a 1978 shootout that had killed one officer. MOVE had fortified the location with a bunker and supplies. Neighbors complained about the noise from their obscene political messages and the trash scattered around the property. Several members had warrants, and the police obtained a warrant to arrest the offenders. They were classified as a terrorist organization by the city and were charged with making terrorist threats, illegal possession of firearms, and contempt of court. The neighbors were cleared out for 24 hours during the siege. On May 13, 1985, the police arrived with 500 officers to execute the warrant in force. When the shooting broke out, the police bombed the building setting off a cache of fuel that burned down the entire block. Eleven people in the house, including children and the leader John Africa, were killed. Members reported police shooting at those trying to flee.

The race riots of the 1960s left police departments reeling. The lack of preparedness for civil unrest and the violence in the community changed policing in the United States forever. The race riots and violent Vietnam protests motivated police departments to

militarize. They traded 38 police specials for Glocks, 1911 pistols, and shotguns. Today, the police have ready access to automatic weapons as well. This militarization became evident by the next time a major race riot broke out, in 1992.

Rodney King and Latasha Harlins

Violence regarding race relations broke out again in 1992 when two cases burst the boil of racism in Los Angeles. The first was the case of Latasha Harlins. Latasha Harlins was on her way to school and stopped for breakfast at a Korean-owned grocery store in L.A. Korean immigrants owned most shops in South Central L.A. and elsewhere. She was with a friend. She had her backpack with her, and when she picked out her orange juice and other items and made her way to the counter, with money in hand, the shopkeeper, Soon Ja Du, believed she had stolen something and had put it in her backpack. Ms. Du demanded to inspect the backpack, grabbing it at one point. Latasha would not let her have the bag, and Ms. Du retrieved her shotgun and fired, killing Latasha Harlins. Du was fined $500 and sentenced to five years of probation and 400 hours of community service with no jail time. Latasha Harlins was killed just under two weeks after the brutal beating of Rodney King.

When pulled over during a regular traffic stop, Rodney King was driving his white Hyundai Excel in L.A. In the iconic video, he leaves his car and is brutally attacked by LAPD officers using batons. According to their testimony at trial, they thought he was on PCP or another drug and feared for their lives. His face and body were severely bruised.

When the officers were tried for assault resulting in bodily injury, the case was moved out of LA county to Simi Valley, a predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles. The jury had no black people (the jury was primarily white with one Hispanic and one Asian juror), and the officers were acquitted on all counts except one for which a mistrial was declared. The resulting lack of a conviction and the wanton murder of Latasha Harlins sparked riots that left most of Los Angeles burning for three days.

The crisis was so severe the State of California declared an emergency in the middle of the night and called in the National Guard. A curfew was instituted as the city continued to burn. The riots sparked from the intersection of Florence and Normandie and spread through South Central to encompass most of the area. Hundreds of fires burnt down businesses, homes, and bearded palms. The police barricaded themselves in the old Parker Center in downtown L.A. The police formed a line outside, but when the protest grew in fervor, the police eventually moved inside. Protesters tore down a guard shack, and a few attempted to set the building on fire. Gangs set aside differences for a moment to protest the terrible injustice. Mayor Bradley, L.A.’s first black mayor who had landed the 1984 Olympics, lamented the violence and injustice.

Much like the 1965 riots, leaders stood in churches begging for calm. Radio DJs held open call-ins to let people vent their frustration as the ability of white police officers to use the system to set them free from any responsibility for the abuse and a Korean shop owner not to be held responsible for what should have been a sentence for murder. Those calls for calm went unheard. The violence, as a result of the Rodney

King’s verdict lasted for five days until the City of Los Angeles was put under a dawn to dusk curfew, and the National Guard was roaming the streets, weapons out, to finally end the violence. Nine hundred fires burned in L.A., everywhere from South Central to Hollywood. Businesses were destroyed, and people were displaced and were sleeping in shelters. The violence finally ended, and L.A. was left to pick up the pieces. Daryl Gates, the police at the time, eventually resigned over the incident, and the LAPD was left to continue policing while working to rehabilitate its image within the community.

The Violence Never Stopped

Over the past five years, police violence against black Americans has drawn international headlines. The violence has been remarkable. Online videos have allowed everyone to see people like Philando Castile shot in his car or Eric Garner choked to death on the sidewalk. This stands in contrast to mass shooters like Dylan Roof, who killed nine people at a prayer meeting in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and lived to tell the tale. Instead of merely being shot, they bought him fast food after his arrest because they thought he might be hungry. Age is a minor factor in the brutality of police shootings. The narrative around them remains the same, as well. The police have the same narrative, “we feared for our lives” and “we thought he had a gun.”

