perspective on racism essay

11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Describe how major sociological perspectives view race and ethnicity
Identify examples of culture of prejudice

Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity

We can examine race and ethnicity through three major sociological perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. As you read through these theories, ask yourself which one makes the most sense and why.

Functionalism

Functionalism emphasizes that all the elements of society have functions that promote solidarity and maintain order and stability in society. Hence, we can observe people from various racial and ethnic backgrounds interacting harmoniously in a state of social balance. Problems arise when one or more racial or ethnic groups experience inequalities and discriminations. This creates tension and conflict resulting in temporary dysfunction of the social system. For example, the killing of a Black man George Floyd by a White police officer in 2020 stirred up protests demanding racial justice and changes in policing in the United States. To restore the society’s pre-disturbed state or to seek a new equilibrium, the police department and various parts of the system require changes and compensatory adjustments.

Another way to apply the functionalist perspective to race and ethnicity is to discuss the way racism can contribute positively to the functioning of society by strengthening bonds between in-group members through the ostracism of out-group members. Consider how a community might increase solidarity by refusing to allow outsiders access. On the other hand, Rose (1951) suggested that dysfunctions associated with racism include the failure to take advantage of talent in the subjugated group, and that society must divert from other purposes the time and effort needed to maintain artificially constructed racial boundaries. Consider how much money, time, and effort went toward maintaining separate and unequal educational systems prior to the civil rights movement.

In the view of functionalism, racial and ethnic inequalities must have served an important function in order to exist as long as they have. This concept, sometimes, can be problematic. How can racism and discrimination contribute positively to society? Nash (1964) focused his argument on the way racism is functional for the dominant group, for example, suggesting that racism morally justifies a racially unequal society. Consider the way slave owners justified slavery in the antebellum South, by suggesting Black people were fundamentally inferior to White and preferred slavery to freedom.

Interactionism

For symbolic interactionists, race and ethnicity provide strong symbols as sources of identity. In fact, some interactionists propose that the symbols of race, not race itself, are what lead to racism. Famed Interactionist Herbert Blumer (1958) suggested that racial prejudice is formed through interactions between members of the dominant group: Without these interactions, individuals in the dominant group would not hold racist views. These interactions contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group, and thus maintains the status quo. An example of this might be an individual whose beliefs about a particular group are based on images conveyed in popular media, and those are unquestionably believed because the individual has never personally met a member of that group.

Another way to apply the interactionist perspective is to look at how people define their races and the race of others. Some people who claim a White identity have a greater amount of skin pigmentation than some people who claim a Black identity; how did they come to define themselves as Black or White?

Conflict Theory

Conflict theories are often applied to inequalities of gender, social class, education, race, and ethnicity. A conflict theory perspective of U.S. history would examine the numerous past and current struggles between the White ruling class and racial and ethnic minorities, noting specific conflicts that have arisen when the dominant group perceived a threat from the minority group. In the late nineteenth century, the rising power of Black Americans after the Civil War resulted in draconian Jim Crow laws that severely limited Black political and social power. For example, Vivien Thomas (1910–1985), the Black surgical technician who helped develop the groundbreaking surgical technique that saves the lives of “blue babies” was classified as a janitor for many years, and paid as such, despite the fact that he was conducting complicated surgical experiments. The years since the Civil War have showed a pattern of attempted disenfranchisement, with gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts aimed at predominantly minority neighborhoods.

Intersection Theory

Feminist sociologist Patricia Hill Collins (1990) further developed intersection theory , originally articulated in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, which suggests we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other attributes (Figure 11.4). When we examine race and how it can bring us both advantages and disadvantages, it is important to acknowledge that the way we experience race is shaped, for example, by our gender and class. Multiple layers of disadvantage intersect to create the way we experience race. For example, if we want to understand prejudice, we must understand that the prejudice focused on a White woman because of her gender is very different from the layered prejudice focused on an Asian woman in poverty, who is affected by stereotypes related to being poor, being a woman, and her ethnic status.

Culture of Prejudice

Culture of prejudice refers to the theory that prejudice is embedded in our culture. We grow up surrounded by images of stereotypes and casual expressions of racism and prejudice. Consider the casually racist imagery on grocery store shelves or the stereotypes that fill popular movies and advertisements. It is easy to see how someone living in the Northeastern United States, who may know no Mexican Americans personally, might gain a stereotyped impression from such sources as Speedy Gonzalez or Taco Bell’s talking Chihuahua. Because we are all exposed to these images and thoughts, it is impossible to know to what extent they have influenced our thought processes.

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Ayn Rand’s Individualist Perspective on Racism

Rand’s essay “Racism” advocates reason, individualism and capitalism as antidotes to the evils of racism.

In August 1963, the spiritual leader of the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a now-famous speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., calling for an end to racism in America.

“I have a dream,” declared King, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

In that same turbulent year, Ayn Rand published “ Racism ,” a remarkable essay that not only denounces racism but identifies its philosophic roots and psychological motivation.

Almost sixty years later, as the controversies over racism rage on, Rand’s essay is worth reading for its unconventional analysis of racism and its diagnosis of the many confusions surrounding this complex phenomenon. The buzzwords of today — “critical race theory,” “anti-racism,” “woke” culture — may be different, but the issues are timeless: “What is racism? What are its causes? How do we recognize it? What should we do about it?”

A lifelong champion of reason and individualism, Rand loathed racism, calling it “a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

As for racism’s psychological root, Rand located it in “the racist’s sense of his own inferiority,” which leads to a “quest for the unearned . . . above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).”

In light of today’s “anti-racist” policy proposals — which work to institutionalize race as a criterion in hiring, promotion, university admission, and other areas — Rand’s argument against advocates of racial quotas is particularly relevant.

Instead of fighting against racial discrimination, they are demanding that racial discrimination be legalized and enforced. . . . Instead of fighting for “color-blindness” in social and economic issues, they are proclaiming that “color-blindness” is evil and that “color” should be made a primary consideration.

In stark contrast to mainstream thought today, Rand argues that the only antidote to racism is “the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.”

To explore Rand’s perspective on racism, you can read “Racism” in Rand’s collection of essays in The Virtue of Selfishness , or online here on the Ayn Rand Institute’s Campus website.

Image credit: itakdalee /Shutterstock.com.

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Aaron Smith , PhD in philosophy, is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute where he lectures and develops educational content for the Institute’s intellectual training and outreach programs. He is a member of the Ayn Rand University faculty.

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The Psychology of Racism

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Verywell / Joshua Seong

Psychological History

Prejudice vs. Racism

Cultural tools that perpetuate racism.

Explanations

Combating Racism and Promoting Anti-Racism

The psychological study of racism can be summed up in one word: evolving. How society thinks about race and racism has changed and with it, the psychological discourse has changed as well.

Many Americans, particularly White Americans, were complacent going into the year 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic started, the complacency started to wane and was replaced with fear and a sense of unrest. When George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25, 2020, a bright spotlight was redirected to an uncomfortable reality that most BIPOC Americans already knew: Racism is still alive and well in America.

At a Glance

With the added spotlight has come a renewed interest in understanding racism. In order to combat racism, it's vital to recognize its effects and take steps to understand the factors that contribute to it. Keep reading to learn more about the psychology of racism, including historical perspectives and more current views on the individual and systemic nature of racism.

Psychological History of Racism

The psychological understanding of racism has historically been focused on individual psychology—how racism is driven by the beliefs and behaviors of individual people (the social-psychological approach ). But there are severe limitations to viewing racism solely through this lens.

Today, some researchers are using and advocating for a cultural-psychological approach , which views racism as ideas and practices embedded in culture, where individuals shape culture and culture shapes individuals.

Early Theories of Racism

Early psychological theories of racism justified the domination of one race over another because of Charles Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest . It was theorized that there was some survival advantage to being racist. However, modern hunter-gatherer tribes were not found to exclude out-groups (people not included in a particular group), and this problematic theory was rejected.

Then, race psychology theorized that there were brain differences between races and that intelligence tests and segregation were the answer. Later in 1954, American psychologist Gordon Allport argued in his book, "The Nature of Prejudice," that people use categories to understand their world better and that racism was simply an artifact of that process.

Whatever the history of the psychology of racism is in the United States, the actual history of racism is that White people have been and continue to be afforded benefits in society because of a system that was set up for their benefit. Racism is real regardless of whether White people recognize or accept it.

Early explanations of racism were often inherently racist. Modern views on racism don't simply focus on individual acts of racism but also look at how racism is perpetuated at a societal and cultural level.

Many people misunderstand and confuse the definitions of racism and prejudice. Though related, they are different.

Prejudice is a negative preconception or attitude toward members of a group based on shared characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, age, religion, language, class, or culture. Prejudice can be racial, but it can also be sexist, ageist, or classist, for example.

Prejudiced beliefs are usually learned early in life and can affect behavior in subtle and overt ways. For example, a teacher with prejudice might hold the belief that girls aren't good at math. That belief would then affect the teacher's behavior with their students, whether consciously or subconsciously.

In contrast, racism is directed at a particular racial group and is based on systems of power and oppression. Racism is often seen as being a problem with individual racial prejudice, but it is important to recognize that it is much more multifaceted and systemic.

People commonly think of racism in terms of overt individual actions and ideologies (the social-psychological understanding), but it also exists within systems, organizations, and cultures (the cultural-psychological understanding). In this way, racism is embedded in the reality of everyday life.

Since racism is part of daily life, cultural patterns, and historical narratives in the U.S., it is often difficult for people to see how familiar and normalized ideas promote racialized views and behaviors.

Racism isn't just about individuals demonstrating racial prejudice or engaging in direct acts of racial discrimination; it is often less immediately obvious and much more insidious, affecting institutions like the justice system, in which Black defendants regularly face harsher sentences than White defendants for the same crimes, for example.

Phia S. Salter, Glenn Adams, and Michael J. Perez in "Current Directions in Psychological Science"

Decreases in overt expressions of racial bias might suggest that racial prejudice (and therefore racism) is less extreme in modern America; however, many psychologists suggest that racial bias has gone underground, and they have mounted substantial evidence that it instead thrives in subtle forms.

While most blatant individual demonstrations of racism are no longer tolerated or viewed as acceptable in "mainstream" contemporary American society, our society's understanding of what is racist continues to evolve. In reality, our institutions are not so far removed from the years of colonialism, slavery, and segregation, and racism is still ignored, condoned, or even actively supported in many facets of American life.

