black/white race relations

Although black/white race relations have improved dramatically in the past two centuries, racial prejudice remains problematic. To understand this prejudice requires an examination of its historical roots. Racial prejudice results from past and present social practices that shape the perceptions of individuals.

Marxism provides an explanation for the historical persistence of racial prejudice in America. The basis of racial prejudice is power imbalance. Prior to the Civil War, much of the United States was actively involved in the slave trade. Africans were transported to American shores and forced into labor. This unfree labor could only be sustained by the adoption of certain attitudes by whites toward blacks: "It was only after Africans were enslaved that African people were represented in negative terms as an Other and that certain of their phenotypical characteristics were signified as expressive of their being a different (and inferior) type of human being" (Miles, 1993, p. 50). In other words, sharp distinctions were drawn between the owners of the means of production (whites) and the suppliers of forced labor (blacks). These distinctions enabled whites to enslave their fellow human beings while suffering minimal psychological repercussions.

Racism and prejudice served important economic purposes during America's formative years. As long as a certain population (blacks) were relegated to inferior position, their labor could be exploited by the dominan

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some whites attribute an internal cause for the failure of blacks to achieve economic parity with mainstream society: "Indeed, white racism has in some ways been reinforced by the end of Jim Crow: continued deprivation of blacks has been attributed to innate inferiority rather than to discrimination, now falsely assumed by many whites to have ended" (Marx, 1998, p. 272). Whites who express prejudice against blacks based on perceived internal deficiencies fail to acknowledge the existence of institutional racism. Institutional racism describes a set of pervasive practices within organizations and systems that operate to maintain and reinforce the lower class status of certain groups: "this is so embracing an operating principle that it no longer requires conscious or even overtly racist acts to sustain it" (Rodriguez, 1987, p. 128). Institutional racism is a form of modern racism, which expresses racial prejudice in a less open manner than that which occurred in the past, yet exerts a significant influence over outcomes. Under the present system of modern racism, the majority of whites go out of their way to appear unprejudiced. Many such whites truly believe that America is now a colorblind society. These whites point t

Category: History - B