Racism in American life

Racism has been an integral part of American life for as long as we have been a nation, if not longer. When America became a nation, our Founding Fathers presided over a slave society and accorded the South 3/5 of a person for each black person in their states when deciding how many representatives a state was endowed with. It would take four score more years for this nation, the nation which Abraham Lincoln believed was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," to rid itself of slavery through the whirlwind of suffering and death that was civil war. Even that Great War did not eliminate racism as it abolished slavery. The conflict between the ideal of democratic equality and the harsh reality of racism continues to this day, over a century later. Blacks continue to be marginalized in our society today, isolated in our decaying post-industrial cities and are vastly over-represented among the poorest, most desperate citizens of our nation. Racism, that hobgoblin of the weak, is far more than a fear of people who look different. It is a social construct, the result of four centuries of acclimatization.

Throughout most of America's history, racism flourished and was constructed and implemented through both law and social practice. Prior to the civil war and the subsequent abolition of slavery, blacks were chattel property and barred from any free association whites. Abraham Lincoln's celebrated Emancipation Proclamation,

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r 37 percent of welfare recipients, and 13 percent of US residents (Swarns). Rates of infection with the AIDS virus run five to ten times higher among black than white populations, and Blacks account for 48 percent of American AIDS cases once again, compared to 13 percent of the population (Center for Disease Control). In all of these dire social ills, Blacks are over-represented by factors of 3 to 4.5 to their percentage of the population. And that's not all. Black Americans as a group experience lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, lower levels of academic achievement, higher poverty rates, greater unemployment, and a higher incidence of mental illness than do white Americans. No modern day institution is more rife with Racism than our prison system. Almost two million people are behind prison and jail bars in the United States. 70% of the incarcerated population are people of color. The fastest growing group of prisoners is black women. Per capita the most numerous group are Native Americans. One third of all black men between the ages of 20-29 are incarcerated in a prison or jail, on probation, or on parole. As previously mentioned, 47 percent of state and federal inmates are black representing the la

Category: History - R