In order to better understand how racism operates, it's important to look beyond individual psychology to the systemic and cultural practices that continue to uphold racism.

The dominant American culture's discomfort with race and racism continues to result in harmful beliefs and sentiments that promote ignorance about racism and uphold the racial status quo. Perhaps you've heard someone say that they are "color-blind," "don't see color," or that "race doesn't matter." Maybe you've even said something to that effect yourself.

Those ideas, though often promoted as inclusive , actually shut down important conversations about race and deny the fact that racism exists not only on an individual level but as a systemic problem. It's the same responding to " Black Lives Matter " with "All Lives Matter."

This denial of the significance of race is a tool that allows the dominant racial group to legitimize the effects of racism under the guise of individual merit. Through this lens, people in positions of power can credit their successes to their own hard work while positioning the disadvantages oppressed racial groups face to personal rather than systemic failures.

Continuing to support this individualistic American narrative results in blindness to the realities of America's racist systems. For example, research has shown in no uncertain terms that Black Americans experience disparities in income, employment, education, and health. But research shows that White Americans still tend to be less aware of these racial realities than people who are part of racial minority groups.

Ignoring racism doesn't make it go away. Rather, it perpetuates it, effectively shutting down the possibility of moving forward by not having important conversations about the problems and possible solutions.

Explanations for Racism

As more attention is being given to the racism ingrained in our society, many more people are seeking explanations for it. Is it survival of the fittest, or a psychological defense mechanism to help people identify with a primary group and feel more secure? Below is a list of possible psychological explanations for why racism exists.

Personal Insecurity

It's true that those who lack an identity and struggle with insecurity may seek group membership. Consequently, after finding a group, members of the group may start to alienate non-group members . Sometimes, hostility arises toward those people who have been alienated.

While in a clique, people tend to think and behave more like the people they surround themselves with. It becomes much easier to attack others when you're among people who share the same viewpoint.

Racism comes in when groups are formed based on characteristics like race, bolstered by beliefs of superiority, and supported by systems of oppression.

Lack of Compassion

Alienation of others eventually leads to less compassion for those who have been ostracized. People begin to only show compassion and empathy for those they regularly associate with.

Consider, for example, television segments asking viewers to donate to causes that support food security for families in Africa. These messages may be easier for a person to dismiss if they don't identify with the group or culture in need. This dismissal may or may not be overt racism, but it begins with a lack of empathy .

Projection of Flaws

When people feel bad about themselves or recognize their shortcomings, instead of dealing with them and trying to fix them, they may project their self-loathing onto others . Alienated groups can easily become scapegoats for those who ignore their own personal flaws.

Poor Mental Health

Is racism a sign of poor mental health? Not necessarily, but it can be. For example, paranoid personality disorder and narcissism are both mental health disorders that are characterized in part by feelings of insecurity, which may make a person more likely to hold racist beliefs or engage in racist behaviors.

But it's important to recognize that racist beliefs and actions are certainly not limited to people with mental health disorders.

Hatred and Fear

Extreme hatred is almost always based on fear. People may feel threatened by people they view as "different" or "foreign." They may fear losing power. To combat this fear, some people may seek social support from others with similar fears, perpetuating the cycle.

Racism is not a mental illness, but it is certainly related to psychological adaptation. Factors such as personal insecurity, lack of empathy, and projection may contribute to racism.

Factors That Contribute to Racism

In a 2020 paper published in the journal American Psychologist , Steven O. Roberts, a Stanford psychologist, and Michael T. Rizzo, a New York University postdoctoral fellow, discuss what leads to racism. With their paper, the authors aimed to provide an overview of several of the major factors theorized to contribute to racism in America. Those factors are the following.

Humans learn to group people into categories based on race from a young age. Roberts and Rizzo hold that racial categories are not inborn but become significant because "they are federally sanctioned (e.g., by the U.S. Census Bureau), easily employed by individuals, and because they directly tell people which racial categories to form."

Category labels can support a belief that category members have a shared identity, which promotes stereotypes. This categorical grouping and the concept of shared identity later lead to factions.

Categories lead to factions in which people are assigned to a racial group and begin to strongly identify with their racial ingroup. Positive perceptions of their assigned racial group and the desire to show cooperation, loyalty, and empathy to the group commonly lead to behavior that benefits the group, even to the detriment of another group.

Beyond loyalty to their own group, group members can also begin to show hostility toward other groups as a result of real or perceived competition or threats to their self-image, values, or resources.

Segregation

Being segregated from other racial groups greatly influences attitudes and feelings about race. Lack of contact with other racial groups tends to narrow and harden a person's beliefs and opinions about others and offers few chances for negative beliefs to be challenged.

That is why segregation by race early in life can influence the development of racist attitudes .

A hierarchical system assigns wealth, power, and influence unevenly across groups. Hierarchies are further reinforced by beliefs that attribute power and status to individual characteristics rather than systematic influences, ultimately resulting in the dominant group believing that they are, in fact, superior to non-dominant groups.

Power grants groups the ability to build a society that benefits them. It also allows them to create what are considered to be culturally acceptable standards. They control resources and are allowed to exploit others and assume dominance. When power is distributed along racial divides as it is in the U.S., so are advantages.

The media plays a role in sustaining racism. On one level there is simply representation (or lack thereof). When media consistently portrays a mostly White cast of actors in magazines, television shows, and movies, it makes the White culture the "dominant" or "normal" American culture.

On another level, there is how the media portrays racial groups. When media reinforces racial stereotypes in its representation of different racial groups, it also reinforces individual racial prejudice and the systems that perpetuate institutionalized racism.

The final factor Roberts and Rizzo describe is perhaps the most important. It is the passive racism that results from ignorance, apathy , or denial. When racism is systemic and ingrained in social structures, all that is required to sustain it is inaction.

People do not need to be actively racist in their beliefs and actions to support racist systems—they simply need to do nothing to change those systems.

Research suggests that many factors contribute to racism on both individual and systemic levels. These factors include categorization, factions that pit people against each other, social hierarchies, power, and media influences.

When faced with the sheer magnitude of racism in America, it can be easy to feel powerless. But there are things you can do on an individual level to influence both interpersonal racism and systemic racism. Below are some ways in which racism can be combated on an individual level:

Build a system of equity in which all communities are equally engaged.
Direct attention to the problem of racism instead of sweeping it under the rug or pretending that it does not exist.
When you hear racist attitudes, challenge them ; ask people for the reason behind their thinking and encourage them to consider alternatives.
Remember that change does not occur overnight and be patient when it seems like the progress being made is slow; even small changes can lead to big results when you are consistent in your actions.
Teach children inclusion and empathy from a young age so that they grow up to be adults who can identify racism and challenge it.
Conduct psychological research on how social norms change and how best to implement systems that result in the changing attitudes of people in the dominant group so that systems will also be affected.
Design a curriculum that addresses the legacy of the United States' history of racism and teaches students how to be aware of their own inherent biases .
Engage in contact in favorable conditions with other groups, and work toward shared goals with people from different races.
Seek and foster friendships across racial lines so that you can start seeing people as individuals rather than as just part of a race.

The way children learn about American history can affect their understanding of racism. For example, one study looked at how Black History Month was taught in predominantly White and predominantly Black schools. The researchers found marked differences in how information was presented.

In mostly White schools, students were exposed to displays and discussions that were highly abstract and focused more on individual achievements rather than addressing racism. At mostly Black schools, however, information more directly addressed racism and the effects of racial barriers.

Combating racism is about more than being "not racist," which often equates to passive racism. Learning to be actively anti-racist is essential. For example, research has shown that taking a more direct, anti-racist approach to teaching children about history has a greater impact on their understanding of the real effects of racism.

Keep in Mind

For too long, racism has been relegated to the past or reduced to individual beliefs and actions. As a result, America's lingering systemic and institutionalized racism has been overlooked and allowed to persist and progress. But cultural-psychological approaches to understanding racism challenge these ideas. Racism is in more ways a cultural phenomenon than an individual psychological occurrence.

What this means is that you do not need to be racist to uphold racist systems. We each have a personal responsibility to challenge racism on an individual level, but we also must look toward the cultural structures that perpetuate individual bias and the injustice that racism causes.

Salter PS, Adams G, Perez MJ. Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A cultural-psychological perspective . Curr Dir Psychol Sci . 2018;27(3):150-155. doi:10.1177/0963721417724239

Carl N. The fallacy of equating the hereditarian hypothesis with racism . Psych . 2019;1(1):262-278. doi:10.3390/psych1010018

Rusch H. The evolutionary interplay of intergroup conflict and altruism in humans: A review of parochial altruism theory and prospects for its extension . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences . 2014;281(1794). doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.1539

Roberts S, Rizzo M. The psychology of American racism . American Psychologist . 2020. doi:10.1037/amp0000642

Allport G. The Nature of Prejudice . Addison-Wesley; 1954.

Olson M, Zabel K. Measures of prejudice . In: Nelson D, ed. Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination . Psychology Press; 2016:175-211.

United States Sentencing Commission. Demographic Differences in Sentencing .

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PEW Research Center. Sharp racial divisions in reactions to Brown, Garner decisions .

Salter PS, Adams G. On the intentionality of cultural products: Representations of black history as psychological affordances . Front Psychol . 2016;7. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01166

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

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Civil CONVERSATION CHALLENGE

What Students Are Saying About Race and Racism in America

We invited teenagers to join a moderated discussion about racial equity and justice. Here is a summary of the 2,000-plus thoughtful, passionate comments.

By Nicole Daniels

Note: We have a lesson plan for teaching with this collection of student comments.

This past fall, we held a Civil Conversation Challenge for students, inviting young people to engage in respectful, productive discussions about some of the most divisive issues of the 2020 presidential election. In a series of online forums hosted by The Learning Network, they reflected on their experiences of the coronavirus pandemic and debated education, voting and other issues they cared about. Across forums, they told us that “ 2020 has been a wake-up call .”

But the discussion that perhaps challenged students the most was our forum on the fight for racial justice , in which we asked them to share their opinions on protests, policing, systemic racism and more.

By the end, the conversation had generated over 2,000 comments, and if you read even a few of the highlights we feature below, we think you’ll see why we thought it merited its own roundup. Though we were impressed by student posts on all of the topics in our challenge, this forum was special.

