Racism in the United States

Racism in the United States has been a major issue in America since the colonial era. Historically, the country has been dominated by a settler society of religiously and ethnically diverse whites. Major racially structured institutions include slavery, settlement, Indian reservations, segregation, residential schools (for American Indians), and internment camps. Racial stratification has occurred in employment, housing, education and government. Racial discrimination was largely criminalized in the mid-20th century, and it became socially unacceptable or morally repugnant as well, but major inequalities still persist and racial politics remain a major phenomena.

The heaviest burdens of racism in the country have fallen upon Native Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans and some other immigrant groups and their descendants. Racist attitudes, or prejudice, are still held by moderate portions of the U.S population. Members of every American ethnic group have perceived racism in their dealings with other groups.

History by targeted racial group

Racism against Native Americans

Main article: Native Americans in the United States

Hundreds of native peoples made up of millions of individuals occupied the lands that would become the United States of America. During the colonial and independent periods, a long series of Indian Wars were fought with the primary objective of obtaining much of North America as territory of the U.S. Through wars, massacre, forced displacement (such as in the Trail of Tears), restriction of food rights, and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. Ideologies justifying the context included stereotypes of Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages" (as described in the United States Declaration of Independence) and the quasi-religious doctrine of Manifest Destiny which asserted divine blessing for U.S. conquest of all lands west of the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. The most rapid invasion occurred in the California gold rush, the first two years of which saw the deaths of tens of thousands of Indians. Following the 1848 American invasion, Native Californians were enslaved in the new state from statehood in 1850 to 1867.

Military and civil resistance by Native Americans has been a constant feature of American history. So too have a variety of debates around issues of sovereignty, the upholding of treaty provisions, and the civil rights of Native Americans under U.S. law.

Discrimination, marginalization

Once their territories were incorporated into the United States, surviving Native Americans were denied equality before the law and often treated as wards of the state. Many Native Americans were relegated to reservations--constituting just 4% of U.S. territory--and the treaties signed with them violated. Tens of thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white settler American values, culture and economy--to "kill the Indian, sav[ing] the man."

Further dispossession continued through concessions for industries such as oil, mining and timber and through division of land through legislation such as the Allotment Act. These concessions have raised problems of consent, exploitation of low royalty rates, environmental injustice, and gross mismanagement of funds held in trust, resulting in the loss of $10-40 billion. The Worldwatch Institute notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards, while Western Shoshone land has been subjected to more than 1,000 nuclear explosions.

While formal equality has been legally granted, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the country, and suffer from high levels of alcoholism and suicide.

Racism against African Americans

Main article: African American history

Slavery and emancipation

In colonial America, before slavery became completely based on racial lines, thousands of African slaves served European colonists, alongside other Europeans serving a term of indentured servitude. In some cases for African slaves, a term of service meant freedom and a land grant afterward, but these were rarely awarded, and few former slaves became landowners this way. In a precursor to the American Revolution, Nathaniel Bacon led a revolt in 1676 against the Governor of Virginia and the system of exploitation he represented: exploitation of poorer colonists by the increasingly wealthy landowners where poorer people, regardless of skin color, fought side by side. However, Bacon died, probably of dysentery; hundreds of participants in the revolt were lured to disarm by a promised amnesty; and the revolt lost steam.

Slaves were primarily used for agricultural labor, notably in the production of cotton and tobacco. Black slavery in the Northeast was less common, usually confined to involuntary domestic servitude. In both regions, only the wealthiest Americans owned slaves. In contrast, poor whites recognized that slavery devalued their own labor. The social rift along color lines soon became ingrained in every aspect of colonial American culture. Approximately one Southern family in four held slaves prior to war. According to the 1860 U.S. census, there were about 385,000 slaveowners out of approximately 1.5 million white families.

Although the Constitution had banned the importation of new African slaves in 1808, and in 1820 slave trade was equated with piracy, punishable by death, the practice of chattel slavery still existed for the next half century. All slaves in only the areas of the Confederate States of America that were not under direct control of the United States government were declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on January 1, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. It should be noted that the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to areas loyal to, or controlled by, the Union, thus the document only freed slaves where the Union still had not regained the legitimacy to do so. Slavery was not actually abolished in the United States until the passage of the 13th Amendment which was declared ratified on December 6, 1865.

About 4 million black slaves were freed in 1865. Ninety-five percent of blacks lived in the South, comprising one third of the population there as opposed to one percent of the population of the North. Consequently, fears of eventual emancipation were much greater in the South than in the North. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the civil war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South. Despite this, post-emancipation America was not free from racism; discriminatory practices continued in the United States with the existence of Jim Crow laws, educational disparities and widespread criminal acts against people of color.