In March 2019, a protest regarding the decision not to charge police for killing Stephon Clark, who had fled police at the San Francisco City Hall, caused a stir when a young black gentleman jumped on a table to protest the decision. Police were present, and activists used a new tactic to deploy white privilege in real-time. Instead of standing with the black protestor, they stood before him. In a video posted to Twitter by KRON, a local TV station, police seemed to be ready to use batons and other detainment methods; however, once a white gentleman and a white (possibly also Asian) woman stepped in front of him, the police seemed to calm down and use other means to de-escalate the situation. A comment was made at the time that the presence of white bodies appeared to change the police’s response to this protestor radically.

As for Mr. Clark, the police were investigating a claim that he had broken windows. Body camera footage and helicopter footage were available. He was shot in the back between 7 and 8 times, with 20 total rounds discharged. The police were afraid for their lives and believed that he had a gun. The police paranoia is an exact thing. However, the numbers don’t back up the narrative. In 2017, only 44 officers were killed by gunfire. There are around 1 million police officers in the country. By the numbers, the police have a distinct upper hand. However, any conversation with a police officer usually uses the same language. There is a fear that results in us versus them attitude. Police officers are under strain at all times. They spend their working lives seeing humanity at its worse. They confront dangerous situations daily. Any confrontation can result in a variety of outcomes.

This has resulted in an authoritarian attitude from the police. Travis Yates wrote in Law Officer Magazine in 2016 to “Follow the commands of a police officer or risk dying.” Is that the free American society? Is that true liberty? Troops in war zones to take this attitude. Their rules of engagement do not allow the wanton shooting

of civilians. That is considered a war crime. Do Americans want police officers with military-style weapons roaming the streets ready to shoot at the slightest provocation or inability for anyone to follow their strict commands? Isn’t that what would be expected from a police state? How is this police behavior allowed in a free country?

The same pattern repeats over and over again. The officer fears for their life, and another killing is simply allowed. For the police and the greater society, it is merely the cost of doing business. One cannot merely assume that all police are racist, especially in our modern era. However, it is clear from the numbers that police crackdowns and increasing the levels of policing are not a strict solution to crime and that when these crackdowns occur, it is poor people and people of color (with plenty of crossover between those groups) that is causing more of those people to be killed and more violence in those communities. This has not made the country safer; instead, it has allowed the police to use violence whenever and however they choose. The violence and seemingly racist policies do not stop with interactions with police in the regular world. There are more of the same problems with the prison population and the American trend of mass incarceration.

Angola Prison and Mass Incarceration

As it stands, the United States imprisons 2.2 million people, about 25% of the world’s total population of prisoners. This number of prisoners is more remarkable than Russia and China, which have political prisoners. In 1972, that population stood at merely 200,000 prisoners. Much of this culture of mass incarceration stems from the War on Drugs and various “tough on crime” initiatives sparked by multiple local officials. This attitude that the authorities should be “tough on crime” led to increased life sentences for drug possession or distribution. Mandatory minimums tied judges’ hands further on how they could sentence criminals. In recent years, states have begun to repeal these regulations quietly, and some prisoners have been able to have their sentences commuted and be released on parole. However, the culture of mass incarceration has harmed poverty-stricken communities and communities of color. While African-Americans only represent 13% of the American population, representation of African-Americans in federal prison stands at 37.6%, according to the Bureau of Prisons. When state prisoners are accounted for, the percentage drops to 33%, with white and Hispanic populations at 30% and 23%, respectively. For the 440 people out of every 100,000 people in prison, the bulk of those prisoners is black. Based on the percentage of the population, we would anticipate the number of minorities in jail to be drastically more minor. White prisoners represent 64% of the general population to be much higher. However, that is not the case. Crime since 1991 has been on a steady decline. Violent crime has decreased as well. Most state prisoners are serving time for non-violent offenses.

So what do the states and the federal government do with 2.2 million people responsible for? They certainly don’t just sit around and watch TV all day. That is the conditions of some prisons; it’s very much based on the level of security involved. Some people are in minimum security prisons and even have work release to return to the jail after work. However, in medium and high-security prisons, prisoners are often put to work right within the prison’s walls. Nowhere is this

more evident and more racially charged than at the famous Angola Prison in Louisiana. Angola Prison is an exciting sight when videos or pictures are posted.

The prison is also a plantation. There is active agriculture, including cotton production at the facility—all prisoners in reasonably good health work at some job in prison. In many of the released videos, correctional officers on horseback can be seen watching over black prisoners working in the field like it’s 1860, and the Civil War never happened. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery except in imprisonment cases, which has allowed a system of prison labor to grow within the United States. Prison labor includes everything from fighting fires in California to retreading tires and making clothing. Prisoners also can be leased out to businesses that need extra labor. If they are paid at all, prisoners only earn an average wage of $2 per hour. When Texas proposed paying prisoners a fair wage, the measure was slated to cost $1.2 Billion. The effort was not passed.

