Racism in America has evolved, but not for the better. African Americans do not face the same harsh treatment they did during slavery, however, they are still being treated poorly. Racism has manifested itself in a different way, it has become more internalized rather than external. The treatment towards black people has evolved from slavery, yet it in many cases it is still similar to the treatment of 1960s America. Furthermore this treatment plays a huge role on the African American identity.
In the 18th century, the social system between white people and black people was very simple. White people viewed themselves as superior to black people. To them, black people were just another piece of property that one could obtain, own, sell and abuse. In the slave narrative of William Brown, we get to see an example of the abuse and cruelty that was inflicted upon blacks, “ I could hear every crack of the whip, and every groan and cry of my poor mother.” Brown had to watch and hear his mother get assaulted just because she was ten minutes behind the other workers in the field. From the poem “Mulatto” by Claude Mckay, he writes, “Because I am the white man’s son his own … when falls the hour I shall not hesitate into my father’s heart to plunge the knife to gain the utmost freedom that is life.” Even when white people had kids with their slaves they still saw them as nothing more than a slave and did not accept that fact that he was his own son. He needed to kill his own father just to obtain freedom because instead of treating him like a son, his father had enslaved him. Slavery nonetheless, only helped shape this internal racism towards blacks.
There was a little of bit of a shift towards how people looked at black people during the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. People were starting to see all this talent that black people had and black people were trying to make it known that they were just people too who deserved to have the same equal rights. Black people were finally given a platform and a voice that they could speak out on, even though most people would not listen. In the poem called, “I, Too,” by Langston Hughes, he says, “ Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed— I, too, am America.” In this poem, Hughes tries to emphasize how black people are also apart of the american identity and have more to offer than the color of their skin. Racism, although, was still very prominent in America, because there was still segregation in the 1960s, however the harlem renaissance was set to define who black people actually were, and they were more than slaves “- the previous image of the rural, uneducated African American to one of urban, cosmopolitan sophistication.”
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After the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, a new set of rules were being forced upon black people, the Jim Crow laws. Black people were forced to follow these inhumane laws that were clearly made to show how inferior white people wanted black people to be. Black people were restricted into doing anything concerning white people and being anywhere near them was seen as a crime. This however has inspired black people to come together and fight this injustice. Associations like the NAACP were created to unite people and express the beauty of being black.
Today racism is rather systematic because its been internalized – or at least – the racist acts of violence are. The media focuses or tends to focus on all the negative news involving any African Americans. The media constantly shows information that is skewed towards minorities and its mostly negative , thus we have developed an internal fear of black people in our subconscious, especially those people whose only view of black people is the media. Black people are more likely to be profiled than any other race. For example, Trayvon Martin who was a seventeen year old boy that was fatally shot in Florida. He was thought to be a “threat” to George Zimmerman (his attacker), because he stereotyped him as “dangerous” and “suspicious” for wearing a hoodie.
Racism is internalized to the point that the shooter himself does not think he is racist. Lisa Bloom, a legal analyst who covered the trial for NBC has said, “ I believe racial profiling is at the heart of the case, not only for Zimmerman, but for the police who did a lax job of investigating the case, for the jury, and I have new info from the jury room that substantiates this, from the judge who didn’t want anyone to talk about racial profiling even though it was so obviously a part of the case,” There have been many cases of innocent black people being killed for the exact same reasons, thus inspiring a new campaign of this decade, the black lives matter movement.
Black people are still facing prejudice towards them regardless all of the progress we’ve done. It has become more subconscious and even though some gestures may seem unbiased, people still see color above all else. Internalized racism is just as bad as external racism because there’s a false level of equality that they perceive when in reality, equality is not truly present.
The behavior towards black people has become more internal. It is still a little similar to 1960s America in some ways because black people still face that same fear or hatred that was drilled into people’s minds. In either case black people have still stood up and expressed their beauty throughout all the hatred they recieve, and come together to try to fight the racism directed towards them.