Nadir of American race relations

Main articles: Nadir of American race relations and Mass racial violence in the United States

The circus-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909.

The new century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Although technically able to vote, poll taxes, acts of terror (often perpetuated by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, founded in the Reconstruction South), and discriminatory laws such as grandfather clauses kept black Americans disenfranchised particularly in the South but nationwide following the Hayes election at the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. In response to de jure racism, protest and lobbyist groups emerged, most notably, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909.

This time period is sometimes referred to as the nadir of American race relations because racism in the United States was worse during this time than at any period before or since. Segregation, racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. So did anti-black violence, including lynchings and race riots.

In addition, racism which had been viewed primarily as a problem in the Southern states, burst onto the national consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the Southern states to the industrial centers of the North after World War I, particularly in cities such as Boston, Chicago, and New York (Harlem). In northern cities, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynchings--mob-directed hangings, usually racially motivated--increased dramatically in the 1920s.

American Civil Rights movement

Main article: American Civil Rights movement

Civil Rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial

Prominent African American politicians, entertainers and activists pushed for civil rights throughout the twentieth century, quite noticeably during the 1930s and 1940s with noted allies including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who facilitated singer Marian Anderson's famous 1939 Easter concert when segregated venues would not accommodate her.

Activists, particularly A. Philip Randolph agitated for civil rights throughout the Great Depression and World War II years, organizing protest marches and seeking government concessions. The efforts of civil rights activists began to bear fruit with the issuance of wartime Executive Order 8802, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on June 25, 1941 to prohibit racial discrimination in the national defense industry. This was followed by Executive Order 9981 by President Harry S. Truman in July 1948, which banned racial segregation in the American armed forces, and the creation of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1957. The 1950s and 1960s saw the peaking of the American Civil Rights Movement and the desegregation of schools under the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board and the organizing of widespread protests across the nation under a younger generation of leaders.

The pastor and activist Martin Luther King, Jr. was the catalyst for many nonviolent protests in the 1960s which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This signified a change in the social acceptance of legislative racism in America and a profound increase in the number of opportunities available for people of color in the United States. While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, black poverty and lack of education deepened in the context of de-industrialization.

Discrimination against Latin Americans

Americans of Latin American ancestry (often categorized as "Hispanic") come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds; however, Latin Americans have often been viewed as a monolithic group by other Americans. Latinos are often portrayed as passionate, hypersexual, violent, lazy, or macho in literature, films, television and music.

Furthermore, recent increases in illegal Hispanic immigration have spurred anti-Latino sentiment, particularly in areas of the United States that have previously seen few Hispanic immigrants. The immigration debate has generated negative feelings of nativism and racist claims that Latin Americans are taking over white Anglo-American society, especially in the Southwestern United States, home to most American Latinos.

Due to the diversity of backgrounds encountered in the Hispanic population of the United States, racist policies have varied widely. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted Mexicans in the territories acquired after the Mexican-American War access to United States citizenship and legal status. Puerto Ricans began arriving on the mainland after the Spanish-American War when the U.S. acquired the island territory from Spain, but the migration peaked between 1930 and 1960.

Latinos are not all distinguishable as a racial minority. For example, Leander Perez's ancestors were mainly Isleños who immigrated to the New Orleans area in the late 1700s, yet Leander had the appearance of, and was considered by almost everyone, to be a white man. Many Cuban Americans, particularly those from the exile generation that arrived immediately after the Communist domination of the island, are also largely integrated into American society.

West Coast racism

In the Pacific States, racism was primarily directed against the resident Indian and Latino peoples, Asian immigrants, and black (African-American) populations. Several immigration laws discriminated against the Asians, and at different points the ethnic Chinese or other groups were banned from entering the United States. Nonwhites were prohibited from testifying against whites, a prohibition extended to the Chinese by People v. Hall. The Chinese were generally subject to harder labor on the First Transcontinental Railroad and often performed the more dangerous tasks such as using dynamite to make pathways through the mountains. The San Francisco Vigilance Movement, although ostensibly a response to crime and corruption, also systematically victimized Irish immigrants, and later this was transformed into mob violence against Chinese immigrants. Legal discrimination of Asian minorities was furthered with the passages of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned the entrance of virtually all ethnic Chinese immigrants into the United States until 1943. During World War II, the United States created internment camps for Japanese American citizens in fear that they would be used as spies for the Japanese. This was also done with Italian American and German American populations in the East.