For most other countries, prison labor is simply banned. For many European nations, prison is a place to rehabilitate criminals as best they can to re-enter society as soon as possible. However, in the United States, prisoners are hardly treated with regard to their welfare. Prisons are cramped and often overcrowded. Sexual assault and other assaults can occur, even from the guards.

Prisoners leaving the corrections system face a changing world and limited opportunities for employment and housing. One former convict confessed to me that the only reason he could find a job was that one guard gave him $400 to get clothes, some food, and some basic hygiene supplies. Even the basics of human decency are a luxury within the prison system. This can lead to a high recidivism rate where people who leave prison return to a life of crime to survive and then are re-arrested and sent back to prison. This cycle of crime has devastated the black community due to the high incarceration rate. The most heartbreaking stories are those arrested and imprisoned for a small crime and who might have had jobs and life. For those people, they re-enter society with diminished job prospects and often then become criminals to survive. The prison system, as it stands, creates more criminals than it rehabilitates.

Economics and the Destruction of Black Wealth

One of the principal projects for newly freed slaves after the end of slavery was to survive and then make money, create wealth, and live prosperous lives. However, the newly freed slaves were often at odds with the racist society around them to achieve these goals. While many formerly enslaved people ended up as sharecroppers or lowly paid laborers, many could go to school, run for Congress and Senate, own land, and begin to create wealth. The fear of violence was pervasive. Even after federal troops crushed the first KKK, black families still had to endure violence against them and their property. This often resulted in outright theft and even death, simply for owning land and building a life for themselves. Once federal troops left and racist leaders were back in charge in the South, the violence ensued. By the 1880s, incidences of violence had somewhat calmed down. Advancement among black people continued through college, and many black businesses were quite successful. Madam C.J. Walker was the first black millionaire via her line of beauty products. She was a prominent activist and

died a wealthy woman in 1919. Black troops, though segregated, fought in World War

I. However, the new century did not stop the violence against black people that had started during Reconstruction. In The Case for Reparations, Ta Nehisi Coates recounts the destruction wrought when black people organized in towns and cities and created wealth and opportunity for themselves, “The demobilization of soldiers after the war, which put white and black veterans into competition for scarce jobs, produced the Red Summer of 1919: a succession of racist pogroms against dozens of cities ranging from Longview, Texas to Chicago to Washington, D.C. Organized white violence against blacks continued into the 1920s — in 1921 a white mob leveled Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” and in 1923, another one razed the black town of Rosewood, Florida — and virtually no one was punished.”

The Case for Reparations also cited this sad study, “Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. Whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.” People of color have not ascended to the higher echelons of society at the same rate as white people. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. The fall is precipitous when financial calamity strikes — a medical emergency, divorce, job loss.

In some cases, black people were held back due to theft. In 2001, the Associated Press did an 18-month investigation into claims of stolen land. Stealing isn’t new. At the beginning of The Case for Reparations by Ta Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, he begins his case with the many losses of a man from the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. The cavalier attitude that white people had toward the property of black people, like the man’s horse which he describes “as the first of my losses,” was a standard policy in the south. However, the loss is the generational wealth that has held back 13% of the population when it comes to land.

The LA Times describes the problem this way: “The AP – in an investigation that included interviews with more than 1,000 people and the examination of tens of thousands of public records – documented 107 land-takings in 13 Southern and border states. In those cases alone, 406 black landowners lost more than 24,000 acres of farm and timberland plus 85 smaller properties, including stores and city lots. Today, virtually all of this property, valued at tens of millions of dollars, is owned by whites or corporations. Properties taken from blacks were often small – a 40-acre farm, a general store, and a modest house. But the losses were devastating to families struggling to overcome the legacy of slavery. In the agricultural South, land ownership was the ladder to respect and prosperity – the means to build economic security and pass wealth on to the next generation.”

The story goes on to cite several stories, one from 1908 when David Walker and his family were driven off their land by men in white hoods who had told David to come

out for a whipping. His oldest son was killed in the resulting fire set to their home, and they were driven from their land, which was folded into the land of a white neighbor. To this day, the land is owned by the neighbor’s daughter. The farm was only

2.5 acres. The land was undeveloped at the time of the story.

In 1942, the Espy family was offered $8,000 by the federal government for their land to build an airfield. An all-white jury awarded them $13,000. When the war was over, the Navy gifted the land to the City of Vero Beach, despite Espy’s plea to repurchase the land used as a fruit grove. The City of Vero Beach used the airstrip as a municipal airport, and the rest of the land was turned into the Spring Training Facility for the Los Angeles Dodgers. That land was worth 6.19 million dollars in 2001 and certainly worth more now in the intervening years.

Reverend Isaac Simmons was killed in Amite County, Mississippi, in 1942 for consulting a lawyer when the county claimed they were going to sell his land for non-payment of taxes. The records are not in great shape, but the AP investigation showed that his taxes had been paid at the time. According to newspaper reports from the period, that did not stop local men from accosting the family and shooting the good Reverend in the back of the head.

