Understanding American Racism, Part I: Culture & System

For the first 150 years of the nation’s existence slavery and the racist culture that supported it represented a critical weakness in America’s foundation. The Civil War was fought to remove the cancer of slavery and by association reject those components of the racist culture that were recognized as contrary to our founding principles. While the victory against slavery was complete, America’s culture of racism evolved and was incorporated into an expanding federal system of government producing systemic racism. For the next 100 years racism against African-Americans was formalized through legal, economic, and political oppression represented by Jim Crow and segregation. It was through a long and difficult fight that the Civil Rights Movement all but eliminated systemic racism, symbolized most by the election of Barack Obama to president in 2008. But once again the culture of racism has evolved, adopting symbols and narratives of the past in order to try and stay alive.

America’s Culture of Racism

America is not unique in its racism. Every country in the world today, and just about every civilization throughout history, has suffered from discrimination against one or more of its own minorities due to racial or ethnic hatred. In some instances (e.g. contemporary America) it is driven by a small group within the ethnic majority, while in other cases it is a national sentiment (e.g. Nazi Germany). In all cases racism is a cancer with its potential for death and destruction determined by 1) the…