See also: History of Oregon § Racial discrimination

A variety of laws were enacted to prevent African American migration to the Pacific Northwest. While slavery was criminalized in the Oregon Territory in 1844, a so-called lash law required that all blacks (slave or free) be whipped twice annually was enacted in June of that year. An exclusion law, barring African Americans from entering the territory was passed in 1847, repealed in 1854, and added to the new Oregon state constitution in 1857. While African Americans have been present at some level since 1805, the demographic reverberations of these laws remain today.

The Zoot Suit Riots were vivid incidents of racial violence against Latinos in Los Angeles in 1943. Naval servicemen stationed in a Latino neighborhood conflicted with youth in the dense neighborhood. Frequent confrontations between small groups and individuals had intensified into several days of non-stop rioting. Large mobs of servicemen would enter civilian quarters looking to attack Mexican American youths, some of whom were wearing zoot suits, a distinctive exaggerated fashion popular among that group. The disturbances continued unchecked, and even assisted, by the local police for several days before based commanders declared downtown Los Angeles and Mexican American neighborhoods off-limits to servicemen.

The Pacific and Western states were often portrayed to those on the East Coast as more liberal in terms of race relations in the 1960s and 1970s, but California legally allowed racial segregation of public facilities until the 1950s and other forms of racism were felt there as well.

Hate crimes

Most hate crimes in the United States target victims on the basis of race or ethnicity (for Federal purposes, crimes targeting Hispanics based on that identity are considered based on ethnicity). Leading forms of bias cited in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, based on law enforcement agency filings are: anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-white, anti-homosexual, and anti-Hispanic bias in that order in both 2004 and 2005. There are more hate crimes against whites than against Hispanics, Asians, American-Indians and multiple-race groups - a statistically expected trend given that there far more whites than other ethnic groups put together. By contrast, the National Criminal Victimization Survey, finds that per capita rates of hate crime victimization varied little by race or ethnicity, and the differences are not statistically significant.

The New Century Foundation, a white nationalist organization founded by Jared Taylor, argues that blacks are more likely than whites to commit hate crimes, and that FBI figures inflate the number of hate crimes committed by whites by counting Hispanics as "white". Other analysts are sharply critical of the NCF's findings, referring to the criminological mainstream view that "Racial and ethnic data must be treated with caution. ... Existing research on crime has generally shown that racial or ethnic identity is not predictive of criminal behavior with data which has been controlled for social and economic factors." NCF's methodology and statistics are further sharply criticize as flawed and deceptive by anti-racist activists Tim Wise and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Antisemitism

Main article: Antisemitism

Antisemitism has also played a role in America. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of Ashkenazi Jews were escaping the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. They boarded boats from ports on the Baltic Sea and in Northern Germany, and largely arrived at Ellis Island, New York.

It is thought by Leo Rosten, in his book, 'The Joys of Yiddish', that as soon as they left the boat, they were subject to racism from the port immigration authorities. The derogatory term 'kike' was adopted when referring to Jews (because they often could not write so they may have signed their immigration papers with circles - or kikel in Yiddish).

From the 1910s, the Southern Jewish communities were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, who objected to Jewish immigration, and often used 'The Jewish Banker' in their propaganda. In 1915, Texas-born, New York Jew Leo Frank was lynched by the newly re-formed Klan, after being convicted of rape and sentenced to death (his punishment was commuted to life imprisonment).

The events in Nazi Germany also attracted attention from America. Jewish lobbying for intervention in Europe drew opposition from the isolationists, amongst whom was Father Charles Coughlin, a well known radio priest, who was known to be critical of Jews, believing that they were leading America into the war. He preached in weekly, overtly anti-Semitic sermons and, from 1936, began publication of a newspaper, Social Justice, in which he printed anti-Semitic accusations such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A number of Jewish organizations, Christian organizations, Muslim organizations, and academics consider the Nation of Islam to be anti-Semitic. Specifically, they claim that the Nation of Islam has engaged in revisionist and antisemitic interpretations of the Holocaust and exaggerates the role of Jews in the African slave trade. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) alleges that NOI Health Minister, Abdul Alim Muhammad, has accused Jewish doctors of injecting blacks with the AIDS virus, an allegation that Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad has denied.

Racism against Middle Easterners and Muslims

Main articles: Anti-Arabism and Islamophobia

An Assyrian church vandalized in Detroit (2007). Assyrians, although not Arabs and mostly Christians, often face backlash in the US for their Middle Eastern background.