In another Mississippi case, Jasper County, Mississippi, property records were destroyed by a fire in 1932. The fire was an arson case leaving the area with almost no property records. In 1938, the Masonite paper company claimed significant tracts of land. Due to the lack of documents, the court awarded the company the land; millions of dollars in timber and oil have been earned from the land. International Paper now owns the land, which bought Masonite in 1988. The families who were kicked off their land, unable to prove their ownership, never saw a dime of the profits. Bryan Logan, a writer, was doing some research on this family. He discovered land in Virginia willed to his ancestors from their plantation owner in 1855. The land had never been turned over to his family and stayed within the family of the plantation owner. He discovered that in 1955 became the Willow Oaks Country Club. The land is precious, and any wealth that would have resulted from its

ownership was lost to his family.

In 1964, the State of Alabama sued a family working on a 40-acre farm since 1874, contending that the land belonged to the state. According to the LA Times story, “Circuit Judge Emmett F. Hildreth urged the state to drop its suit, declaring it would result in “a severe injustice.” The suit went forward, and the family was removed from the land. The story did not indicate any compensation. They essentially lost everything of almost 100 years of work.

Through land theft and redlining policies, black people have consistently and repeatedly been denied the chance for their share of the American dream. The 20th Century was an opportunity for everyone to build a tremendous amount of wealth that would radically change lives for a generation. However, this was an opportunity denied to whole segments of the population, and it has had an adverse effect on the generations of black people in this country. Today in 2019, black people still have higher poverty rates than any other group, except for Native Americans. Black homeownership is

the lowest of all groups. Household wealth stands at an average of just $2,000, which counts every basketball player, football player, media star, musician, and Oprah Winfrey. One of the biggest crimes of racism has been the economic degradation of the descendants of enslaved people who left the plantation.

The White Experience of Race

One of the presumptions that many white people have is that a conversation about race does not affect them. This is far from true. Racism affects everyone in America. It is so built into the fabric of this nation that almost everyone is being affected by it or advantaged from it. No conversation about racism is complete without talking about the white experience of race and why racism is brutal to speak of, even among well-meaning liberal people who should easily have a conversation about race. The white perspective on race is an important one, and the only way to advance and change the discussion is to actively engage white people in that conversation and break down how race has affected them. Racism results from America’s insidious class structure, mythical concepts about America, and a lack of focus on this area.

Why White People Are So Uncomfortable Talking About Race

One of the luxuries that white people enjoy in modern American society is never being an “other.” People of color learn, from a very young age, that they are different. This can be from skin color, cultural differences, and beauty standards. They then walk through life always being “an other” or someone different and often being treated differently, even in governmental institutions. Imagine what the current trend of police shootings is doing to a generation of young people of color regarding their interactions with the police. These cultural attitudes shape people, especially at a young age. These are the kinds of challenges that white children simply do not face.

There is also a cultural sense of belonging that people of color never really get to enjoy. While not always the case, white people can go almost anywhere and do almost anything and never feel “out of place” unless it is due to class, which is another conversation entirely. If there are no people of color around, there must be no racial conversation or race matter at play for many white people. This also plays into the idea that white people are “people” and anyone who is not white is simply something else, something different, and therefore “an other.”

Ignorance

Race is not something that most white people are forced to address in most areas of their life. Most neighborhoods are still reasonably segregated, often by income resulting from discrimination in employment and a lack of generational movement of wealth. This is not merely conjecture; it is born out by the numbers. A black person who was making $100,000 most likely lives in a neighborhood with people earning just $30,000. This is not the case for white people. Most people are also generally unaware of black people’s fears in their interactions with police, institutions, or through education. In

Brightmag, a corporate HR diversity trainer, Robin DiAngelo faced extreme pushback from white employees who did not want to be trained about working in a diverse workplace and complained about “reverse racism.” They were not interested in learning about the racial fabric of this country or how to navigate it. Consider the conversation that I relayed at the beginning of this essay.

Lack of Language

Most white people talk about race in terms of their interactions with it. Conversations usually start with admissions of having a black friend or growing up in a diverse school, or having racially progressive parents. It seems like race, for white people, is a dangerous minefield where one wrong word can mark one as a racist and erase the idea that the speaker is a good, moral person. However, this ties into ignorance. There are many positive contributions to the conversation about race from white people. White people and black people founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). White people have done good research and education on this matter. The conversation about race does not exclude white voices. Those voices need to be included; that is how change is possible.

Fear and Fragility

Much of the fear and resulting fragility around the white conversation around race has much to do with the simple idea that many white people do not want to admit that they have unwittingly benefited from an institutional bias toward them from a cultural bias toward them and through a country that was created for their benefit and to the disadvantage of other people.