Some students shared heartbreaking stories of discrimination. Several told us what it’s like to have a family member who is a police officer. And many wrote about becoming deeply aware of racism for the first time after the death of George Floyd and the protests that followed. Throughout, the teenage participants showed a willingness to write candidly about their own experiences as well as to stretch to understand the experiences of others.

But this discussion is also a microcosm of a conversation happening across American society, and it mirrored its sharp divisions, too. Students engaged passionately on core issues like the existence of white privilege, the extent of systemic racism, the legacy of slavery, the effectiveness of protests and the role of the police.

Though the roundup below doesn’t feature conversations so much as individual posts, it is still easy to see how students handled these difficult topics thoughtfully and respectfully. We have published responses in thematic groups so that you can easily navigate the various points of view, but clicking on each student’s name will take you back to the original conversation so you can read it in that context if you like.

Thank you to all who participated and to the teachers who brought their classes to the discussion. As always, but especially for a forum as important as this one, we are grateful to be a place students can share their voices.

Please note: All student comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity, but we did not change individual words. Therefore, while it is Times style to capitalize “Black” when describing people and cultures of African origin , student uses of the word remain rendered the way they were originally submitted.

“As a black girl, I have experienced a lot of pain because of my skin color.”

As a black girl, I have dealt with a lot of comments from others over the years pertaining my skin color and other features that make me a person of color. I still remember girls telling me my hair looked “normal” after straightening it, or girls petting my curly hair calling it “different,” treating me not like a person, but an exotic object. During the summer, when moments like the Black Lives Matter protests took place, I realized how many of my “friends” weren’t willing to say anything. It made me feel sad knowing they decided to stay silent. I also couldn’t believe the city I was born in would later be known as the city where the life of Floyd was taken.

— Naomi, Georgia

As a black young man in America, I feel every day is a new worry. I’d like to be able to go out and not be afraid of something happening to me, my friends, my family or other people of color. When the death of George Floyd occurred, something definitely changed. People became more aware of the fear that people of color go through in everyday life situations. I’d love to one day see a country where skin color doesn’t contribute to how a human being is treated.

— Q, New York

As a young black girl, I’ve experienced racism numerous times. I’ve been called the N-word, been told that it should’ve been you instead of Breonna, etc. All things that hurt me. People wonder why these protests get so violent and so intense. It’s because racial inequality and all these problems aren’t being addressed.

— Camryn, New York

As a black girl, I have experienced a lot of pain because of my skin color. A lot of my childhood friends were nonblack, and I often was made to feel like an outsider with them. Once I was told by a white classmate, “Wow, your hair is finally normal!” upon having my hair straightened for picture day. Suddenly, I felt as though my natural curls were abnormal, and I never wanted to be abnormal again. So, the internalized racism began to grow and flourish within me. I was so ashamed to be black, so desperate to not be seen as “hood” or “ghetto” that I demeaned my own people in order to raise myself up …

Today, I am very pro-black; I love my hair, and I love my skin. But it’s still hard to find beauty in the mirror when I go to look. Sometimes it hurts knowing that lighter girls will always be seen as being prettier than me, that I don’t fit most people’s idea of being the “acceptable version” of blackness. But I have to remind myself that it’s OK, things will change. I’m still young enough to help create a future where no other black girl will suffer like I did, or how I sometimes still do.

— KJ, Texas

“This summer was really the first time that I was actually aware of the impact racism had.”

I am white, and I live in a predominately white suburban town. I have never been treated differently for the color of my skin because I am a product of white privilege. I was not very politically active until George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter protests began in May. Since then, I’ve tried to better understand the hardships that people of color endure as a result of racism. I think it is of the utmost importance to speak out against corrupt systems, especially if you are not affected by these systems. Because in my opinion, choosing not to speak up against something because it does not involve you is proof that the system is working. Turning a blind eye with the thinly veiled excuse “politics isn’t for me” can no longer mask selfish ignorance. This is not the time to be anti-political because silence is contributing to the blatant discrimination of black Americans. Hiding behind privilege instead of utilizing that very privilege to initiate change can no longer be justified.

— Annie, New Jersey

I think that this summer was really the first time that I was actually aware of the impact racism had. My parents have taught me, from a young age, that racism and injustice exist but I guess I did not understand to what extent. As a person who benefits from white privilege, I feel kind of guilty that I had not realized how it affected me before. Also, as a person who cannot yet vote, I am struggling to find ways that I can help make change. Do you have any suggestions?

— L, Pennsylvania

In ninth grade, before the pandemic and killing of George Floyd, I used to be thankful to the police officers who stood at our doors to prevent any school shooting. After hearing of the George Floyd incident, I remember suddenly feeling like the police hadn’t made our school safer at all.

To be honest, it infuriated me. I was raised in a bubble that taught me to think racism was extinct. To think that the police protected all of us as equals … George Floyd was a father, a son and a brother. Imagine seeing your son get murdered by the people that are supposed to protect you.

As a white person, I will never truly understand the horrors of being discriminated against for my skin color. I am privileged, not because of what I am, but because of what I’m not. The best thing I and other white people can do is listen and share. We will never completely know what racism will feel like, but we can listen and try to understand the pain of being harassed or attacked by the people who are supposed to protect you.

— Lindsay, North Carolina

As a kid with divorced parents, I have two sides of my family: My mom’s house, where we can have talks about racism and go to protests together; and my dad’s house, where the existence of white privilege is denied completely and even joked about. I’ve seen news, real and fake, about the police cases and the protests, and I’ve come to a few conclusions. The first is that people with privilege and power will do or deny anything to stay in that place, even when they have proof it’s hurting others. The second is that if it were only a few bad apples, those “bad apples” would be fired and arrested — but they’re not. The police system protects racists and always has, as a system born out of catching runaway slaves. Until we dismantle and rebuild every racist system in our country, racism will be a problem, and everyone will have the choice to educate themselves or stay ignorant

— Claire Elise, North Carolina

I am from France and I can tell that the death of George Floyd has touched everyone in the world and his death has awakened the spirits. Some demonstrations have been organized, and even though I couldn’t go, I have followed this history on the internet, on TV news and in magazines.

I believe that we can change the mentality at the moment. The new generation is respectful of each other and is able to change things. We are strong and determined to put an end to racism!

— Julie, Paris

“I never once thought in my life that the hatred for law enforcement would EVER go this far.”

As a daughter of a police officer and a granddaughter of a retired police chief, I never once thought in my life that the hatred for law enforcement would EVER go this far. I was raised to treat everyone equally no matter what. With that being said, I cannot speak for people of color. What I can say is that police officers are trained on how to handle situations like the one with George Floyd. Like both President Trump and Joe Biden said last night [at the debate], there are bad apples in every profession and more could be done to weed out the bad cops. The officer that killed George Floyd deserved to be put away. Did his actions deserve a protest? Maybe. Should the protest still be happening? Definitely not. Police officers provide safety in a community and have been a staple for ages. Law enforcement should never make you feel threatened unless you are doing the wrong thing. We should support everyone no matter their color or occupation. So I agree that all lives do matter and that we should not only back the blue but back all other first responders and essential workers.

— Kylie, California

In the case of George Floyd, I believe that what happened was a terrible tragedy and should forever be talked about when racism in this country is brought up. However, the cop that murdered George Floyd killed him on his own accord, showing an example of individual racism instead of systemic … How the murderers of George Floyd are tried will change my opinion of systemic racism and other cases the organization Black Lives Matter has brought to attention.

— Jason, New York

Systemically, the United States does not discriminate racially. Unfortunately, there are and always will be racist individuals in any and all countries. People of color disproportionately attend poorer schools because residents of a county must go to a school in that district, which is why many people generally leave poorer counties and move to richer ones …

I believe racism is a horrible issue at any given time, and legitimately racist individuals should be shamed. However, the word racism has lost meaning nowadays because of how commonly it’s thrown around. America is not a racist nation: it’s the world’s largest immigrant destination, but there certainly are racist individuals who need to change. So many people think that racism means stereotypes and saying “offensive” words, when legitimate racism (hate crimes and actual discrimination) is actually quite rare.

— Kai, California

I am a white male and am right leaning. I feel that there should be a change in our police forces and our opinions toward other people. At the same time there is different way to go about the situations than what the people of the Black Lives Matter movement are trying to accomplish. The Black Lives Matter movement is trying to defund the police, which is the opposite of what you want do. With less money, the less officers we can have to keep us as a people safe. I believe that we should fund the police forces more so the police can get more training, have therapists they can go to, and so we can keep the police in the correct state of mind. In turn there will be change and less police brutality. I also feel that it’s not just black lives that matter, it should be all lives matter. Having this mind-set you are able to bring everyone up to be equal, not just one race, so there is no “white privilege” or any other race getting more than another.

— Spencer, Utah

“The first time I began thinking about my racial identity was when my family and I moved into a predominantly white town.”

Being a Latina makes my perspective on the topic of racial inequalities quite sensitive. The first time I began thinking about my racial identity was when my family and I moved into a predominantly white town. I truly wish my parents had prepared me more for the environment that we were moving into, yet I believe that deep down they did not expect to encounter racism.

Witnessing and sometimes even experiencing all the issues and injustices around me has propelled my interest in history, in hopes of simply understanding and helping to educate others. As a little girl, I would witness racism against indigenous people in my home country, Ecuador. I began noticing it at about the age of 12. It was only after studying the age of exploration, the Incan empire and colonization that I began to make sense of such horrible actions.

With the death of George Floyd, I began wondering how racial injustices are manifesting during the Covid-19 pandemic. I began thinking about access to health care and unemployment benefits. According to The New York Times, 40 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic. How many of these people were minorities? How many of these minorities were able to receive relief from the government? Do all students have equal access to technology to facilitate their online learning?

After witnessing so many acts of racial injustice, I worry that little by little, humans are losing their empathy and love for one another.

— Paula, New Jersey

“Why are your eyes so small? Can you even see?” was my first experience with racial remarks. It was no big deal to me, thinking it was only fun teasing. I can vividly remember my first day of 6th grade, walking to my assigned seat and a girl laughs at me, pulling her eyes back to make them small. I didn’t know what to say and I thought I was being judged.

