Black Equality and Racism

Black Equality and Racism
Policy List
Essential Articles

Few issues resonate with me on a deeper, more visceral level than racial inequality. It’s what drew me to politics in the first place. The nobility of the civil rights movement and its moral demand for justice is a force like nothing else. When you combine strategic genius with a dramatic fearlessness to put yourself in grave danger because you have an undying belief that justice will prevail, that is unbelievably powerful. Not many things more starkly cleave right from wrong in my mind. And when I think of my own life, the relationships that have had the biggest role in shaping who I am as a person would not have even been allowed by the institutions of our not-too-distant past.

For far too long, men and women of African descent have been uniquely targeted by the powers that be in this country. Too often treated as “the other”, too often demagogued by politicians and villainized by the media. Too often denied the dignity of being seen through the lens of a common humanity. If we are a nation built upon the belief that “all men are created equal”, this injustice cannot stand. This cause is urgent, and the solutions must move beyond the lip service that is too often offered in place of real progress.

I want to take the opportunity to examine what exactly racism is because I think there are varying degrees of confusion around it. I hear people (some well-meaning, some not) say things like “Well, everyone is a little racist” or accept certain racial stereotypes as having scientific or biological basis. But that thinking misses the point of what racism actually is. Race is a manmade idea. The theory that someone’s complexion imbues them with unalterable character traits or determines their potential from birth, that belief was created. Human beings are not naturally racist, meaning that we don’t naturally divide ourselves into groups based on our skin color. Tribalism is a natural feature of human psychology, yes, but racism is a much more manufactured and targeted idea that plays off of tribalism.

In the British Virginia colony of the early 1600s, there was no concept of race. People did not refer to themselves as white or black, there was not even a written concept of white until 1671. In these early stages, people from Africa, Europe, and North America worked and lived side by side. Some were taken as slaves, others worked as indentured servants, eventually becoming free. The people of this era were not naturally hateful, on the contrary, they socialized and intermarried. Men of African descent owned their own land.

However, the Virginia colony was created first and foremost to enrich the British crown, and its rulers wanted a steady stream of cheap labor to rapidly grow. Much of that labor increasing came from slave-trading off the West coast of Africa, and much of the colonial elite’s desired land was inhabited by the indigenous peoples of America. It was this dynamic, the practical need to divide and conquer, that planted the seeds of racism.

The rulers of the Virginia colony began to change the structure of their society as the 17th century rolled on. They changed the legal definition of slavery to a hereditary system in 1662 and gradually turned slavery into a permanent, inescapable status (which had not been the case prior). They continued to pass laws that artificially created the identity of race, establishing legal protections and privileges based on heritage, ancestral origin, and appearance, which again did not exist before the mid-1600s. They also began to create an idea framework, spreading a belief that Natives were “savages” unfit to work the land they resided upon, and Africans as “subhuman” only fit for servitude. Dehumanization was a means by which to justify stealing land and establishing chattel slavery.

The last gasp of the pre-racism society was an event known as Bacon’s Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon, a wealthy planter, attempted to overthrow the governor of the Virginia colony over Bacon’s desire to raid the local tribal villages. Bacon led a notably multiracial coalition made up of white and black indentured servants and enslaved people, managing to burn the capital to the ground. The rebellion was eventually defeated, but the aristocratic elite took away a critical lesson: the way to protect our power is to keep the lower classes divided and fighting amongst themselves. If we do not, they will unite to defeat us. This is the same dynamic that shapes our society today. After that, chattel slavery based upon the fictional idea of the Black race was set. It became increasingly entrenched in society and legal theory, and the idea of race was gradually accepted as fact.

I think many people believe that racism is the default state, and that we have to learn to move beyond our base instincts. But history proves that the opposite is true, and psychological studies support this fact. It was the structure of society, a deliberate attempt to divide us that artificially created racism. Institutions at the top of society create inequality, not human nature. This is important to understand. It not only immunizes us against racist ideas and policies, but provides an explanation for the inequalities we see today.

The structure of our society today is unfairly rigged against people of color in ways that are distinct and more intense than whites. Some will try to say that racism is dead and that there is no need for additional efforts to undo its effects. Some of those people even sit on the Supreme Court (Shelby County v. Holder). But reality tells a different story. We live in a country where Black women die three times as often as White women during childbirth, where the poverty rate for Blacks is nearly double that of Whites, and Black homeownership is less than 2/3 that of White homeownership. Black and Latino people are imprisoned at a rate exponentially more than White people, and Black unemployment is consistently higher than any other. Despite the far-right spewing propaganda about all the “free things and advantages” that people of color receive, it’s just not true, the data doesn’t bear that out. The only way that these differences are possible is because of concentrated efforts to create them. If racism had never been created four centuries ago, these rates would be virtually the same. People of color are targeted as a threat by the institutions of society, and it affects every aspect of life.