Race breaks down the American myth that people came here from Europe and worked hard and succeeded. To admit that much of the American wealth and success has been built on the land of native peoples, the labor of black, yellow, and brown people and the subjugation of the same completely destroys the myth that it was through ingenuity and hard work alone that created that success. It is a challenging but necessary pill to swallow.

White Supremacy

White Supremacy is a simple belief that “white” people, basically anyone with northern European heritage, are superior to people with Hispanic, black, Asian, or Jewish ancestry. Although not all white supremacy groups denigrate Jewish people, many do. Many groups harken back to the imagery and racial attitudes toward other races that were common in 1930s Germany. Swastikas are common. The modern KKK still uses robes and hoods and other clothing and symbology deeply rooted in their history stretching from Reconstruction.

Modern groups are focused on creating a “white ethno-state” within the United States or as part of a new nation, separate from the current United States. Leaders like Alex Linder often flat out state that black people and people of other groups either need to go back to where they came from or at least move to other parts of the country

so that the white people can separate themselves into a country all their own where they can continue to be the dominant race and not be forced to address issues of racial inequality.

One of the new items on the white agenda is immigration, and this attitude has some broad-based support. The idea that immigrants, which come from all over the world but mainly from Latin American nations, are taking over the country and displacing white people is a common refrain. In the post 9-11 world, there is also a great deal of anger toward muslims, which tend to be black and Arab. That community suffers double because they suffer from America’s racial discrimination based on skin color and suffer due to their religion.

There is a strong belief that diversity and multiculturalism are a danger to the United States and a danger to the white race. White Supremacy groups have been active in some form in the United States since Reconstruction. Although they make the news now, these groups have been responsible for violent exchanges, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

People with these attitudes are active today. In 2018 and 2019, there have been two mass shootings at Jewish synagogues. In Louisiana, three black churches were burnt down in 2019 alone. There will most likely have been even more incidences of violence by the time the reader reaches this work; that is the modern reality. White Supremacy is not merely a political ideology; it is also a violent movement. The clash in Charlottesville proved that when a young man drove his car into a crowd of people again, killing one woman. Other protesters were injured in the protest by the police and in other public violence.

Separation by the color of the skin is ingrained in our society in all sorts of subtle ways. Recently, I read an online story about a gaming store employee who was launching the popular Pokemon game “White and Black.” The store was so crowded the employee announced, “We’re going to separate the White and Black lines.” Without complaint and almost instantaneously, the crowd separated into lines by skin color. The employee, very embarrassed, clarified the situation and continued the game’s sales. Although the comment was not meant to be racist, and they had a thoughtless moment about what exactly they were saying, the fact that the crowd simply separated themselves belies the ingrained knowledge in our society of who we are by racial group.

For black people, any public interaction is an inherently racial experience. White people do not suffer “racial stress” (as beautifully put by Robin DiAngelo in her Brightmag interview) or any otherness because they are the dominant group. When white is normal, race seems to be something white people don’t have to deal with daily. However, even for white people, the underlying presumptions of racism affect them. If racism is a lack of humanity, white people have enjoyed humanity denied to other groups.

The White Trash Problem

Nancy Isenberg published a massive book aptly titled, White Trash: The 400 Year Untold Story of Class in America. I picked the book up right away, and reading through it reveals much, not only about class attitudes but also how the idea of certain people being simply inferior affected the colonization of the New World. In the early days of America, many of the colonists were not people looking for a new life. The aristocracy of Great Britain looked at their American colonies as a cheap and easy way to get rid of certain people they no longer wanted in Great Britain. Much in the same way they used Press Gangs to fill Royal Navy ships with drunkards and other undesirables, Great Britain emptied prisons or used indentured servitude as a way to empty prisons or as a way to sentence people to pay back a debt. Indenture was a form of economic slavery. The contract was simple; the indentured servant had to work for whoever owned the indenture for how many years the indenture lasted, based on the debt owed. If the task was highly valued, the indenture could be as short as two years. However, as a punishment, the indenture could be extended. Also, if the servant caused any loss of financial value to the owner, the indenture could be extended.

Many of the colonists emptied from prisons were brought to America to pay off the cost of their passage. Already impoverished, they were required to work for free until the debt was paid and then, having no access to land, had to find a way to make a living after that.

Many of the new colonists were restricted from buying land in the colonies’ early days. Georgia, as a colony, was often used as a prison colony before independence. This system created a permanent underclass of people that existed well into independence. This system was based on the idea that some people were simply “waste people” that provided no real value to society or real productivity and were only valuable if they could be put to productive work, preferably for their betters. This had also had religious and philosophical backing at the time.