“So how does dog taste?” “Say hi to Uncle Kim Jong-un for me.” “Go back to North Korea.” When this was said, it created an image in my head that I wasn’t like anyone else, I didn’t fit into society …

While all my experiences were in the past, I considered the fact that society was changing and I wouldn’t receive any more racist comments but then Covid-19 hit. I no longer felt safe sneezing or coughing in public. Passing down aisles and places were frightening and my heart would race hoping I wouldn’t cough or sneeze. I would hold back the itch in my throat and the sniffle under my mask. People would back up against walls, trying their best not to touch me. This was my first experience with nonverbal racism. One step we can take to get closer to achieving racial justice is by starting in the household.

— Lauren, California

My race has been classified as the “model minority,” resulting in negative effects on the fight for equality.

The term model minority is based on the stereotype that Asian-American children are born “gifted.” It characterizes Asian-Americans as a “docile racial group that has achieved financial and educational success in the United States” …

It was only this year after discussing the protests occurring for George Floyd with other Asians that I had come to the realization that the ideas my family had perpetrated on me were the epitome of the “model minority.”

Putting Asian-Americans on a pedestal is destructive toward African Americans and the racial inequalities they face. It dismisses their struggles by using the Asian-American stories as testimonial representation to back up false claims against African Americans that classify them as “lazy” and “hostile.”

It is important to discuss these matters as the only true way to create change is through an open mind-set and discussion.

— Jay, New York

“The point of privilege is that you don’t feel that.”

So, I’m white, and I grew up in a town that I think is about 75 to 80 percent white. I grew up in an immense place of privilege — I never had to worry about being racially profiled, I’ve never experienced racial discrimination, and I don’t have relatives who have been unjustly shot or killed by police. And my guess is most white people, specifically white people in my community, haven’t. That’s why it was so frustrating over the summer, and especially after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to hear many of my peers try to justify their deaths. I think, especially when it comes to the topic of racial justice, we need to amplify the voices of black people and people of color, instead of silencing them because we, as white people haven’t experienced the same. I find it completely ironic when kids in my grade talk about not experiencing harassment or discrimination by the police or our security officers while being white. Like, of course we haven’t. The point of privilege is that you don’t feel that.

— Eleanor, Illinois

I grew up with white privilege in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Racism was not evident in my everyday life, and even in school I was not exposed enough to what happened and was happening in the United States. Yes, we learned about slavery and racism in the United States, especially racism during the time of Martin Luther King Jr., but we kind of just stopped there. We learned nothing of police brutality, white privilege, systematic racism, generational wealth, etc. Last year I was a part of a club called Community-Wide Dialogue that discussed racism issues that I had never heard of before. It was eye-opening. Every school should incorporate those extremely important topics into their curriculum, to help promote change, understanding and empathy.

— Sarah, New York

4.9 million fathers, daughters, sons, mothers; humans were brought to Brazil to suffer a fate worse than death: slavery. 4.9 million lives were ended because of the color of their skin. And still, after centuries of pain and fighting to make their voices heard, black lives do not matter for some. Being a child from an upper-middle class white family, I never experienced prejudice in my own skin. I grew accustomed to the bubble in which I was raised, and it wasn’t until I reached a considerably advanced age that I started to look at my surroundings and realize how messed up our society is. Why I am privileged because my skin is lighter than someone else’s? It doesn’t make ANY sense … Even though the fight to end racism has followed us until this very date, the need to make even more civil rights movements makes me think that we did not advance as a society. We will remain frozen in time until equality is reached.

— Maria, Recife, Brazil

“Racism does exist in people … but America and the system as a whole is not racist in any way.”

I think the term racism is thrown around a lot in today’s society. America, as a country, is not racist. Go to almost any other country in the world and you will have it significantly worse. Today, there is not a single law that gives opportunity or rights to one race that is not given to another. In other words, everyone in America is treated equally. That doesn’t mean there aren’t racist people, because there always will be. There are racist white, black and Asian people, etc., but the system, as a whole, is not racist. My overall point is that racism does exist in people, and it always will, but America and the system as a whole is not racist in any way.

— Nate, Ohio

First of all, I do not believe racism and systemic racism is a very big threat in America as compared to many other problems or even to other countries. As a Chinese immigrant minority, I have not experienced nor heard of any racism in my life in the United States. Instead, I think America is truly one of the most diverse nations made up of people of all different races, cultures and religions. The people here are all-encompassing, and the police are human too. As many police officers say, “No one hates a bad cop more than a good cop.”

— Jiayi, New York

Racism is a very strong topic and if I’m being completely honest, I hate talking about it. Me, personally, I think America is one of the most racially equal countries. A white man and a black man have the same opportunities to succeed and thrive. There has become a common stereotype that black people don’t have equal opportunity as white people. I love when I see black doctors, businessmen and other workers because I know how hard they have worked. Just as hard as a white man would have.

— Nicholas, North Carolina

Everybody knows America has had a troubled past with slavery, civil rights, racial discrimination, the whole nine yards. So in response to all that, “Does the United States owe the descendants of enslaved people an apology — or, as some argue, financial reparations?” No. Most, if not everyone, in the United States right now didn’t own slaves nor were they slaves. If somebody owed them an apology, it was owed a long time ago. It is irrelevant now. The United States especially does not owe them financial reparations. Why should today’s leaders pay back on something they never did, to people that were never slaves anyway? If the problem is trying to help people who came from a slavery background and has a poor family, well there are plenty of financial aid programs for them. They want equality, yet also wish to get special things because of actions our ancestors made, not us.

— Bella, Mississippi

“Police reform should most definitely be a priority.”

Police reform should most definitely be a priority. Personally, I think it should take a back seat to other issues such as equal opportunities and fixing our justice system, but it is still a top priority behind those issues. Although no one in my family is an officer, we know people that are officers. I do think that the police are necessary in our country, and without them our country could and would become a very dangerous place. However, there are still steps to be taken that would make our policing better.

For example, police need to be better trained in de-escalation techniques rather than resorting too quickly to force. Another important reform would be bringing a psychiatrist on 911 calls. There are times when tragedies could be avoided if a person was calmed down by a trained professional, rather than enraged by police threatening them. Police should also be more involved and engaged in their communities. In many places, police are simply there as law enforcement, and nothing else. However, if police were to get to know their community and be able to bond with them in certain ways, there would be much more trust on both sides. In my town, although I haven’t interacted with many officers in my life, I see things that the police do to support and engage with the community, and I think that’s one important reason why no one in my town really has an issue with our police force. With all these reforms, I think policing could be greatly improved.

— Jacob, Illinois

I personally don’t believe police reform should be a priority, police abolition should. There have been countless policies with the goal of reforming police departments and, clearly, reform movements have not stopped police brutality. This can especially be seen in the city of Minneapolis which had implemented many of the common reform policies before George Floyd’s murder. The first step to abolition would be defunding the police. A world without police or a defunded police department may be hard to imagine, but if you are like me and live in a predominantly white, wealthy suburban community, this is what that world would look like. The majority of resources are not going to criminalize members of the community, they are going to education and other ways of supporting the community.

— Mira, Illinois

I disagree with the idea that the police should be abolished. Unfortunately, humans are inherently selfish, and in a world without police or law enforcement to stop them, people of all races would steal things for their own gain and society would be a mess. I believe instead, that the police system should be completely redone from square one. This way, it actually has a good foundation to build upon, instead of it being a lost cause to try and fix.

— Devon, California

I feel that if law enforcement were defunded and there were a lot fewer cops, chaos would occur and nobody would be there to stop it. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely bad cops out there, but I feel as if the majority of cops are there to do good in the world, and to prevent chaos, not cause it … I do feel that cops are necessary and very important figures in everyday society because they keep order and try to make it fair for everyone. Although this isn’t always the case, most try the best that they can.

— Andrew, New Jersey

You have to keep in mind police budgets can be very large. For example, the Los Angeles Police Department has a budget of around $2 billion. Say you take only five percent of their budget and redirect it into funding schools, housing, health care, etc. That is $100 million, which barely affects their budget, yet it can make a large impact on the community. By creating a higher standard of living, in theory, the crime rate would drop. Now, there is no way to stop all crime, and yes, I believe police are important to stop the violence. However, another small fraction of their budget can go toward better training. Ultimately, the goal is to decrease the crime rate by putting more money into communities and having better trained police to handle issues in an appropriate manner.

— Lauren, Massachusetts

“I think systemic racism today is absolutely tied to slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination of the past.”

“I feel that there is no real definite solution to racism, but there are steps that can be taken to get closer to equality.”

As a young person, I have never really talked about racism due to the fact that many adults play it off or act as if there is no such thing. I am more privileged to be able not to hear about it. However, I really do disagree with the fact that adults and older figures try to avoid the topic. As a kid, I was taught to admire police forces as they protect me. But during times such as this, I have started to realize how unfair the police officers treat people due to race. So many kids are not taught such things because adults believe that kids should live a blissful life. I believe that the system should change as soon as possible, as informing others of racial injustice is so important … To be honest, I do not think racism will come to a complete end, unless humanity is gone. Yet, I still believe that there would be much less racism if people were educated and accepting of others.

— Natalie, California

I feel that there is no real definite solution to racism, but there are steps that can be taken to get closer to equality. Step 1 would be to teach your kids how to show compassion and how not to judge someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. By doing this, the next generation will grow up knowing how to not judge others by the way that they look but by the way they act and the decisions they make. Step 2 would be to educate this generation and the next about racism and the correct history behind it. It is mostly ignorance that causes people to make poor judgment on others and treat others unfairly and that is what I believe is one of the main causes of racism. Step 3 would be to enforce the change of history books and to encourage communities to work for each other not against each other.

— Aidan, Illinois

One of the relics of the racism that has been gaining more coverage recently is the lack of diverse narratives in our history curriculums. I am lucky enough to be a part of a new class in my district called Unites States History Perspectives, a class that focuses on the untold histories of oppressed peoples. I have already learned more about the culture of Indigenous people and the struggles of African Americans this year than I have in the other 11 years of my education combined.

— Isabela, Washington

I live in a mostly white town and before these seven months I knew about white privilege and police brutality, however I was ignorant to how large and deeply rooted the problem is. I think literature and stories are a great way of educating and learning about racism in our country. For example, during quarantine I got to read one of my new favorite books, “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas. I really like how it made me sympathize with the main character and helped me understand a little better how unfairly people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were treated. I wish people in this country who still believe America is handling racism would educate themselves about the oppression of African Americans. If everyone worked toward understanding American flaws then we might be able to make progress toward a country with true equality.