Racism against Arab Americans may rise concomittantly with tensions between the American government and the Arab world. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, discrimination and racialized violence has markedly increased against Arab Americans and many other religious and cultural groups. Public opinion polls and think tank observers also note a "backlash" against Muslims and Arabs since 2001, with 34% of Americans reporting recently hearing prejudiced remarks about Islam and 25% assessing themselves as prejudiced against Arabs.

Iraqis in particular were demonized which led to hatred towards Arabs and Iranians living in the United States and elsewhere in the western world. There have been attacks against Arabs not only on the basis of their religion (Islam), but also on the basis of their ethnicity; numerous Christian Arabs have been attacked based on their appearances.In addition, non-Arabs who are mistaken for Arabs because of perceived "similarities in appearance" have been collateral victims of anti-Arabism. Persian people (who constitute a completely different set of ethnic groups than Arabs), as well as South Asians of different ethnic/religious backgrounds (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) have been stereotyped as "Arabs". The case of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh who was murdered at a Phoenix gas station by a white supremacist for "looking like an Arab terrorist" (because of the turban that is a requirement of Sikhism), as well as that of Hindus being attacked for "being Muslims" have achieved prominence and criticism following the September 11 attacks.

Parts of Hollywood are regarded as using a disproportionate number of Arabs as villains and of depicting Arabs negatively and stereotypically. According to Godfrey Cheshire, a critic on the New York Press, "the only vicious racial stereotype that's not only still permitted but actively endorsed by Hollywood" is that of Arabs as crazed terrorists. Hussein Ibish, former Communications Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, writes that all Hollywood portrayals of Arabs fall under one of "the three B's": bombers, belly dancers, or billionaires. In Hollywood, Arabs have been portrayed as terrorists and women abusers, and Arabs as extremist people.

Some western movies portray Arab Muslims similar to how Nazi-inspired movies portrayed Jews. Like the image of Jews in fascist Germany, the image of Arabs is that of "money-grubbing caricatures that sought world domination, worshipped a different God, killed innocents, and lusted after blond virgins."

The 2000 film Rules of Engagement drew criticism from Arab groups, described as "probably the most racist film ever made against Arabs by Hollywood" by the ADC. Paul Clinton of the Boston Globe wrote "at its worst, it's blatantly racist, using Arabs as cartoon-cutout bad guys".

Jack Shaheen, in his book Reel Bad Arabs, surveyed more than 900 film appearances of Arab characters. Of those, only a dozen were positive and 50 were balanced. Shaheen writes that "[Arab] stereotypes are deeply ingrained in American cinema. From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy #1 – brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money-mad cultural "others" bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially [Christians] and [Jews]. Much has happened since 1896… Throughout it all, Hollywood's caricature of the [Arab] has prowled the silver screen. He is there to this day – repulsive and unrepresentative as ever.".

Some feel the obese oil sheik has become the new fat, grotesque Jewish banker or merchant as a negative stereotype in Western media

According to Newsweek columnist Meg Greenfield, anti-Arab sentiment presently cause misconceptions about Arabs, and hinder genuine peace in the Middle East.

During the 1991 Gulf war, anti-Arab sentiments increased in the United States. Arab Americans have experienced backlash as result of many terrorist attacks, including events where Arabs were not involved, like the Oklahoma City bombing, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the explosion of TWA Flight 800. According to a report prepared by the Arab American Institute, three days after the Oklahoma City bombing "more than 200 serious hate crimes were committed against Arab Americans and American Muslims. The same was true in the days following September 11."

According to a 2001 poll of Arab Americans conducted by the Arab American Institute, "32% of Arab Americans reported having been subjected to some form of ethnic-based discrimination during their lifetimes, 20% reported having experienced an instance of ethnic-based discrimination since September 11. Of special concern, for example, is the fact that 45% of students and 37% of Arab Americans of the Muslim faith report being targeted by discrimination since September 11.

According to the FBI and Arab groups, the number of attacks against Arabs, Muslims, and others mistaken as such rose considerably after the 9/11 attacks. Hate crimes against people of Middle Eastern origin or descent increased from 354 attacks in 2000, to 1,501 attacks in 2001. Among the victims of the backlash was a Middle Eastern man in Houston, Texas who was shot and wounded after an assailant accused him of "blowing up the country" and four immigrants shot and killed by a man named Larme Price who confessed to killing them as a "revenge" for the 9/11 attacks. Although Price described his victims as Arabs, only one was from an Arab country.