Nothing was valuable unless it was productivity in some way and produced something of value. North Carolina was viewed as the first white trash colony, “blockheads,” and others. Unlike its southern sister colony, the state lacked a vital port and did not have a real planter class. Isenberg analyzes how the British class system was brought right over to the United States. Wealth was in the land, and the white trash population was simply left out. Puritans in New England had little regard for their servants and enslaved people. How you were born is what you were, and there was little social mobility. This extended well into the Civil War period. When Virginia voted to succeed from the Union, what is now West Virginia, populated by poor whites who were little interested in dying for the rights of wealthy planters and their right to enslave people, voted to separate from Virginia and were granted admission to the Union in 1863.

The fact that poor whites were the tip of the spear for racism was a simple human reaction. Ta Nehisi Coates, in his blog post for The Atlantic, “A Species of Labor We Do Not Want,” analyzes the authentic fact that poor whites were used as a “buffer class” between the enslaved black and the upper class, landowning whites. The logic, no

matter how perverse follows this: as long as someone is beneath you, it makes you feel better about yourself, it gives you a focus to put your hate for the upper class. Many whites aspired to enslave people—that represented wealth. Even if a workshop owner could afford an enslaved person, that meant he now owned some wealth.

This problem extends well toward the modern period. Isenberg points out that people like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and even Bill Clinton epitomize the red-neck and the idea that these people understand that some look down upon them and don’t regard them for very much. Instead of plantation owners, the modern red-neck stands opposed to tech entrepreneurs and cultural elites in coastal cities who “don’t get them” and tell them they are wrong for having racist, sexist, or homophobic opinions. These people do not wish to exist in a culture where they are viewed as “wrong” or told what they think is “wrong.” One internet comment I read summarized it perfectly. The article discussed the controversial North Carolina transgender bathroom bill allowing transgender persons to use the bathroom of the gender they identify. One young man simply said, “I don’t have a problem with transgender people; I just don’t want to be told what to think about it.” He was from Tennessee.

This language was deeply rooted in the 2016 election. In their “Make America Great Again” clothing, people stood on television proudly saying, “He speaks like us.” “He says the things that we wish we could say.” “He gets us.” “He understands what it’s like out here.” The fact that people from diverse coastal cities are out of touch is not a new thing. States between New York and Los Angeles have been called “flyover states” for 40 years now. Because those are the states you have to fly over to get to the next coast, the statement “not places you want to stop in” is simply implied.

In all the changes that have occurred, many of these places have been left behind. That is part of the cultural fabric as well. Plantation owners wouldn’t stoop to do something for “idlers” and other people that weren’t deemed worthy in the colonies’ early days. Now, in the zeal to shut down coal mines and create trade agreements that moved jobs overseas for cheaper labor, these people have been left behind again. Instead of being angry at the corporations, which I have always considered the new aristocracy, and others who have shut down plants and closed mines, it’s simply easier to blame immigrants and other people of color for the woes that have gutted those flyover states.

White Racial Consciousness and Identity Politics

Identity politics have come under fire for being too extreme and too focused on everyone being different. This certainly has fueled what is now being branded as the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), a group of thinkers like Jordan Peterson, David Rubin, and Ben Shapiro. They push back against identity politics and center politics around the issues of race or even sexual orientation. Peterson argues that the “regressive left” doesn’t merely want equality of opportunity but equality of outcome, which he says is impossible. For those that find identity politics tedious, like the IDW thinkers, the constant complaint about discrimination within society and the cultural backlash against ideas, language, and iconography seems childish and limiting. Much of this

thought has to do with these thinkers not wanting to address the real problems we have in our society and their racial implications.

To talk about poverty without talking about race is not an honest conversation. Even infant mortality affects black women more than women of almost every other group. For the IDW, the racial focus becomes a flashpoint. These flashpoints start around the “free speech” debate and “de-platforming.” This begins when a university or institution invites a controversial speaker, like Jordan Peterson or Bill Maher. Students and others who find their thoughts or statements “problematic” will protest that speaker being invited. These protests often grow large and loud enough that often a speaker will be uninvited. A controversial person like Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos might be put off a platform altogether in the social media world. In this debate, identify politics, particularly racial politics, become a virulent clash of minds between those who would rather not talk about the subjugation of minority groups and those who are advocating for policy changes to undo the mistakes of the past.

For the IDW, this “attack” on them for stating things that aren’t popular seems like the oppression of speech. The cultural limits of free speech do not extend to the adverse reaction they may receive. Anyone has a right to express their views. However, those who disagree also have a right to make their voice heard. If platforms and others decide to respond due to the outcry, that is their individual choice. One might think that the IDW would indeed celebrate personal decisions regarding who they do and do not want to associate with, but somehow those individual choices become an attack on free speech. It is incredible to think that free speech is being discussed around identity politics, but that is where the discussion in society is right now.