— Zoe, New Jersey

Nicole Daniels joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2019 after working in museum education, curriculum writing and bilingual education. More about Nicole Daniels

Race in America

A Smithsonian magazine special report

History | June 4, 2020

158 Resources to Understand Racism in America

These articles, videos, podcasts and websites from the Smithsonian chronicle the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States

Meilan Solly

Associate Editor, History

In a short essay published earlier this week, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch wrote that the recent killing in Minnesota of George Floyd has forced the country to “confront the reality that, despite gains made in the past 50 years, we are still a nation riven by inequality and racial division.”

Amid escalating clashes between protesters and police, discussing race—from the inequity embedded in American institutions to the United States’ long, painful history of anti-black violence—is an essential step in sparking meaningful societal change. To support those struggling to begin these difficult conversations, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture recently launched a “ Talking About Race ” portal featuring “tools and guidance” for educators, parents, caregivers and other people committed to equity.

“Talking About Race” joins a vast trove of resources from the Smithsonian Institution dedicated to understanding what Bunch describes as America’s “tortured racial past.” From Smithsonian magazine articles on slavery’s Trail of Tears and the disturbing resilience of scientific racism to the National Museum of American History’s collection of Black History Month resources for educators and a Sidedoor podcast on the Tulsa Race Massacre, these 158 resources are designed to foster an equal society, encourage commitment to unbiased choices and promote antiracism in all aspects of life. Listings are bolded and organized by category.

1. Historical Context

2. Systemic Inequality

3. Anti-Black Violence

5. Intersectionality

6. Allyship and Education

Historical Context

Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million people were kidnapped from Africa and sent to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade . Only 10.7 million survived the harrowing two month journey. Comprehending the sheer scale of this forced migration—and slavery’s subsequent spread across the country via interregional trade —can be a daunting task, but as historian Leslie Harris told Smithsonian ’s Amy Crawford earlier this year, framing “these big concepts in terms of individual lives … can [help you] better understand what these things mean.”

Shackles used in Transatlantic Slave Trade

Take, for instance, the story of John Casor . Originally an indentured servant of African descent, Casor lost a 1654 or 1655 court case convened to determine whether his contract had lapsed. He became the first individual declared a slave for life in the United States. Manuel Vidau , a Yoruba man who was captured and sold to traders some 200 years after Casor’s enslavement, later shared an account of his life with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which documented his remarkable story—after a decade of enslavement in Cuba, he purchased a share in a lottery ticket and won enough money to buy his freedom—in records now available on the digital database “ Freedom Narratives .” (A separate, similarly document-based online resource emphasizes individuals described in fugitive slave ads , which historian Joshua Rothman describes as “sort of a little biography” providing insights on their subjects’ appearance and attire.)

Finally, consider the life of Matilda McCrear , the last known survivor of the transatlantic slave trade. Kidnapped from West Africa and brought to the U.S. on the Clotilda , she arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in July 1860—more than 50 years after Congress had outlawed the import of enslaved labor. McCrear, who died in 1940 at the age of 81 or 82, “ displayed a determined, even defiant streak ” in her later life, wrote Brigit Katz earlier this year. She refused to use her former owner’s last name, wore her hair in traditional Yoruba style and had a decades-long relationship with a white German man.

How American society remembers and teaches the horrors of slavery is crucial. But as recent studies have shown, many textbooks offer a sanitized view of this history , focusing solely on “positive” stories about black leaders like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass . Prior to 2018, Texas schools even taught that states’ rights and sectionalism—not slavery—were the main causes of the Civil War . And, in Confederate memorials across the country, writes historian Kevin M. Levin , enslaved individuals are often falsely portrayed as loyal slaves .

Accurately representing slavery might require an updated vocabulary , argued historian Michael Landis in 2015: Outdated “[t]erms like ‘compromise’ or ‘plantation’ served either to reassure worried Americans in a Cold War world, or uphold a white supremacist, sexist interpretation of the past.” Rather than referring to the Compromise of 1850 , call it the Appeasement of 1850—a term that better describes “the uneven nature of the agreement,” according to Landis. Smithsonian scholar Christopher Wilson wrote, too, that widespread framing of the Civil War as a battle between equal entities lends legitimacy to the Confederacy , which was not a nation in its own right, but an “illegitimate rebellion and unrecognized political entity.” A 2018 Smithsonian magazine investigation found that the literal costs of the Confederacy are immense: In the decade prior, American taxpayers contributed $40 million to the maintenance of Confederate monuments and heritage organizations.

To better understand the immense brutality ingrained in enslaved individuals’ everyday lives, read up on Louisiana’s Whitney Plantation Museum , which acts as “part reminder of the scars of institutional bondage, part mausoleum for dozens of enslaved people who worked (and died) in [its] sugar fields, … [and] monument to the terror of slavery,” as Jared Keller observed in 2016. Visitors begin their tour in a historic church populated by clay sculptures of children who died on the plantation’s grounds, then move on to a series of granite slabs engraved with hundreds of enslaved African Americans’ names. Scattered throughout the experience are stories of the violence inflicted by overseers.

The Whitney Plantation Museum is at the forefront of a vanguard of historical sites working to confront their racist pasts. In recent years, exhibitions, oral history projects and other initiatives have highlighted the enslaved people whose labor powered such landmarks as Mount Vernon , the White House and Monticello . At the same time, historians are increasingly calling attention to major historical figures’ own slave-holding legacies : From Thomas Jefferson to George Washington , William Clark of Lewis and Clark , Francis Scott Key , and other Founding Fathers , many American icons were complicit in upholding the institution of slavery. Washington , Jefferson , James Madison and Aaron Burr , among others, sexually abused enslaved females working in their households and had oft-overlooked biracial families.

Though Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the decree took two-and-a-half years to fully enact. June 19, 1865—the day Union Gen. Gordon Granger informed the enslaved individuals of Galveston, Texas, that they were officially free—is now known as Juneteenth : America’s “second independence day,” according to NMAAHC. Initially celebrated mainly in Texas, Juneteenth spread across the country as African Americans fled the South in what is now called the Great Migration .

At the onset of that mass movement in 1916, 90 percent of African Americans still lived in the South, where they were “held captive by the virtual slavery of sharecropping and debt peonage and isolated from the rest of the country,” as Isabel Wilkerson wrote in 2016. ( Sharecropping , a system in which formerly enslaved people became tenant farmers and lived in “converted” slave cabins , was the impetus for the 1919 Elaine Massacre , which found white soldiers collaborating with local vigilantes to kill at least 200 sharecroppers who dared to criticize their low wages.) By the time the Great Migration—famously chronicled by artist Jacob Lawrence —ended in the 1970s, 47 percent of African Americans called the northern and western United States home.

Listen to Sidedoor: A Smithsonian Podcast

The third season of Sidedoor explored a South Carolina residence’s unique journey from slave cabin to family home and its latest incarnation as a centerpiece at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Conditions outside the Deep South were more favorable than those within the region, but the “hostility and hierarchies that fed the Southern caste system” remained major obstacles for black migrants in all areas of the country, according to Wilkerson. Low-paying jobs, redlining , restrictive housing covenants and rampant discrimination limited opportunities, creating inequality that would eventually give rise to the civil rights movement.

“The Great Migration was the first big step that the nation’s servant class ever took without asking,” Wilkerson explained. “ … It was about agency for a people who had been denied it, who had geography as the only tool at their disposal. It was an expression of faith, despite the terrors they had survived, that the country whose wealth had been created by their ancestors’ unpaid labor might do right by them.”

Systemic Inequality

Racial, economic and educational disparities are deeply entrenched in U.S. institutions. Though the Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” American democracy has historically—and often violently —excluded certain groups. “Democracy means everybody can participate, it means you are sharing power with people you don’t know, don’t understand, might not even like,” said National Museum of American History curator Harry Rubenstein in 2017. “That’s the bargain. And some people over time have felt very threatened by that notion.”

Instances of inequality range from the obvious to less overtly discriminatory policies and belief systems. Historical examples of the former include poll taxes that effectively disenfranchised African American voters; the marginalization of African American soldiers who fought in World War I and World War II but were treated like second-class citizens at home; black innovators who were barred from filing patents for their inventions; white medical professionals’ exploitation of black women’s bodies (see Henrietta Lacks and J. Marion Sims ); Richard and Mildred Loving ’s decade-long fight to legalize interracial marriage; the segregated nature of travel in the Jim Crow era; the government-mandated segregation of American cities ; and segregation in schools .

Black soldiers returning from France -- WWI

Among the most heartbreaking examples of structural racism’s subtle effects are accounts shared by black children. In the late 1970s, when Lebert F. Lester II was 8 or 9 years old, he started building a sand castle during a trip to the Connecticut shore . A young white girl joined him but was quickly taken away by her father. Lester recalled the girl returning, only to ask him, “Why don’t [you] just go in the water and wash it off?” Lester says., “I was so confused—I only figured out later she meant my complexion .” Two decades earlier, in 1957, 15-year-old Minnijean Brown had arrived at Little Rock Central High School with high hopes of “making friends, going to dances and singing in the chorus.” Instead, she and the rest of the Little Rock Nine —a group of black students selected to attend the formerly all-white academy after Brown v. Board of Education desegregated public schools—were subjected to daily verbal and physical assaults. Around the same time, photographer John G. Zimmerman captured snapshots of racial politics in the South that included comparisons of black families waiting in long lines for polio inoculations as white children received speedy treatment.

In 1968, the Kerner Commission , a group convened by President Lyndon Johnson, found that white racism, not black anger, was the impetus for the widespread civil unrest sweeping the nation. As Alice George wrote in 2018, the commission’s report suggested that “[b]ad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression and other culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination all converged to propel violent upheaval.” Few listened to the findings, let alone its suggestion of aggressive government spending aimed at leveling the playing field. Instead, the country embraced a different cause: space travel . The day after the 1969 moon landing, the leading black paper the New York Amsterdam News ran a story stating, “Yesterday, the moon. Tomorrow, maybe us.”

Fifty years after the Kerner Report’s release, a separate study assessed how much had changed ; it concluded that conditions had actually worsened. In 2017, black unemployment was higher than in 1968, as was the rate of incarcerated individuals who were black. The wealth gap had also increased substantially, with the median white family having ten times more wealth than the median black family. “We are resegregating our cities and our schools, condemning millions of kids to inferior education and taking away their real possibility of getting out of poverty,” said Fred Harris, the last surviving member of the Kerner Commission, following the 2018 study’s release.

