Modernization of America’s Nostalgic Racism
America’s history is stained with racial discrimination or racism against African Americans. From slavery to post civil war, from lynching to modernized incarceration, from Ku Klux Klan to police brutality, the racism keeps on improvising with no hopes for better future. Although, America is the biggest advocate of human rights, it has failed to address the issue of racial discrimination at hand.
The color-blindness strategy has failed in dealing with racism, and America needs to address the issue, rather than ignore it. After all, the racial discrimination or racism, a socio-economic gap between African Americans and White Americans, police brutality, modernized lynching of the African Americans is still at the rise.
The underlying problem is the whiteness of the community, where African Americans are seen, reconciled, and judged by the visions of their counterpart. Dr. Cone suggests that until America is overrun by blackness, it’ll fail to liberate the African Americans from the shackles of the past (102). It means that there is a need for change in perceptions and understanding the wrongs from the history.
African Americans had and have been suffering from the same dilemma, that is, being an alien invasive species in the soil of America. They are not yet fully incorporated with the American dream and culture, and these two dominant forces in America still collides in other forms, which ultimately lead to the grievance amongst both parties, but more in the African Americans.
With the implication of Jim Crow laws, the African Americans were segregated in housing and education, which led to lower quality of education, more ghetto life, sheer racism, and poor living standards. Due to the segregations, the public schools left for African Americans had either had inadequate teaching resources and infrastructure or, teaching personnel.
This resulted in low education in African Americans people. As per statistics, every level of education increases 10 folds of income, and in turn, increases socio-economic status in the society. Being deprived of White American schools and suburban life, the African Americans were conspired to fail by the White Americans from the start. Another stout example of planned racism.
As suggested by David R. Williams, the federal housing schemes, lending practices, real estate discrimination and restrictive covenants confined African Americans to least desirable neighborhood, and it left a longstanding mark on them (178). As the property value was decreased for African Americans, they had lower socio-economic status, as compared to White Americans, with all the privileges of high standards schools and property values. That’s economic racism against the blacks.
This began the cycle of improvised racism against African Americans in the United States. The bigger issue at hand is that the playing field between White Americans and African Americans is not leveled. President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, Martin Luther King won the civil rights for African Americans, however, they had suffered and lost so much in their struggle, that the socio-economic gaps between African Americans and White Americans still differ significantly to this day.
With the implication Jim Crow laws, Dr. James Cone and Dr. Taylor Branch argues that it left a longstanding mark on the achievement on blacks, even after passing of the civil rights bill. With segregation, blacks were forced into ghettos with the property devalued, education systems with lacking standards, poverty labor workings prioritizing over education are many of the underlying causes of socio-economic gaps between White Americans and blacks.
The blacks and White Americans have a different of centuries, and until America is ready to address this gap, the grievance amongst African Americans cannot be addressed, and they cannot lessen this gap, until unless the government intervenes (Moyers & Company).
Furthermore, the modernized lynching of African Americans is still in effect, though without ropes and trees. Dr. Cone calls this modernized lynching as “legal lynching”, where one half of two million people in United States prisons are black. He argues that it is a strategized movement for detaining black people in prison, just to feed the rich prison industry complexes in the “dying white towns and cities”.
Though, the White Americans and other races are prone to more drug abuse and possession, still the black people suffer from the wrath of the White criminal system. The question remains that why blacks are more likely to suffer from the same criminal justice systems for same crimes than the White Americans?
The answer is simple, that the United States still regards whiteness as its true symbol and founding stone of the nation, and it will never change mentality of Ku Klux Klan’s white supremacy. As stated by Michelle Alexander in her article, Obama’s Drug War¸ that United States will never change its habits when it comes to “demonization and criminalization of black men” and that has restricted United States to address race dynamics, giving rise to social and racial inequality.
From the accounts stated above, police brutality is still consistent towards African Americans more often than the White Americans. George Floyd, in 2020, was suffocated to death by a Minneapolis white police officer on the doubt of making a purchase of $20 counterfeit bill. It’s a right of police authority to apprehend criminals, but it was violation, or even abuse of authority that happened with George Floyd. Police brutality isn’t confined to physical abuse, there are many shootings, in which more African Americans are at the worst receiving end than that of White Americans.
Brooks states that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police in United Statesthan the White Americans (240). In United States, police killings are the 6th top reasons of deaths in United States, and African Americans takes the first place in racial category. The statistics are shocking, where justice department seems to downplay the significance of these reoccurring events.
The plot is set by courts that the policemen were intimidated by the appearance of the potential perpetrators, or, they are challenged in authority, when the perpetrator insults or misbehave that they are compelled for violent action against them. However, in both cases, George Floyd and Michael Brown (shooting in Ferguson, Missouri), the African Americans were totally non-violent and yet, they faced the worst treatment from White policemen leading up their deaths.
It begs the question that, are black people that intimidating? What racial characteristics of blacks are likely to get them the worst police treatment? The answers are simple, that America still assumes the white supremacy doctrine, that shadows the blackness of the society.
Hence, America has a long history of racial discrimination against African Americans.
It seems like the dreams of Dr. King is yet to be realized fully. As Dr. James H. Cone and Dr. Taylor argues that Dr. MLK fought against poverty, irrespective of race, however, the race that suffers most from inequality and unfair distribution of resources is no doubt, the African Americans. The African Americans from slavery and lynching lost valuable members of their community, that could have contributed to black schools.
Moreover, the achievement gaps between blacks and White Americans are huge because of the insufficiency of education implemented by the Jim Crow laws, that prevented blacks to be upwardly mobile. Despite the socio-economic gaps, the modernized legal lynching and police brutality against African Americans have established that the horrors of the pasts are hidden, and from time to time, they are exposed, hurting the African Americans in United States.
Though United States tries to hide behind the agenda of color blindness of society, however, United States society can never be color blind, until unless it addresses the grievances and unfair treatment of the blacks. It doesn’t need to hide the past and say we’ve come so far by achieving civil rights, United States surely needs to discuss the problems, and put policies in places to level the playing fields amongst White Americans and African Americans.
Otherwise, the horrors of George Floyd and Michael Brown will keep on occurring, and they will ultimately lead to another civil war, resulting from the growing resentment in the community.
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Works Cited
- Alexander, Michelle. “Obama’s Drug War”. The Nation, 2010, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obamas-drug-war/.
- Brooks, Oliver. “Police Brutality And Blacks: An American Immune System Disorder”. Journal Of The National Medical Association, vol 112, no. 3, 2020, pp. 239-241. Elsevier BV, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnma.2020.06.003. Accessed 10 Nov 2021.
- Cone, James H. A Black theology of liberation. Orbis Books, 2010.
- Cone, James H. The cross and the lynching tree. Orbis books, 2011.
- Moyers & Company. James Cone And Taylor Branch On MLK’s Fight For Economic Equality. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF8OpSwU5AI. Accessed 10 Nov 2021.
- WILLIAMS, DAVID R. “Race, Socioeconomic Status, And Health The Added Effects Of Racism And Discrimination”. Annals Of The New York Academy Of Sciences, vol 896, no. 1, 1999, pp. 173-188. Wiley, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1999.tb08114.x. Accessed 10 Nov 2021.
