Okay But Why Are We Still Talking About Racism?

To be clear, this is not a personal condemnation of anyone reading this right now. Racism is built into the structure of our country. What we want to focus on is why that is and what we can do about it. But first, let’s start with the history.

How Did We Get Here?

Let’s do a quick jump back in time, keeping in mind that there’s way too much history to cover everything in depth. (We’ll link to additional reading at the end of this post.):

• In 1619, a Dutch ship landed in Virginia carrying around 20 Africans who were then sold to British colonists. That began almost 250 years of enslaved labor, with more than 12 million people kidnapped from Africa and sent to the Americas.
• After slavery ended in 1865, new laws called Black Codes were enacted – laws like “no person of color can pursue any other trade besides farming, manual labor or domestic service” or “no person of color can testify against a white person in court.”
• Black Codes were replaced by Jim Crow laws that mandated separate schools, bathrooms, restaurants, and parks. Jim Crow laws existed all over the country, not just in the South. And there were thousands of “sundown towns” across the country where Black people weren’t allowed after sunset.
• The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1968 causing those laws to be repealed.

But racism didn’t disappear with the passage of the Civil Rights act. It was built into our communities. For decades, Black families weren’t allowed to buy houses in suburban neighborhoods. It was fully legal to just say, “nope, you can’t live here,” to people if they weren’t white. Black families were also denied access to home loans in a practice called “redlining.” And this wasn’t just by private lenders – it was by the government too. And in cities across America, not just in the South, communities drained their public pools and filled them in with dirt rather than be forced to allow Black kids to swim alongside white kids.

Racism Is Not a Thing of the Past

A more recent example of racism is the political uproar over Critical Race Theory and Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Extremists claim that teaching students the history we just mentioned here promotes division and makes white kids feel bad. But research shows that it doesn’t. It actually teaches empathy and promotes unity. Some of Trump’s first Executive Orders were to shut down DEI programs.

And here’s another great example: two hundred anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress in the first half of the 20th century and exactly none of them passed. It wasn’t until 2022, under President Joe Biden, that the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act was passed. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old Black boy murdered by white men in 1955, and lest you think this is all ancient history, the highway marker remembering Emmett Till has been replaced four times because of vandalism. It’s been spraypainted with the letters “KKK,” covered in black paint, and shot up so often that organizers finally put up a bulletproof memorial in 2019.

More Examples of Racism Today

Racism, and anti-Blackness in particular, continues to permeate so many aspects of modern life in America. It is so inescapable, it touches every system and structure in our country. Here are just a few examples:

• Home Ownership – 73% of white Americans are home-owners, compared to 42% of Black Americans.
• Healthcare – Black moms are more than twice as likely to die in childbirth than white moms. As recently as 2016, a study found that half of white medical residents believed in biological differences between Black and white people, including that Black people have thicker skin or a higher pain tolerance (these things are not true).
• Sports – a 2019 study found that basketball commentators were more likely to discuss the mental abilities of lighter-skinned players and the physical strength of darker-skinned players.
• Politics – A 2018 study found that even within the same party, white candidates were about three times more likely to win than Black candidates.
• Criminal Justice – Police violence and incarceration rates are much higher for Black people. For example, when it comes to marijuana laws, Black people are 3 times more likely to be arrested for possession, despite the fact that usage rates between Black and white people are almost identical.
• Advertising – On eBay, people selling iPods received 21 percent more offers if a white hand was holding the iPod in the photo rather than a black hand.

What Can We Do?

It’s hard to know what we can do to help. If systemic racism is structural, what can we do as individuals to stop it? For one thing, white Americans can start by listening. When Black people talk about their experiences, don’t immediately say, “Oh, but that’s not me. I’m not racist.” Just listen. And if you hear racist comments from your friends or family, say something so they know that’s not okay. And vote! Voting for anti-racist candidates who are committed to solving structural inequities is the most direct way we can make real change.

We were all born into a system that was built on inequality; there’s nothing we could have done to avoid it. But if we want to fix it, we need to start by acknowledging that it’s real – something that the Trump administration is trying its hardest to pretend isn’t true. And all of that is why people are still talking about racism.

Here’s some reading recommendations from our Banned Book Club:

• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

And if you would like to join our Banned Book Club, sign up here.