Police patrol the streets during the 1967 Newark Riots

Today, scientific racism —grounded in such faulty practices as eugenics and the treatment of race “as a crude proxy for myriad social and environmental factors,” writes Ramin Skibba—persists despite overwhelming evidence that race has only social, not biological, meaning. Black scholars including Mamie Phipps Clark , a psychologist whose research on racial identity in children helped end segregation in schools, and Rebecca J. Cole , a 19th-century physician and advocate who challenged the idea that black communities were destined for death and disease, have helped overturn some of these biases. But a 2015 survey found that 48 percent of black and Latina women scientists, respectively, still report being mistaken for custodial or administrative staff . Even artificial intelligence exhibits racial biases , many of which are introduced by lab staff and crowdsourced workers who program their own conscious and unconscious opinions into algorithms.

Anti-Black Violence

In addition to enduring centuries of enslavement, exploitation and inequality, African Americans have long been the targets of racially charged physical violence. Per the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative , more than 4,400 lynchings —mob killings undertaken without legal authority—took place in the U.S. between the end of Reconstruction and World War II.

Incredibly, the Senate only passed legislation declaring lynching a federal crime in 2018 . Between 1918 and the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act’s eventual passage, more than 200 anti-lynching bills failed to make it through Congress. (Earlier this week, Sen. Rand Paul said he would hold up a separate, similarly intentioned bill over fears that its definition of lynching was too broad. The House passed the bill in a 410-to-4 vote this February.) Also in 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative opened the nation’s first monument to African American lynching victims . The six-acre memorial site stands alongside a museum dedicated to tracing the nation’s history of racial bias and persecution from slavery to the present.

One of the earliest instances of Reconstruction-era racial violence took place in Opelousas, Louisiana, in September 1868. Two months ahead of the presidential election, Southern white Democrats started terrorizing Republican opponents who appeared poised to secure victory at the polls. On September 28, a group of men attacked 18-year-old schoolteacher Emerson Bentley, who had already attracted ire for teaching African American students, after he published an account of local Democrats’ intimidation of Republicans. Bentley escaped with his life, but 27 of the 29 African Americans who arrived on the scene to help him were summarily executed. Over the next two weeks, vigilante terror led to the deaths of some 250 people, the majority of whom were black.

In April 1873, another spate of violence rocked Louisiana. The Colfax Massacre , described by historian Eric Foner as the “bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era,” unfolded under similar circumstances as Opelousas, with tensions between Democrats and Republicans culminating in the deaths of between 60 and 150 African Americans, as well as three white men.

Between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s, multiple massacres broke out in response to false allegations that young black men had raped or otherwise assaulted white women. In August 1908, a mob terrorized African American neighborhoods across Springfield, Illinois, vandalizing black-owned businesses, setting fire to the homes of black residents, beating those unable to flee and lynching at least two people. Local authorities, argues historian Roberta Senechal , were “ineffectual at best, complicit at worst.”

False accusations also sparked a July 1919 race riot in Washington, D.C. and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 , which was most recently dramatized in the HBO series “ Watchmen .” As African American History Museum curator Paul Gardullo tells Smithsonian , tensions related to Tulsa’s economy underpinned the violence : Forced to settle on what was thought to be worthless land, African Americans and Native Americans struck oil and proceeded to transform the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa into a prosperous community known as “Black Wall Street.” According to Gardullo, “It was the frustration of poor whites not knowing what to do with a successful black community, and in coalition with the city government [they] were given permission to do what they did.”

Over the course of two days in spring 1921, the Tulsa Race Massacre claimed the lives of an estimated 300 black Tulsans and displaced another 10,000. Mobs burned down at least 1,256 residences, churches, schools and businesses and destroyed almost 40 blocks of Greenwood. As the Sidedoor episode “ Confronting the Past ” notes, “No one knows how many people died, no one was ever convicted, and no one really talked about it nearly a century later.”

The second season of Sidedoor told the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Economic injustice also led to the East St. Louis Race War of 1917. This labor dispute-turned-deadly found “people’s houses being set ablaze, … people being shot when they tried to flee, some trying to swim to the other side of the Mississippi while being shot at by white mobs with rifles, others being dragged out of street cars and beaten and hanged from street lamps,” recalled Dhati Kennedy, the son of a survivor who witnessed the devastation firsthand. Official counts place the death toll at 39 black and 9 white individuals, but locals argue that the real toll was closer to 100.

A watershed moment for the burgeoning civil rights movement was the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till . Accused of whistling at a white woman while visiting family members in Mississippi, he was kidnapped, tortured and killed. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, decided to give her son an open-casket funeral, forcing the world to confront the image of his disfigured, decomposing body . ( Visuals , including photographs, movies, television clips and artwork, played a key role in advancing the movement.) The two white men responsible for Till’s murder were acquitted by an all-white jury. A marker at the site where the teenager’s body was recovered has been vandalized at least three times since its placement in 2007.

Family members grieving at Emmett Till's funeral

The form of anti-black violence with the most striking parallels to contemporary conversations is police brutality . As Katie Nodjimbadem reported in 2017, a regional crime survey of late 1920s Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, found that while African Americans constituted just 5 percent of the area’s population, they made up 30 percent of the victims of police killings. Civil rights protests exacerbated tensions between African Americans and police, with events like the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968, in which law enforcement officers shot and killed three student activists at South Carolina State College, and the Glenville shootout , which left three police officers, three black nationalists and one civilian dead, fostering mistrust between the two groups.

Today, this legacy is exemplified by broken windows policing , a controversial approach that encourages racial profiling and targets African American and Latino communities. “What we see is a continuation of an unequal relationship that has been exacerbated, made worse if you will, by the militarization and the increase in fire power of police forces around the country,” William Pretzer , senior curator at NMAAHC, told Smithsonian in 2017.

The history of protest and revolt in the United States is inextricably linked with the racial violence detailed above.

Prior to the Civil War, enslaved individuals rarely revolted outright. Nat Turner , whose 1831 insurrection ended in his execution, was one of the rare exceptions. A fervent Christian , he drew inspiration from the Bible. His personal copy , now housed in the collections of the African American History Museum, represented the “possibility of something else for himself and for those around him,” curator Mary Ellis told Smithsonian ’s Victoria Dawson in 2016.

Other enslaved African Americans practiced less risky forms of resistance, including working slowly, breaking tools and setting objects on fire. “Slave rebellions, though few and small in size in America, were invariably bloody,” wrote Dawson. “Indeed, death was all but certain.”

One of the few successful uprisings of the period was the Creole Rebellion . In the fall of 1841, 128 enslaved African Americans traveling aboard The Creole mutinied against its crew, forcing their former captors to sail the brig to the British West Indies, where slavery was abolished and they could gain immediate freedom.

An April 1712 revolt found enslaved New Yorkers setting fire to white-owned buildings and firing on slaveholders. Quickly outnumbered, the group fled but was tracked to a nearby swamp; though several members were spared, the majority were publicly executed, and in the years following the uprising, the city enacted laws limiting enslaved individuals’ already scant freedom. In 1811, meanwhile, more than 500 African Americans marched on New Orleans while chanting “Freedom or Death.” Though the German Coast uprising was brutally suppressed, historian Daniel Rasmussen argues that it “had been much larger—and come much closer to succeeding—than the planters and American officials let on.”

Some 150 years after what Rasmussen deems America’s “ largest slave revolt ,” the civil rights movement ushered in a different kind of protest. In 1955, police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white passenger (“I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it any more,” she later wrote). The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott , in which black passengers refused to ride public transit until officials met their demands, led the Supreme Court to rule segregated buses unconstitutional. Five years later, the Greensboro Four similarly took a stand, ironically by staging a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter . As Christopher Wilson wrote ahead of the 60th anniversary of the event, “What made Greensboro different [from other sit-ins ] was how it grew from a courageous moment to a revolutionary movement.”

During the 1950s and ’60s, civil rights leaders adopted varying approaches to protest: Malcolm X , a staunch proponent of black nationalism who called for equality by “any means necessary,” “made tangible the anger and frustration of African Americans who were simply catching hell,” according to journalist Allison Keyes. He repeated the same argument “over and over again,” wrote academic and activist Cornel West in 2015: “What do you think you would do after 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow and lynching? Do you think you would respond nonviolently? What’s your history like? Let’s look at how you have responded when you were oppressed. George Washington—revolutionary guerrilla fighter!’”

Martin Luther King Jr . famously advocated for nonviolent protest, albeit not in the form that many think. As biographer Taylor Branch told Smithsonian in 2015, King’s understanding of nonviolence was more complex than is commonly argued. Unlike Mahatma Gandhi’s “passive resistance,” King believed resistance “depended on being active, using demonstrations, direct actions, to ‘amplify the message’ of the protest they were making,” according to Ron Rosenbaum. In the activist’s own words , “[A] riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?… It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. ”

Another key player in the civil rights movement, the militant Black Panther Party , celebrated black power and operated under a philosophy of “ demands and aspirations .” The group’s Ten-Point Program called for an “immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people,” as well as more controversial measures like freeing all black prisoners and exempting black men from military service. Per NMAAHC , black power “emphasized black self-reliance and self-determination more than integration,” calling for the creation of separate African American political and cultural organizations. In doing so, the movement ensured that its proponents would attract the unwelcome attention of the FBI and other government agencies.

Protestors clap and chant at March on Washington

Many of the protests now viewed as emblematic of the fight for racial justice took place in the 1960s. On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in D.C. for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom . Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the march, activists who attended the event detailed the experience for a Smithsonian oral history : Entertainer Harry Belafonte observed, “We had to seize the opportunity and make our voices heard. Make those who are comfortable with our oppression—make them uncomfortable—Dr. King said that was the purpose of this mission,” while Representative John Lewis recalled, “Looking toward Union Station, we saw a sea of humanity; hundreds, thousands of people. … People literally pushed us, carried us all the way, until we reached the Washington Monument and then we walked on to the Lincoln Memorial..”

Two years after the March on Washington, King and other activists organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. Later called the Selma March , the protest was dramatized in a 2014 film starring David Oyelowo as MLK. ( Reflecting on Selma , Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch, then-director of NMAAHC, deemed it a “remarkable film” that “does not privilege the white perspective … [or] use the movement as a convenient backdrop for a conventional story.”)