Throughout this nation’s history, every time Black Americans began to move beyond the restrictions that were placed upon them, the wealthy elites of society cracked down on them with violence and destruction. Reconstruction after the Civil War could have put in motion the end of racism, as newly freed Black men were elected to office, and started their own businesses. The failure of the federal government to protect these communities and uphold the law led to mass violence by white supremacist organizations like the KKK, and racism was rejuvenated in the form of Jim Crow authoritarianism. There is story after story of how Black Americans organized and rose above the conditions placed upon them, only to be brought back down by violence. Black Wall Street was an inspirational story of achievement in the face of incredible adversity in the state of Oklahoma, and it was all but destroyed in a race riot instigated by the white elite of Tulsa. Some of those survivors are alive today and were denied justice for the massacre as recently as last year.

Systemic racism is not just about the negatives of slavery and Jim Crow, lynch mobs and fire hoses. It’s the lack of access to the positives that were given to whites in society that created opportunity, that created wealth. The Homestead Act of 1862 for example granted thousands of White Americans the chance to own their own land that they never would have had otherwise. It gave poor Whites, (including White immigrants) a generational advantage, an opportunity to change the lives of their families. It also further increased the racial divide.

When you examine the origins of most of the institutions of modern society, it is shocking how explicitly the idea of racism was written into the law. Not surprising, but still shocking nonetheless. Social Security is a program that lifted and continues to lift millions of seniors out of poverty, granting them the freedom to live a comfortable and dignified retirement that they spent their lifetime earning. But when the act was passed, it included a provision put in place by Southern segregationists that specifically excluded some of the only jobs that black Americans in certain states were allowed to work: agriculture and domestic work. Federal labor laws also specifically carved out these jobs, preventing the formation of unions. The G.I. Bill that passed following WWII provided what many regard as the American Dream: cheap federal housing loans, education, and job training. Despite being ordered to put their lives on the line for this country, Black servicemembers were often denied the benefits of the G.I. Bill when they returned home. They were deprived of wealth and upward mobility for themselves and their children. Instead of owning their homes, many were forced to raise their families in segregated sections of America’s rapidly developing cities. Housing sections that knowingly exposed them to a number of environmental harms, giving generations of children asthma, cancer, heart disease and neurological damage.

Post-segregation, the sabotage may not have been explicit, but it didn’t have to be either. During the Reagan-led mass incarceration of the 80s, the sentencing for crack cocaine used in urban environments was 100 times greater than the powder snorted by the rich men of Wall Street. The goal was to imprison young Black men, and it succeeded by the millions. It had the added advantage of depriving them of the right to vote by making people felons. The fear tactics on display on the nightly news taught a generation of middle Americans to associate Black people with drugs and violence, and not through the lens of a shared humanity. After the gains of the Civil Rights Movement, far-right authoritarianism had struck back hard.

It should not be lost on anyone that it was taxes paid by working class Black Americans in the post WWII-era that sent working class white students to college. That Black servicemembers fought for a promise of freedom that they themselves were denied. That Black wealth was continuously stolen, lives cut short, and misery induced to uphold a deeply evil system.

In this context, I can find no justification for denying the creation of a reparations panel designed to bring this nation closer to the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. There is no moral justification to deny reparations, nor is there a practical one. Without benefiting from the same type of institutional intervention that Whites have had, I don’t see how true equality is going to be achieved on its own. Time or indifference will not cleanse racism from our society. What is required is clear-eyed, focused, and sustained efforts to root out racism from our societal institutions. We must be a society that looks at each other with a common humanity, and acts to guarantee the individual freedom of one another. Only then can we live up to our national ideals. Only then can we live up to the true potential that this nation is capable of.

Policy List

The ultimate goal is to reach a point in our society where there are no statistical differences between people based on the color of their skin, whether that be economically, politically, from a health perspective, and so on. The best way I believe to do that (in addition to the programs that will help everyone such as improved labor standards and increased housing…) is to view all bills through the lens of equality, making sure that our policies are continuously working to reduce black inequality rather than increasing it. You will find additional solutions toward achieving Black equality in other sections such as labor and justice reform, but this list is specifically for policies pertaining to undoing systemic targeting of Black Americans.

Creation of a reparations panel, similar to New York and California, to identify what should be included, who should be included, and the best method by which to deliver the long overdue debts
Approaching every new bill, whether it is about housing, healthcare, banking, etc.. with the deliberate intent of undoing the discrimination that was built into those institutions i.e. viewing every policy through the lens of equality
Congregational hearings on the causes of increased rates of illnesses for people of color, such as the high rate of fibroids in Black women
Banning hair discrimination in the workplace
Increased funding for historically black colleges and universities
Establishment of a repatriation system similar to the Native American NAGPRA