Eric Boehlert has accused the US media, in particular Fox News, of "pandering to anti-Arab hysteria" by "fudging the facts and ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers". John F. Sugg has accused prominent media terrorism expert Steve Emerson of persistent anti-Arab prejudice and of rushing to accuse Arab-Americans after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Prominent conservative commentators in the United States have voiced hostility towards Arabs. Bill O'Reilly has described Iraqis as a "pre-historic" and "primitive" group. Michael Savage described Arabs as "non-humans" and "racist, fascist bigots" and advocated a nuclear attack on a "major Arab capital".

Earl Krugel and Irv Rubin, two members of the Jewish Defense League, classified by the Department of Homeland Security as a terrorist organization, planned to bomb Arab-American Congressman Darrell Issa's office and the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California. The two were arrested as part of a sting operation when they received a shipment of explosives at Krugel's home in L.A. and both met their end in prison. The group was also suspected in the 1985 bombing of ADC leader Alex Odeh, though no arrests were made.

Stephen E. Herbits, the Secretary-General of the New York-based World Jewish Congress made several racist remarks and ethnic slurs in an internal memo against the president of the European Jewish Congress Pierre Besnainou: "He is French. Don’t discount this. He cannot be trusted, ... He is Tunisian. Do not discount this either. He works like an Arab." The World Jewish Congress in Israel has condemned the statements as both hateful and racist. "It appears that the struggle in the World Jewish Congress has now turned racist, said MK Shai Hermesh (Kadima), who heads the Israeli board of the WJC. Instead of creating unity among the Jewish people, this organization is just creating division and hatred."

UNHCR estimates that over 4.2 million Iraqis have been displaced since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with nearly 100,000 fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. A May 25, 2007 article notes that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refugee status in the United States.

Racism against Iranians

Main article: Anti-Iranian sentiment

A man holding a sign that reads "deport all Iranians" and "get the hell out of my country" during a protest of the Iran hostage crisis in Washington, D.C. in 1979.

The November 1979 Iranian hostage crisis of the U.S. embassy in Tehran precipitated a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States, directed both against the new Islamic regime and Iranian nationals and immigrants. Even though such sentiments gradually declined after the release of the hostages at the start of 1981, they sometimes flare up. In response, some Iranian immigrants to the U.S. have distanced themselves from their nationality and instead identify primarily on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliations.

Ann Coulter called Iranians "ragheads." Brent Scowcroft called the Iranian people "rug merchants."

Since the 1980s and especially since the 1990s Hollywood's depiction of Iranians has gradually shown signs of vilifying Iranians. Hollywood network productions such as 24 , John Doe, On Wings of Eagles (1986), Escape From Iran: The Canadian Caper (1981), and JAG almost regularly host Persian speaking villains in their storylines. On May 9, 1997, CBS aired an episode of JAG in which several Hamas terrorists take a Washington hospital under siege. According to the film, they spoke in fluent "Persian", not "Arabic".

Some of Hollywood's "stereotypical" and anti-Iranian movies include: The Peacemaker (in which a character, apparently without any context, says "fuck Iran"), The Hitman (in which several mobs join together to demolish an Iranian mob operating in Canada), MadHouse (partially centering upon a wealthy Iranian who is in the process of divorcing his American wife. In one scene, the wife, speaking to her Iranian husband utters "you goddamn towel heads, sand rats"), The Naked Gun, Under Siege, The Delta Force, Into the Night, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Threads, The Final Options, and Silver Bears.

Racism as a motivator in U.S. foreign policy

United States foreign policy making was influenced from its early decades by racial concerns. While pursuing a series of expansionist wars (see "Racism against Native Americans" above), American leaders embraced and ideology of white racial supremacy. George Washington predicted at the end of the U.S. Revolutionary War, “The gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." The successful slave revolution in Haiti alarmed the United States leadership, and the country refused diplomatic recognition for decades. The United States conquest of Florida and the Seminole Wars were fought in part to confront the danger of "mingled hordes of lawless Indians and negroes," in the words of President John Quincy Adams.

Armed conflict against predominatly Muslim areas was launched by the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In 1801, Jefferson sent a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean. On March 3, 1815, the US Congress authorized deployment of naval power against Algiers, and a force of ten ships was dispatched under the command of Commodores Stephen Decatur, Jr. and William Bainbridge.