Organized in response to the manifest obstacles black individuals faced when attempting to vote, the Selma March actually consisted of three separate protests. The first of these, held on March 7, 1965, ended in a tragedy now known as Bloody Sunday . As peaceful protesters gathered on the Edmund Pettus Bridge —named for a Confederate general and local Ku Klux Klan leader—law enforcement officers attacked them with tear gas and clubs. One week later, President Lyndon B. Johnson offered the Selma protesters his support and introduced legislation aimed at expanding voting rights. During the third and final march, organized in the aftermath of Johnson’s announcement, tens of thousands of protesters (protected by the National Guard and personally led by King) converged on Montgomery. Along the way, interior designer Carl Benkert used a hidden reel-to-reel tape recorder to document the sounds—and specifically songs—of the event .

Civil rights leaders stand with protesters at the 1963 March on Washington

The protests of the early and mid-1960s culminated in the widespread unrest of 1967 and 1968. For five days in July 1967, riots on a scale unseen since 1863 rocked the city of Detroit : As Lorraine Boissoneault writes, “Looters prowled the streets, arsonists set buildings on fire, civilian snipers took position from rooftops and police shot and arrested citizens indiscriminately.” Systemic injustice in such areas as housing, jobs and education contributed to the uprising, but police brutality was the driving factor behind the violence. By the end of the riots, 43 people were dead. Hundreds sustained injuries, and more than 7,000 were arrested.

The Detroit riots of 1967 prefaced the seismic changes of 1968 . As Matthew Twombly wrote in 2018, movements including the Vietnam War, the Cold War, civil rights, human rights and youth culture “exploded with force in 1968,” triggering aftershocks that would resonate both in America and abroad for decades to come.

On February 1, black sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker died in a gruesome accident involving a malfunctioning garbage truck. Their deaths, compounded by Mayor Henry Loeb’s refusal to negotiate with labor representatives, led to the outbreak of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike —an event remembered both “as an example of powerless African Americans standing up for themselves” and as the backdrop to King’s April 4 assassination .

Though King is lionized today, he was highly unpopular at the time of his death. According to a Harris Poll conducted in early 1968, nearly 75 percent of Americans disapproved of the civil rights leader , who had become increasingly vocal in his criticism of the Vietnam War and economic inequity. Despite the public’s seeming ambivalence toward King—and his family’s calls for nonviolence— his murder sparked violent protests across the country . In all, the Holy Week Uprisings spread to nearly 200 cities, leaving 3,500 people injured and 43 dead. Roughly 27,000 protesters were arrested, and 54 of the cities involved sustained more than $100,000 in property damage.

In May, thousands flocked to Washington, D.C. for a protest King had planned prior to his death. Called the Poor People’s Campaign , the event united racial groups from all quarters of America in a call for economic justice. Attendees constructed “ Resurrection City ,” a temporary settlement made up of 3,000 wooden tents, and camped out on the National Mall for 42 days.

“While we were all in a kind of depressed state about the assassinations of King and RFK, we were trying to keep our spirits up, and keep focused on King’s ideals of humanitarian issues, the elimination of poverty and freedom,” protester Lenneal Henderson told Smithsonian in 2018. “It was exciting to be part of something that potentially, at least, could make a difference in the lives of so many people who were in poverty around the country.”

Racial unrest persisted throughout the year, with uprisings on the Fourth of July , a protest at the Summer Olympic Games , and massacres at Orangeburg and Glenville testifying to the tumultuous state of the nation.

The Black Lives Matter marches organized in response to the killings of George Floyd, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and other victims of anti-black violence share many parallels with protests of the past .

Man raises fist at Black Lives Matter protest

Football player Colin Kaepernick ’s decision to kneel during the national anthem—and the unmitigated outrage it sparked —bears similarities to the story of boxer Muhammad Ali , historian Jonathan Eig told Smithsonian in 2017: “It’s been eerie to watch it, that we’re still having these debates that black athletes should be expected to shut their mouths and perform for us,” he said. “That’s what people told Ali 50 years ago.”

Other aspects of modern protest draw directly on uprisings of earlier eras. In 2016, for instance, artist Dread Scott updated an anti-lynching poster used by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1920s and ’30s to read “ A Black Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday .” (Scott added the words “by police.”)

Though the civil rights movement is often viewed as the result of a cohesive “grand plan” or “manifestation of the vision of the few leaders whose names we know,” the American History Museum’s Christopher Wilson argues that “the truth is there wasn’t one, there were many and they were often competitive .”

Meaningful change required a whirlwind of revolution, adds Wilson, “but also the slow legal march. It took boycotts, petitions, news coverage, civil disobedience, marches, lawsuits, shrewd political maneuvering, fundraising, and even the violent terror campaign of the movement’s opponents—all going on [at] the same time.”

Intersectionality

In layman’s terms, intersectionality refers to the multifaceted discrimination experienced by individuals who belong to multiple minority groups. As theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw explains in a video published by NMAAHC , these classifications run the gamut from race to gender, gender identity, class, sexuality and disability. A black woman who identifies as a lesbian, for instance, may face prejudice based on her race, gender or sexuality.

Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality in 1989, explains the concept best: “Consider an intersection made up of many roads,” she says in the video. “The roads are the structures of race, gender, gender identity, class, sexuality, disability. And the traffic running through those roads are the practices and policies that discriminate against people. Now if an accident happens, it can be caused by cars traveling in any number of directions, and sometimes, from all of them. So if a black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from discrimination from any or all directions.”

Understanding intersectionality is essential for teasing out the relationships between movements including civil rights, LGBTQ rights , suffrage and feminism. Consider the contributions of black transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera , who played pivotal roles in the Stonewall Uprising ; gay civil rights leader Bayard Rustin , who was only posthumously pardoned this year for having consensual sex with men; the “rank and file” women of the Black Panther Party ; and African American suffragists such as Mary Church Terrell and Nannie Helen Burroughs .

All of these individuals fought discrimination on multiple levels: As noted in “ Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence ,” a 2019 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, leading suffrage organizations initially excluded black suffragists from their ranks , driving the emergence of separate suffrage movements and, eventually, black feminists grounded in the inseparable experiences of racism, sexism and classism.

Allyship and Education

Individuals striving to become better allies by educating themselves and taking decisive action have an array of options for getting started. Begin with NMAAHC’s “ Talking About Race ” portal, which features sections on being antiracist , whiteness , bias , social identities and systems of oppression , self-care , race and racial identity , the historical foundations of race , and community building . An additional 139 items —from a lecture on the history of racism in America to a handout on white supremacy culture and an article on the school-to-prison pipeline —are available to explore via the portal’s resources page .

In collaboration with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the National Museum of the American Indian has created a toolkit that aims to “help people facilitate new conversations with and among students about the power of images and words, the challenges of memory, and the relationship between personal and national value,” says museum director Kevin Gover in a statement . The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center offers a similarly focused resource called “ Standing Together Against Xenophobia .” As the site’s description notes, “This includes addressing not only the hatred and violence that has recently targeted people of Asian descent, but also the xenophobia that plagues our society during times of national crisis.”

Ahead of NMAAHC’s official opening in 2016, the museum hosted a series of public programs titled “ History, Rebellion, and Reconciliation .” Panels included “Ferguson: What Does This Moment Mean for America?” and “#Words Matter: Making Revolution Irresistible.” As Smithsonian reported at the time, “It was somewhat of a refrain at the symposium that museums can provide ‘safe,’ or even ‘sacred’ spaces , within which visitors [can] wrestle with difficult and complex topics.” Then-director Lonnie Bunch expanded on this mindset in an interview, telling Smithsonian , “Our job is to be an educational institution that uses history and culture not only to look back, not only to help us understand today, but to point us towards what we can become.” For more context on the museum’s collections, mission and place in American history, visit Smithsonian ’s “ Breaking Ground ” hub and NMAAHC’s digital resources guide .

Historical examples of allyship offer both inspiration and cautionary tales for the present. Take, for example, Albert Einstein , who famously criticized segregation as a “disease of white people” and continually used his platform to denounce racism. (The scientist’s advocacy is admittedly complicated by travel diaries that reveal his deeply troubling views on race .)

Einstein’s near-contemporary, a white novelist named John Howard Griffin, took his supposed allyship one step further, darkening his skin and embarking on a “human odyssey through the South,” as Bruce Watson wrote in 2011. Griffin’s chronicle of his experience, a volume titled Black Like Me , became a surprise bestseller, refuting “the idea that minorities were acting out of paranoia,” according to scholar Gerald Early, and testifying to the veracity of black people’s accounts of racism.

“The only way I could see to bridge the gap between us,” wrote Griffin in Black Like Me , “was to become a Negro.”

Griffin, however, had the privilege of being able to shed his blackness at will—which he did after just one month of donning his makeup. By that point, Watson observed, Griffin could simply “stand no more.”

Sixty years later, what is perhaps most striking is just how little has changed. As Bunch reflected earlier this week, “The state of our democracy feels fragile and precarious.”

Addressing the racism and social inequity embedded in American society will be a “monumental task,” the secretary added. But “the past is replete with examples of ordinary people working together to overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges. History is a guide to a better future and demonstrates that we can become a better society—but only if we collectively demand it from each other and from the institutions responsible for administering justice.”

Editor ’s Note, July 24, 2020: This article previously stated that some 3.9 million of the 10.7 million people who survived the harrowing two-month journey across the Middle Passage between 1525 and 1866 were ultimately enslaved in the United States. In fact, the 3.9 million figure refers to the number of enslaved individuals in the U.S. just before the Civil War. We regret the error.

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Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

Sociological Perspectives on Racism

Functionalist perspective of racism.

The functionalist perspective perceives society as a composite system whose parts labor together to uphold harmony and steadiness. According to functionalism, racism and discrimination have had a significant role to play in altering humanity. The approach, however, is problematic since the vices mentioned above cannot have a beneficial influence on the broader public. On the other hand, the functionalist position believes that racism can only improve society through enhancing bonds among in-group members. The reinforcement can be done through the shunning of out-group associates (Bowden 88). The communities’ solidarity will not grow if they deny others the chance to access it. Another dysfunction that comes with racism is that no advantage is taken on the abilities of the subjugated group. For example, more money, effort, and time are taken to maintain a separate and unequal education system due to racism.

