Racism Then & Now

Carina Gonzales

Professor A.

English 1A-0311

07/08/2021

Racism Then & Now

It is often argued that history repeats itself, a lot has changed, and yet so much has not changed. What is left from this initial wounding from our ancestry, is the human experience that delivers us a blueprint. Disembodiment, is a sense of powerlessness that often leads one into disarray, confusion, or disorientation. It points a way forward to take a stand, for what is just. One must be willing to hold multiple perspectives at once while viewing the discrepancies against civil liberties. Americans, it is time to pay attention to what is happening, specifically to those black and multi-racially identified. American citizens must be inclusive of more than just a myopic narrative, their own. A narrative that redefines what inclusion means. Those willing to listen, are being called to consider how to help buffer the sharp edges and uproot deeply embedded, long withstanding acts of racism, bias, and mass incarceration, all of which highlight the toxic effects of cognitive dissonance rampant in this country. Racism still exists in the deep reservoirs of our unconscious human psyche, past to present day, it is our responsibility to redirect these systemic injustices and continue to make progress towards healthy evolution, disarming further perpetuation of intergenerational harm.

An excellent piece of modern-day literature, that follows in the footsteps of James Baldwin is Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of “Between the World and Me”. Both authors carry the power to wield a truth that ultimately challenges cognitive discrepancies held by the audience, with precision. The reader goes on a journey as a witness to many crimes against the black body through the eyes of Coates, by police officers, and those upholding the law (Coates 108). He often writes about violent crimes and the injustices he witnesses, and although these stories are true, for many readers alike, what strikes him as controversial, is that the law still upholds differently for a white person than it does for an American black person, including those multi-racially identified. While many Americans believe that black Americans are free in the present moment, the audience gets a vivid awakening of Coates' lived experience, which disputes the level of freedom actually accessible to black men, women, and children, on a normal day. The lens which the reader is invited to view is as the father (Ta Nehisi-Coates), who is writing to his son (Samori), about the Dream in which Americans are living, and are still enslaved. Coates implores his son to preserve his mind and to be different, to learn from his shared experiences, and encourages him to start fresh and embrace life in new ways.

American slavery was developed as a type of currency, it is known to have originated from Britain, through the Confederacy. Some believe it is a form of white supremacy, which is ruling over one's body, more specifically at the expense of the black body. Author, Coates goes on to articulate, “The dreamers accept this as the cost of doing business, accept our bodies as currency because it is their tradition”(Coates 131). He insists that slavery has always been about politics, about the ruling, and governing as authority over, through enslavement, and through segregation, all of which resulted in financial wealth and prosperity for those who ranked as superior in this particular hierarchy. Usually, the slave owners were the ones who most benefited from the wealth that a human body could produce. Coates's experience is his own window into the abhorrent ways the law has been upheld, with legal right then and now, to govern over black bodies, often without cause with results like death and destruction, separation of families, that left one to wrangle into the steady grip of powerlessness.

Similarly, another author and poet, Audrey Lorde, shares her sentiments on keeping silent while being not only black but also lesbian, very much taboo in her time. Her journey illuminates her path, one that takes her through the promise of death questioning if she will survive a tumor. She feared the worst, like health complications due to lack of accessible healthcare, and technology that would keep her alive, let alone resources that would allow her to live post-surgery if she could access care. These events prompted the publishing of her literature. Lorde speaks on the Lesbian and Literature Panel, “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women, while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences”(Lorde 40). Lorde was a fierce woman in her time, filled with immeasurable strength, hope, and resiliency. She drew upon friends who were like-minded, together they wrote about the tyrannies they faced, not alone but in unity. She created her own narrative and safety while fostering a sense of personal sovereignty and belonging with friends over their shared stories and poems, at a time when black women did not have a voice or the right to vote. She and her colleagues prevailed and paved the way for future generations who can learn by her example.

Furthermore, we can see acts of abusive power today, by taking a look at some of the racist and xenophobic structures currently in place, simply by reading old news articles that date from the 1760s-1960s. During this time period, a new kind of revolution was slowly taking form. According to research from Jones, in a 100-page document with multiple authors, called 1619 Project, which follows the 400-year journey of slavery, “The Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that black people came from a slave race making them inferior to white people and incompatible with society, without rights and unable to claim citizenship at the hands of the constitution”(Jones19). This is during a time when the United States altered their attempts to position slavery as quietly available to those who owned land, or slaves, even requesting that free states return slaves, as it was through these economic investments that American slavery was fueling and securing financial wealth which benefitted from those perpetuating slavery as a currency, much like livestock, but human investments.

In addition to slavery, we have surmounting evidence of ongoing legal assault, in the form of police brutality, amongst black people and minorities today, many of whom are living in poverty. Take a look at the numbers of mass incarceration in the United States. Nikole-Hannah Jones explains further, “That we owe the numbers of mass incarceration in the United States to lack of due process, to prejudice and discrimination as a result of the original sin of mankind, eliciting slavery and reformed segregation came from the Supreme Court itself” (Jones 19). Today we see depictions of police brutality, amongst those who are extensions of authority, holding positions of power and political influence, further enforcing the rules of governance through policies meant to keep people in their original place. An unarmed prisoner in one's own land is supposed to have access to unalienable rights. Police-brutality perpetuates mistrust between political leaders and the American people, with the fight for power in the center.