Much of this has to do with something not often considered in the past: the real feelings of people of color and other marginalized groups. How they experience speakers and types of speech is an emotional luxury normally only afforded to white people. Now the culture has changed, and the feelings of many different people are now being considered. This seems like an attack for people like Peterson, Sam Harris, or other IDW thinkers. The reality is that the only opinion that mattered was the dominant white race’s opinion for most of this nation’s history. Now, other voices are being heard, and as they bring their grievances to the table through identity politics, those opinions that do not align with the racially diverse cultural view may no longer be welcome.

White Racial Consciousness

One of the biggest things to come out of the 2016 election is the rise of what has been called White Racial Consciousness. This narrative was being talked about right after the election but has fallen out of coverage. It is shameful that through all the polling and ongoing data about this election, this idea never got the coverage and legs needed. I’m not sure why because it is the biggest thing to happen to American elections since the hanging chad.

Big data has made the demographics behind elections far more evident than old-fashioned polling. Using modern technology, we can have a conversation about who white men and white women are voting for and every other race. Using different data, we can deduce why they are voting that way as well. The media spent most of the 2016 election trying to discover the story of the election from different perspectives. However, the story of white racial consciousness was not discussed beyond a few commentators on the election night. That story has been lost ever since.

Bernie and Hillary: The Real Debate

The primary debates between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were interesting because while the Republicans were running around trying to understand how politics work, the honest discussion about the course of our society was happening between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Bernie represented the fulfillment of the New Age that the 1960s asked us to consider, and Hillary Clinton described the kind of conscious capitalism that had become popular during her husband’s term in office. She has been a true vanguard of the middle way between socialism and capitalism. That is really where the discussion happened. The debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lacked substance, as did the entire campaign.

However, the debate for the heart of this country had already happened, and while Bernie didn’t get the nomination, he won the soul of the Democratic party, and he won the debate of where this country is going. People are hurting, and they want help. But what did Hillary offer besides a watered-down version of what Bernie was saying? Did she run with the program in stride? She didn’t, which is partly why Donald Trump is in the White House. That being said, she could have used Bernie as a pathway to reach out to people who feel like America has left them behind (the basket of deplorables) for an assortment of minorities, which she jokingly called her basket of adorables.

Donald Trump and White People Left Behind

Those that have been left behind by the way the country has changed, at least this time around, flocked to popular businessman Donald Trump. The Donald Trump brand, before the election, was one of the most valuable brands on the market. The very word spoke luxury, high-end, and success. Trump and victory were practically synonymous. He was a celebrity; he was outrageous. He enlarged the brand on TV to decide who would or would not be successful on “The Apprentice.” But his most outstanding achievement, by far, was his ability to understand the nation’s sentiment. In the last eight years, we’ve seen LGBTQ representation increase, we’ve witnessed festering racial wounds broken open, and there has been massive social change happening in this country. The world of my early adulthood is nearly unrecognizable compared to the world we live in now. For many people, this has been a massive improvement. Others, like many Trump voters, feel left behind. The rest of the country has moved on, and they are left in shrinking towns, with shrinking jobs and almost no help. The Great Recession was a sock in the jaw from which many Americans have never recovered.

The media missed the biggest story of all; white people had felt attacked and undermined in all this progress. When you hear Trump supporters say, “we have a guy on our

side” they say, “We have someone who is white.” This will affect presidential and otherwise elections for the next 50 years. White voters have discovered that if they want their voices heard in an increasingly multicultural America, it is not simply money that is required; it is getting all whites together and voting in the same direction. Racial voting consciousness is not a new concept. After the end of segregation, one of the most significant parts of the Civil Rights movement was the recently-gutted Voting Rights Act. Before the Voting Rights Act, how black people voted mattered in elections. After the Farm Workers movement, led by Cesar Chavez, Hispanic voting began to matter in elections. The voting habits of white people have been tracked by white people who tended not to vote in a group. White voters ranged from very liberal in California to conservative in Texas. But 2016 was different. People who usually voted Democrat voted for a GOP candidate that they did not like. Why? Racial consciousness.

The Real Appeal of Donald Trump

Donald Trump made immigration a story in this past election. It is alarming, as a worker, when you are working at your factory, doing a good job, and then find out that you’re getting laid off, and your factory is being shut down, and production is being moved elsewhere. People are asking questions; they are asking, “Where is my help? Who is here for me? Who is working for me?” As minorities finally started to enjoy some of the promises of America, white people felt like they had been left behind in favor of giving handouts to minorities. All it took to galvanize that anger was one person who could see that anger and give it a place to express itself in full display. Donald Trump read the room and figured out that he could win the White House if he could harness that anger. Make America Great Again is a pass-phrase for many things, but primarily it is a pass-phrase for making sure that white people are not left behind in the new economy, such as it is. Even though Trump offered no actual plans or policies to solve any problems that these people had, he was able to harness an emerging white racial consciousness and use that to gather just enough votes in just enough places to back his way into the White House.