Early 20th-century President Theodore Roosevelt declared, "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages" and openly spoke of cementing the rule of "dominant world races." In line with the concepts of the "Manifest Destiny" of white Anglo-Americans to conquer lands inhabited by "inferior" races of Native Americans and Mexicans and the "White Man's Burden" of Europeans' obligation to introduce civilization to the "primitive" people of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, American foreign policy in the early 20th century had racial overtones of a "superior" race destined to rule the world.

Critics such as Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky have suggested that racism has played a significant role in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and its treatment of the Arabs. Various critics have suggested that racism along with strategic and financial interests motivated the Bush Administration to attack Iraq even though the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction nor had any ties to Al Qaida.

Conflicts between racial and ethnic minorities

Minority racism is sometimes considered controversial because of theories of power in society. Some theories of racism insist that racism can only exist in the context of social power to impose it upon others. Racist thinking, or prejudice, among and between minority groups does occur, for example conflicts between blacks and Koreans (notably in the 1992 Los Angeles Riots) or between blacks and Jews (such as the riots in Crown Heights in 1991) in various urban environments, new immigrant groups (such as Latinos) or towards whites. There has been a long running racial tension between African Americans and Mexican Americans. There have been several significant riots in California prisons where Mexican American inmates and African Americans have targeted each other particularly, based on racial reasons. There have been reports of racially motivated attacks against African Americans who have moved into neighborhoods occupied mostly by Mexican Americans, and vice versa. There had also been cases in the late 1920's California in which Filipino immigrants have been victimized for moving into a predominantly white neighbourhood, or for working in an overwhelmingly white workplace. Recently there has also been an increase in racial violence between whites and Hispanic immigrants and between African immigrants and American blacks.

According to gang experts and law enforcement agents, a longstanding race war between the Mexican Mafia and the Black Guerilla family, a rival African American prison gang, has generated such intense racial hatred among Mexican Mafia leaders, or shot callers, that they have issued a "green light" on all blacks. A sort of gang-life fatwah, this amounts to a standing authorization for Latino gang members to prove their mettle by terrorizing or even murdering any blacks sighted in a neighborhood claimed by a gang loyal to the Mexican Mafia.[4]

Historians pointed out two ethnic and racial groups can band together in solidarity: for example, the Irish-American and Italian-American groups merged later with Polish-Americans, German-Americans and French-Canadians in the U.S. because of the commonality as "ethnics" and Roman Catholics in the early 20th century. Also in the west Coast, the small wave of Indian Americans easily blended in with Mexican Americans for having a common experience as immigrants from an undeveloped world and common cultural values of a male-dominated family unit still evident in India/south Asia and Latin America.

Stereotypes and prejudice

This racist postcard from the 1900s shows the casual denigration of black women. It states "I know you're not particular to a fault / Though I'm not sure you'll never be sued for assault / You're so fond of women that even a wench / Attracts your gross fancy despite her strong stench"

Stereotypical images in the entertainment media

Popular culture (songs, theater) for European-American audiences in the nineteenth century created and perpetuated negative stereotypes of African-Americans. One key symbol of racism against African Americans was the use of blackface. Directly related to this was the institution of minstrelsy.

Contemporary images and protests

Increasing numbers of African-American activists have asserted that rap music videos utilize African-American performers commonly enacting tropes of scantilly clothed women and men as thugs or pimps. Church organized groups have protested outside the residence of Phillipe Dauman (Upper East Side (New York, NY)) (president and chief executive officer of Viacom) and the residence of Debra L. Lee (Northwest Washington DC) (chairman and chief executive of Black Entertainment Television, a unit of Viacom). Rev. Donald Coates, leader of a protest organization formed around the issue of the videos, "Enough is Enough!" said, “In the wake of the Imus affair, I began to think that the African-American community must be consistent in its outrage.” The Clifton, Maryland ministered has also said, “Why are these corporations making these images normative and mainstream?” . . . . “I can talk about this in the church until I am blue in the face, but we need to take it outside.” The NAACP and the National Congress of Black Women also have called for the reform of images on videos and on television. Julian Bond said that in a segregated society, people get their impressions of other groups from what they see in videos and what they hear in music.

In a similar vein, activists protested against the BET show, Hot Ghetto Mess, which satirizes the culture of working-class African-Americans. The protests resulted in the change of the television show name to We Got to Do Better.

Congressional hearing

In September, 2007 Rep. Bobby Rush (Democrat-Illinois) initiated a Congressional hearing on African-American images in the media, “From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images.”

Segregation and integration

Main article: Racial segregation in the United States

History

The Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those provided to white Americans. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks. (These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans.) State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act; none were in effect at the end of the 1960s.

