By Eric Segall
The last few weeks have placed a spotlight on American racism in a way that holds some promise for real reforms and movement towards greater equality among and between whites and people of color. But true progress will never be made unless Americans fully accept that institutional racism is not some distant memory or remnant of a bygone era but is still very much with us today. We are a still a racist country, full stop. We must own our past and our present in order to move towards a less racist future.
The United States of America was built in large part on the foundation of institutional racism. Our Constitution continued the practice of slavery for three quarters of a century after ratification. It took a civil war to formally end our original sin of white people treating black people as their personal property.
From the mid-19th century to approximately 1964, much of our country engaged in racial apartheid, providing people of color grossly unequal access to government facilities such as public schools, hospitals, and parks, and allowing private businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters to exclude people based on the color of their skin. When I was six years old, a hotel located two blocks from my current law school went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to argue that it had the right to exclude black guests.
This history is well-known but institutional racism goes well beyond slavery and segregation. As I documented in my book Supreme Myths, many twentieth century examples of economic racism still haunt us today. The Social Security Act of 1935 provided millions of Americans retirement and disability benefits but excluded domestic workers and many agricultural jobs from that safety net, which (by design) had huge discriminatory effects on people of color.
When FDR's New Deal programs provided new protections for large labor unions, millions of Americans saw their salaries rise and work conditions improve. But these laws also allowed unions to exclude non-whites from their memberships, rolls which many did until as late as the 1970's.
And, perhaps most importantly, between 1934 and 1962, the federal government allocated approximately 120 billion dollars to support bank loans for home mortgages but roughly 98% of that money went to white families. In just Northern California, 350,000 new homes were built between 1946 and 1960 backed by federal tax dollars, but fewer than 100 of those government-backed mortgages went to African-America families. This practice of "red-lining" led to segregated neighborhoods which, even post-Brown v. Board of Education, perpetuated a system of de facto and unequal segregated public schools, which in turn still today harms opportunities for African-Americans to succeed in the workplace.
The last few weeks have placed a spotlight on American racism in a way that holds some promise for real reforms and movement towards greater equality among and between whites and people of color. But true progress will never be made unless Americans fully accept that institutional racism is not some distant memory or remnant of a bygone era but is still very much with us today. We are a still a racist country, full stop. We must own our past and our present in order to move towards a less racist future.
The United States of America was built in large part on the foundation of institutional racism. Our Constitution continued the practice of slavery for three quarters of a century after ratification. It took a civil war to formally end our original sin of white people treating black people as their personal property.
From the mid-19th century to approximately 1964, much of our country engaged in racial apartheid, providing people of color grossly unequal access to government facilities such as public schools, hospitals, and parks, and allowing private businesses such as hotels, restaurants, and theaters to exclude people based on the color of their skin. When I was six years old, a hotel located two blocks from my current law school went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to argue that it had the right to exclude black guests.
This history is well-known but institutional racism goes well beyond slavery and segregation. As I documented in my book Supreme Myths, many twentieth century examples of economic racism still haunt us today. The Social Security Act of 1935 provided millions of Americans retirement and disability benefits but excluded domestic workers and many agricultural jobs from that safety net, which (by design) had huge discriminatory effects on people of color.
When FDR's New Deal programs provided new protections for large labor unions, millions of Americans saw their salaries rise and work conditions improve. But these laws also allowed unions to exclude non-whites from their memberships, rolls which many did until as late as the 1970's.
And, perhaps most importantly, between 1934 and 1962, the federal government allocated approximately 120 billion dollars to support bank loans for home mortgages but roughly 98% of that money went to white families. In just Northern California, 350,000 new homes were built between 1946 and 1960 backed by federal tax dollars, but fewer than 100 of those government-backed mortgages went to African-America families. This practice of "red-lining" led to segregated neighborhoods which, even post-Brown v. Board of Education, perpetuated a system of de facto and unequal segregated public schools, which in turn still today harms opportunities for African-Americans to succeed in the workplace.
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