White racial consciousness is primarily economic, but cultural and those cultural problems run deep. Much of the cultural change in the last decade or so has been at a rapid pace. Much like the people who founded the second KKK, people are nervous about the cultural changes they see around them. The economic problem is more straightforward to solve than the cultural problem. The answer is not tax reform, not healthcare, and the answer is not planned parenthood funding either. The answer is programming for re-education, the answer is an investment, and the answer is an economy that works for everyone. This requires regulation, and this requires spreading out the tax burden. In this election, the media lost track of the story. The world of 2017 and 2008 have very little in common from a practical perspective. No one wants to talk about environmental regulations and climate change reforms when they cannot survive and support their families.

Most Americans don’t want a handout either. They want the chance to have the dignity of a job. However, the economy and the country have changed. The jobs aren’t in the small towns that most Americans live in. The jobs are in the big cities and

they don’t look the way a job used to look, and they require skills training and familiarity with technology. They often need networking and a variety of skills. This is practically a foreign language for people who have lived in a world armed with a high school diploma; they could be in the middle class.

Even among the younger generation, the pathway seemed pretty straightforward. This has progressively been destroyed during the past 30 years, and it took The Great Recession to hit people. It was the type of change that people saw on the news and thought would never happen to them until it happened in their town. Until they were scraping by at Wal-Mart at $11 an hour trying to figure out how to pay the bills. Where was the help for them? Where was the program? Where was the money?

The cultural problem will take decades to solve; in the meantime, we have to acknowledge and learn to handle the rise of the white racial consciousness. White people are no longer “just people”; they are now a powerful voting block, which is the real story of the 2016 election. The Democrats, as they often do, missed the boat.

A Better Idea Than the Democrats

It’s easy to help minorities when you have a job and provide for your life. But let’s face it, survival makes people feel threatened. In the past eight years, threats have come from all sides. In the last eight years, all sorts of things have changed. Our society has had to question fundamental things like race, gender, gender identity, and sexuality. Groups ranging from trans individuals to indigenous people have seen their visibility skyrocket. Where was the help for the white guy/girl? Where were the ideas for them, who was working for them? Hillary saw a basket of deplorables; Donald Trump saw a verdant opportunity.

In this election, white people finally figured out that if you want a voice and you want yours, you have to mobilize and fight for it. Unfortunately, Hillary had been tied too closely to the perception of Obama’s presidency. Not only did anyone over 40 have an opinion about her, damaging enough, but she didn’t offer anything to the disenfranchised white voters. They were looking for someone to speak directly to them and their problems and offer help.

Donald Trump didn’t need the electoral college, and he didn’t need a well-run campaign. All he needed to do was stand on a stage and offer and hand up to people who hadn’t had help in decades. And that’s precisely what he did. It’s not that Trump voters are racist, I’m sure some of them are, but most are not. However, they have figured out that mobilized people get things done in this country. Many voters figured that If black people and Hispanics could do it, so could they. And that is the story that the media missed. There were many factors but the one that will affect elections for the next 50 years is the mobilizing of the white vote as a voting block.

Race and Racism in 2019

To say that America is a racist nation would be oversimplifying a problematic problem. The goal of the current race conversation should not just look to the past. Most people are not racist in an overt way. Most people agree that fringe groups are just that, fringe groups with extremist views. The conversation about race in this day and time should address the problems we have and address the fact that they are fundamentally racial. Whether it’s police brutality or mass incarceration, or our many economic issues, the reality is that minorities are affected by these problems at a greater level than white people. This has a 150-year history, but the problems are right out in front. To have a conversation about race does not mean comparing white people to slaveholders or an old-fashioned idea of racism that included segregated lunch counters and buses. Racism now is subtle and institutional. It’s almost without notice. The only way to solve racism and create a genuinely multi-ethnic democracy is to address how institutions and systems perpetuate racism. In any country, when a group is suffering from activities authorized by the government that is causing them harm, that is a cause for reform. We should not sit back and refuse to talk about the problem. That does not help us begin fulfilling the promises of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

It has been a long fight to create a modern American society. To complete this work, new policies must attack the last vestiges of the underpinning values that some people are not as valuable as others and that some people deserve to suffer just because of the color of their skin or where they came from. Society must resist the temptation to prioritize one group over another to make sure people feel better about a specific policy or a cultural value. America is already changing. America’s schools are no longer majority white. By 2040, which is only 21 years away, America will no longer be a white majority nation. For this country to continue in its present state is simply unsustainable. America must be a nation that works for everyone, no matter their background. This will take time, it will bring change, some of those conversations may be hard to have, but just as those brave people were willing to force the desegregation of buses and lunch counters, it is just as essential to create solutions in housing, employment, and to reform how the government policies its citizens. This is the racial challenge of America today. It is essential not to rest on the laurels of Barack Obama’s presidency or the many achievements that people of color have made throughout the nation. It is vital to continue the work of making all the changes needed to form an indeed more