Segregation continued even after the demise of the Jim Crow laws. Data on house prices and attitudes toward integration from suggest that in the mid-twentieth century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by whites to exclude blacks from their neighborhoods. Segregation also took the form of redlining, the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. Although in the United States informal discrimination and segregation have always existed, the practice called "redlining" began with the National Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The practice was fought first through passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (which prevents redlining when the criteria for redlining are based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin), and later through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities. Although redlining is illegal some argue that it continues to exist in other forms.

Contemporary issues

Black-White segregation is declining fairly consistently for most metropolitan areas and cities. Despite these pervasive patterns, many changes for individual areas are small. Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which Blacks and Whites inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.

Some researchers suggest that racial segregation may lead to disparities in health and mortality. Thomas LaVeis (1989; 1993) tested the hypothesis that segregation would aid in explaining race differences in infant mortality rates across cities. Analyzing 176 large and midsized cities, LaVeist found support for the hypothesis. Since LaVeist's studies, segregation has received increased attention as a determinant of race disparities in mortality. Studies have shown that mortality rates for male and female African Americans are lower in areas with lower levels of residential segregation. Mortality for male and female Whites was not associated in either direction with residential segregation.

Researchers Sharon A. Jackson, Roger T. Anderson, Norman J. Johnson and Paul D. Sorlie found that, after adjustment for family income, mortality risk increased with increasing minority residential segregation among Blacks aged 25 to 44 years and non-Blacks aged 45 to 64 years. In most age/race/gender groups, the highest and lowest mortality risks occurred in the highest and lowest categories of residential segregation, respectively. These results suggest that minority residential segregation may influence mortality risk and underscore the traditional emphasis on the social underpinnings of disease and death. Rates of heart disease among African Americans are associated with the segregation patterns in the neighborhoods where they live (Fang et al. 1998). Stephanie A. Bond Huie writes that neighborhoods affect health and mortality outcomes primarily in an indirect fashion through environmental factors such as smoking, diet, exercise, stress, and access to health insurance and medical providers. Moreover, segregation strongly influences premature mortality in the US.

Laws regarding race

Main article: Race legislation in the United States

Institutional racism

Institutional racism is the theory that aspects of the structure, pervasive attitudes, and established institutions of society disadvantage some racial groups, although not by an overtly discriminatory mechanism. There are several factors that play into institutional racism, including but not limited to: accumulated wealth/benefits from racial groups that have benefited from past discrimination, educational and occupational disadvantages faced by non-native English speakers in the United States, ingrained stereotypical images that still remain in the society (e.g. black men are likely to be criminals).

Some established societal institutions are taking steps to combat the alleged structural disadvantages in modern American society, particularly in the case of non-native English speakers or those raised in homes that spoke broken or pidgin English. Several states are attempting to reduce these educational disadvantages by developing a more multiculturally-aware curriculum. For example, the 2005 California 6th grade statewide examination contained the question Patio comes from the Spanish word meaning what?. Including questions such as these provide opportunities for non-native speakers of English to have greater educational access.

Immigration

Access to United States citizenship was restricted by race, beginning with the Naturalization Act of 1790 which refused naturalization to "non-whites." Many in the modern United States forget the institutionalized prejudice against white followers of Roman Catholicism who immigrated from Ireland, Germany, Italy and France. Other efforts include the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 National Origins Act. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. While officially prohibited, U.S. officials continue to differentially apply laws on illegal immigration depending on national origin (essentially declining to enforce immigration laws against citizens of rich countries who overstay their visas) and personal economy (differentially awarding visas to foreign nationals based on bank accounts, properties and so on).

Wealth creation

Massive racial differentials in account of wealth remain in the United States: betweens whites and African Americans, the gap is a factor of ten. An analyst of the phenomenon, Thomas Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University argues, “The wealth gap is not just a story of merit and achievement, it’s also a story of the historical legacy of race in the United Sates.” Some of the institutions of wealth creation amongst American citizens were open exclusively to whites, notably land distributed under the Homestead Act and other settlement efforts in the West. Similar differentials applied to the Social Security Act (which excluded agricultural workers, a sector that then included most black workers), rewards to military officers, and the educational benefits offered returning soldiers after World War II. Pre-existing disparities in wealth are exacerbated by tax policies that reward investment over waged income, subsidize mortgages, and subsidize private sector developers.