Consequently, inhumane treatment also took place within the Japanese-American community in the 1940s. In the Japanese community, one can attest to atrocious harm inflicted upon those detained by police at the hands of the law, often officials were acquitted for these crimes, more often than not, an utterly abhorrent injustice alone. A narrator on The Soul Of America, a documentary on HBO, explains, “There was fear that Japanese Americans might serve as agents to the Imperial Government, at the time, an enemy force. Secret service had arrested community leaders, Buddhist monks, and other Japanese Americans in 1942”(Soul Of America). Are officers of the law held accountable? To what extent will the punished go unpunished on these lands? Criminals certainly have not been the only ones punishable by law to the furthest extent. To innocent people, harm was inflicted upon, in the form of overt and covert abuse of power, upon unarmed families, American citizens, born in California, were stripped of their valuables, and their land, attacked, without first complex assessment of any true crimes, and put on trains to prisons in Arkansas where they were held. This is indeed an act of racism, discrimination, bias, and the mass influx of cognitive dissonance, being permitted against those detained during the war. Courts must take into account acts of institutional racism and acts of terror that were inflicted upon all society at different times and periods, at the hands of the law.

Michelle Alexander, a civil rights advocate and lawyer, explains in her PBS interview how segregation laws took early form using fearful rhetoric in the public and media, affecting mostly the working class, which organized early forms of social control methods that would continue to segregate black Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants who did not have a social security number. Childress suggests that these methods were intended to control a narrative, “Apparently, criminologists believed that there would be an upswing from the 1960s, until the new millennium, of incarceration rates within the United States”(Childress 2015). American traditions sought to control one’s freedom of speech, and influence society using toxic and false rhetoric, that resulted in the loss of one’s basic rights, if you were a minority you were affected. As time went on, eventually, some civil liberty justice became available to blacks and that multi-racially identified, but it never should have been anyone's right to rob people of their civil dignity in the first place. The result of mass incarceration and imprisonment because of the color of one's skin equaled the staining of one's criminal record. Ruining the lives of more than 65 million people and their ability to access job security, were labeled criminals in the eyes of the United States, on public record, unable to survive and adequately provide for their families.

Enslavement meant to capture people from their own land and bring them to America in slave ships, today is unconstitutional. However, Childress in her interview claims there is current evidence that we can see ongoing enslavement still exists in America, “ There are more than 2.3 million people living in cages today, incarcerated in the United States, and more than 7 million people in correctional control being monitored daily by probation officers, parole officers, subject to stop, search, seizure without any probable cause or reasonable suspicion” (Childress2015). There are large numbers of correctional facilities, inmates, and those seeking asylum in our country, some refugees trying to flee their country and America is making money off of these institutions that house these people. Police and government policy must amend and ratify that it is unethical to treat all peoples, or those perceived as a minority, as inferior. Any person in a position of moral or legal power to exert dominance over another human with excessive, blunt force, or in cages (legal camps owned in the United States, including those utilized for incarceration, therefore must be held accountable.

Moreover, often coupled with war are pandemics, creating further hardships for Americans trying to survive and furthering the divisive war of strictly isolating borders all across the globe. Additionally, America isn’t the only country facing poverty and destitution requiring change from the government,“ In many parts of the world, hundreds of millions of people live in rampant poverty, do not have modern sanitation, endure a lack of health care infrastructure, face cultural barriers to public health interventions, and live in societies without social structures capable of responding to a public health emergency”(Parmet et. al). American lands were originally supposed to be free for all to come and achieve opportunity, what is happening currently is that refugees are attempting to flee their governments and risking their lives to do so. These are dark times for many and it is in the power of the people to change policies that currently block American citizens from experiencing safety within their own lands and finding better ways to educate the upcoming generations where the problems occurring now, will be in their hands. Education is essential to empower those who will come into future political positions.

In conclusion, the only remedy is through reparations, the past is unchangeable. It is the first stage, acknowledging the plunder and oppressive forces, the lie which is the American dream exists freely when it clearly does not. It is imperative to shift our consciousness and consider the entirety upon which our organizational structures and systems have been built. We must take into account how the world of hierarchy implores each person to consider the responsibility they must bear, in the current model of our social construction of race in this country. What is the bigger piece to this ongoing puzzle? How we can diffuse the trauma of generations past that is here now, as a result, pledging allegiance, with affirmative faith, in truth that we are willing to take measures of action? What will it take and how many will we allow, until we decide that no more, shall be disembodied members of society any longer? Will we choose to incorporate inclusively, trauma-informed modalities that help bridge the gap on racism in the present day, by following the voice of Lorde, who lest we not forget demands we turn our silence into a loud remarkable voice?

Works Cited

Coates, Ta Nehisi. Between the World and Me. BCP Literary, Inc., 2015.

Jones, Nikole-Hannah. “1619 Project.” New York Times [New York, New York], 14 Aug. 2019, p. 19.

Lorde, Audrey. “The Transformation of Silence Into Action.” Sinister Wisdom, vol. 6, 1978, p. 40

• Paper delivered at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel.” Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977.

Parmet, Wendy E., et. al, American Journal of Public Health, The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Not — Introduction to the Special Section.00900036, Nov2018, Vol. 108, Issue 11

PBS, et al. “Michelle Alexander: ‘A System of Racial & Social Control.’” FRONTLINE, 29 Apr. 2014, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/michelle-alexander-a-system-of-racial-and-social-control.

“The Soul of America.” HBO, uploaded by HBO, 9 Aug. 2020, (35:00–43:00) www.hbo.com/documentaries/the-soul-of-america.