Impact on health

See also: Race and health

In the US racial differences in health and quality of life often persist even at equivalent socioeconomics levels. Individual and institutional discrimination, along with the stigma of inferiority, can adversely affect health. Residence in poor neighborhoods, racial bias in medical care, the stress of experiences of discrimination and the acceptance of the societal stigma of inferiority can have deleterious consequences for health. Using The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), an 18-item self-report inventory that assesses the frequency of racist discrimination. Hope Landrine and Elizabeth A. Klonoff found that racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms. A study on racist events in the lives of African American women found that lifetime experiences of racism were positively related to lifetime history of both physical disease and frequency of recent common colds. These relationships were largely unaccounted for by other variables. Demographic variables such as income and education were not related to experiences of racism. The results suggest that racism can be detrimental to African American's well being. The physiological stress caused by racism has been documented in studies by Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer on what they term "stereotype threat." Kennedy et al found that both measures of collective disrespect were strongly correlated with black mortality (r = 0.53 to 0.56), as well as with white mortality (r = 0.48 to 0.54). These data suggest that racism, measured as an ecologic characteristic, is associated with higher mortality in both blacks and whites.

Health care inequality

See also: Race and health

They are major racial differences in access to health care and in the quality of health care provided. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that: "over 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had received the same care as whites." The key differences they cited were lack of insurance, inadequate insurance, poor service, and reluctance to seek care. A history of government-sponsored experimentation, such as the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study has left of legacy of African American distrust of the medical system.

Inequalities in health care may also reflect a systemic bias in the way medical procedures and treatments are prescribed for different ethnic groups. Raj Bhopal writes that the history of racism in science and medicine shows that people and institutions behave according to the ethos of their times and warns of dangers to avoid in the future. Nancy Krieger contended that much modern research supported the assumptions needed to justify racism. Racism she writes underlies unexplained inequities in health care, including treatment for heart disease, renal failure, bladder cancer, and pneumonia. Raj Bhopal writes that these inequalities have been documented in numerous studies. The consistent and repeated findings that black Americans receive less health care than white Americans—particularly where this involves expensive new technology.

Affirmative action

Main article: Affirmative action in the United States

Affirmative action is a policy or program intended to promote access to education or employment for minority groups and women. Motivation for affirmative action policies is to redress the effects of past discrimination and to encourage public institutions such as universities, hospitals, and police forces to be more representative of the population.

Affirmative action programs may include targeted recruitment efforts, preferential treatment given to applicants from historically disadvantaged groups, and in some cases the use of quotas. Most American universities and some employers practice affirmative action.

Some opponents of affirmative action view the greater access by women and minority groups to be at the expense of groups considered dominant (typically white men). In their view, these policies demonstrate an overt preference for applicants from particular backgrounds over equally-qualified (or better-qualified) candidates from other backgrounds. Some opponents of affirmative action believe the only consideration in choosing between applicants should be merit. Some also criticize affirmative action because they believe it perpetuates racial division instead of minimizing the importance of race in American society.

Supporters of affirmative action believe that the perceived injustice to the dominant group is not supported by facts. They point to statistics that suggest that affirmative action has not resulted in fewer opportunities for white people. For example, white enrollment in universities has increased along with minority enrollment. In 1973, 30% of white high school graduates attended universities; in 1993, after wide-spread implementation of affirmative action policies, that number had risen to 42%. Some supporters of affirmative action point out that, even in the absence of affirmative action, college admissions rarely are purely merit-based: athletes, musicians, and legacy students (children of alumni) have always been given preferential treatment. For example, Harvard University admits 35-40% of legacy applicants, and a rejected white applicant is more likely to have been displaced by a legacy student than by one who benefited from affirmative action.

Current hate groups

Main article: Hate groups

Supremacist, separatist, racist, and hate groups still operate in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance, National Socialist Movement (United States), Aryan Nations, Westboro Baptist Church, Nation of Islam, Nation of Aztlán, Nation of Yahweh, Jewish Task Force, and the White Order of Thule are among the institutions most commonly identified in this way. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project counted 844 active hate groups in the United States in 2006.

Anti-racism

Main article: Anti-racism

Counter-racist organizations

Further information: NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality, ACLU, and Anti-Racist Action

See also

• Affirmative Action
• American Civil Rights Movement Timeline
• Anti-Irish racism
• Bigotry
• Civil rights
• Eugenics
• Italian American internment
• Japanese American internment
• Jena Six
• List of racism-related topics
• Judicial racism
• Mass racial violence in the United States
• Manifest Destiny
• U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
• White privilege

External links

• From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images -Reprint of Lisa Fager testimony on stereotyping in media