Functionalists claim that manifest roles are the envisioned function of a phenomenon in a social structure. Latent functions are the intended purposes, and the consequences are unintended. They also suggest that racism helps the smaller group stay together, through which they can find solutions to the problems affecting them. Separation makes the inferior group recognize their abilities and the means to survive without depending on others (Griffiths et al. 506). Discerning inner strength and solidifying the bonds among the weak society is the manifest purpose of racism (Bowden 90). Latent functions appear when the dominating group goes as far as trying to eradicate the smaller community (Griffiths et al. 508). Separate education systems, different levels of education qualities, or unequal job opportunities are some of the latent functions of racism.

Sociological Perspectives

The sociological perspective allows people to trace the association between the patterns and the events of their own and those of the community in general. There are three ways of approaching sociological perspectives which include, structural-functional, interaction and the conflict approach. According to the functionalist perspective, aspects of humanity depend on each other, contributing to society’s overall functioning (Bowden 92). Interaction perspective considers symbols and details of daily life. People attribute meanings to signs, and then they act according to the particular understanding of the signs. For example, in the American institution of marriage, white dresses, rings, vows, ceremonies, and flowers all symbolize marriage. Individuals also have their meaning to these signs; for instance, exchanging rings means eternal love.

Nonetheless, the conflict approach focuses on the negative side of the ever-changing society. Conflict theorists believe that the rich people in the community force social direction on the poor. This method examines the differences of unequal groups based on gender, values, religion, and agendas, causing them to be in constant conflict (Bowden 94). The completion between these unequal groups is what forms the basis of the changing nature of society. Thus, a new immigrant in the American interaction approach will help understand why the American people prefer some things over others. The conflict approach will help one know which society they belong to and what grounds their group is different from the others (Bowden 97). The functionalist perspective will help one see the type of rules the American people work with, the laws that govern them, and what keeps them together. Hence, the functionalist perspective is the most suitable because it allows people to learn the positive side of the Americans. Consequently, functionalism brings out what the American population wants to achieve and what would be best for them collectively.

Works Cited

Bowden, Matt. “Community Safety, Social Cohesion and Embedded Autonomy: A case from South-West Dublin”. Crime Prevention and Community Safety , vol 19, no. 2, 2017, pp. 87-102. Springer Science and Business Media LLC , Web.

Griffiths, H., Keirns, N., Strayer, E., Cody-Rydzewski, S., Scaramuzzo, G., Sadler, T., Vyain, S., Bry, J. and Jones, F. Introduction to Sociology 2E (Fall 2019 Corrected Edition) . Openstax, 2017, pp. 501 – 509.

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More people globally see racial, ethnic discrimination as a serious problem in the U.S. than in their own society

Concerns about racial and ethnic discrimination are widespread in most of the 17 advanced economies surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring. Majorities of adults in 14 of these places say discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity is a somewhat or very serious problem in their own society – including around three-quarters or more in Italy, France, Sweden, Germany and the United States. Only in Japan, Singapore and Taiwan do fewer than half say such discrimination is a serious problem.

This Pew Research Center analysis focuses on comparing attitudes about whether racial and ethnic discrimination is a problem within a given survey public and whether it is a problem in the United States. For non-U.S. data, this post draws on nationally representative surveys of 16,254 adults from March 12 to May 26, 2021, in 16 advanced economies. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.

In the U.S., we surveyed 2,596 adults from Feb. 1 to 7, 2021. Everyone who took part in the U.S. survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.

This study was conducted in places where nationally representative telephone surveys are feasible. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, face-to-face interviewing is not currently possible in many parts of the world.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses. Visit our methodology database for more information about the survey methods outside the U.S. For respondents in the U.S., read more about the ATP’s methodology .

A bar chart showing that in every place surveyed, more people see racial, ethnic discrimination as a problem in the U.S. than at home

But even as sizable majorities in these places see racial and ethnic discrimination as a serious problem, even bigger majorities see it as an issue in the U.S. A median of 89% across the 16 non-U.S. publics surveyed describe racial and ethnic discrimination in the U.S. as a somewhat or very serious problem. That includes at least nine-in-ten who take this position in New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

Across most of the places surveyed, younger adults tend to be more likely than older people to see discrimination as a problem, whether in their own society or in the U.S. For example, among Spaniards, 69% of those under age 30 think racial and ethnic discrimination in their own society is a serious problem, compared with 44% of those ages 65 and older. Younger Spaniards are also more likely than older Spaniards to see discrimination in the U.S. as a serious problem – though age-related differences in opinion about American discrimination are less pronounced, both in Spain and elsewhere.

A chart showing that younger adults are more likely than older adults to say racial, ethnic discrimination is a serious problem – both in the U.S. and in their own society

Women in most of the advanced economies surveyed tend to see discrimination at higher rates than men. In the U.S., for example, 80% of women say discrimination against people based on their race or ethnicity is a somewhat or very serious problem, compared with 68% of men. Gender differences of around 10 percentage points are also evident in Canada, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, New Zealand and South Korea, both when it comes to discrimination locally and in the U.S. (though differences for the U.S. are again less pronounced).

In many places surveyed, those on the ideological left are more likely than those on the right to see racial and ethnic discrimination as a serious problem, both in their own society and in the U.S. The ideological gap on this question is widest in the U.S. itself: 92% of those on the left (liberals, in common U.S. parlance) say racial and ethnic discrimination is a serious problem, compared with 47% of those on the right (conservatives), a difference of 45 points. The next-largest ideological gap is in Australia, where 80% of those on the left and 50% of those on the right hold the view that discrimination is a serious problem in Australia. In general, people on the ideological left are also more likely than those on the right to say discrimination in the U.S. is a serious problem.

A chart showing that those on the ideological left are more likely than those on the right to perceive racial and ethnic discrimination as a serious problem, both in U.S. and at home

Attitudes sometimes also differ by educational level, especially when it comes to discrimination in the U.S. In Taiwan, for example, 95% of those with at least a postsecondary degree describe discrimination as a serious problem in the U.S., compared with 77% of those with less than a postsecondary degree. On the other hand, when it comes to perceptions of domestic discrimination, education only plays a role in Singapore, Japan and South Korea, with more educated people more likely to cite discrimination as a serious problem.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses. Visit our methodology database for more information about the survey methods outside the U.S. For respondents in the U.S., read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Discrimination & Prejudice
International Political Values
Racial Bias & Discrimination

Laura Silver is an associate director focusing on global attitudes at Pew Research Center .

Rising Numbers of Americans Say Jews and Muslims Face a Lot of Discrimination

How u.s. muslims are experiencing the israel-hamas war, how u.s. jews are experiencing the israel-hamas war, striking findings from 2023, americans’ views of the israel-hamas war, most popular.

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Hear Something, Say Something: Navigating The World Of Racial Awkwardness

Listen to this week's episode.

We've all been there — confronted with something shy of overt racism, but charged enough to make us uncomfortable. So what do you do?

We've all been there — having fun relaxing with friends and family, when someone says something a little racially off. Sometimes it's subtle, like the friend who calls Thai food "exotic." Other times it's more overt, like that in-law who's always going on about "the illegals."

In any case, it can be hard to know how to respond. Even the most level-headed among us have faltered trying to navigate the fraught world of racial awkwardness.

So what exactly do you do? We delve into the issue on this week's episode of the Code Switch podcast, featuring writer Nicole Chung and Code Switch's Shereen Marisol Meraji, Gene Demby and Karen Grigsby Bates.

We also asked some folks to write about what runs through their minds during these tense moments, and how they've responded (or not). Their reactions ran the gamut from righteous indignation to total passivity, but in the wake of these uncomfortable comments, everyone seemed to walk away wishing they'd done something else.

Aaron E. Sanchez

It was the first time my dad visited me at college, and he had just dropped me off at my dorm. My suitemate walked in and sneered.

"Was that your dad?" he asked. "He looks sooo Mexican."

Aaron E. Sanchez is a Texas-based writer who focuses on issues of race, politics and popular culture from a Latino perspective. Courtesy of Aaron Sanchez hide caption

He kept laughing about it as he left my room.

I was caught off-guard. Instantly, I grew self-conscious, not because I was ashamed of my father, but because my respectability politics ran deep. My appearance was supposed to be impeccable and my manners unimpeachable to protect against stereotypes and slights. I felt exposed.

To be sure, when my dad walked into restaurants and stores, people almost always spoke to him in Spanish. He didn't mind. The fluidity of his bilingualism rarely failed him. He was unassuming. He wore his working-class past on his frame and in his actions. He enjoyed hard work and appreciated it in others. Yet others mistook him for something altogether different.

People regularly confused his humility for servility. He was mistaken for a landscape worker, a janitor, and once he sat next to a gentleman on a plane who kept referring to him as a "wetback." He was a poor Mexican-American kid who grew up in the Segundo Barrio of El Paso, Texas, for certain. But he was also an Air Force veteran who had served for 20 years. He was an electrical engineer, a proud father, an admirable storyteller, and a pretty decent fisherman.

I didn't respond to my suitemate. To him, my father was a funny caricature, a curio he could pick up, purchase and discard. And as much as it was hidden beneath my elite, liberal arts education, I was a novelty to him too, an even rarer one at that. Instead of a serape, I came wrapped in the trappings of middle-classness, a costume I was trying desperately to wear convincingly.

That night, I realized that no clothing or ill-fitting costume could cover us. Our bodies were incongruous to our surroundings. No matter how comfortable we were in our skins, our presence would make others uncomfortable.

Karen Good Marable

When the Q train pulled into the Cortelyou Road station, it was dark and I was tired. Another nine hours in New York City, working in the madness that is Midtown as a fact-checker at a fashion magazine. All day long, I researched and confirmed information relating to beauty, fashion and celebrity, and, at least once a day, suffered an editor who was openly annoyed that I'd discovered an error. Then, the crush of the rush-hour subway, and a dinner obligation I had to fulfill before heading home to my cat.

Karen Good Marable is a writer living in New York City. Her work has been featured in publications like The Undefeated and The New Yorker. Courtesy of Karen Good Marable hide caption

The train doors opened and I turned the corner to walk up the stairs. Coming down were two girls — free, white and in their 20s . They were dancing as they descended, complete with necks rolling, mouths pursed — a poor affectation of black girls — and rapping as they passed me:

Now I ain't sayin she a golddigger/But she ain't messin' with no broke niggas!

That last part — broke niggas — was actually less rap, more squeals that dissolved into giggles. These white girls were thrilled to say the word publicly — joyously, even — with the permission of Kanye West.

I stopped, turned around and stared at them. I envisioned kicking them both squarely in their backs. God didn't give me telekinetic powers for just this reason. I willed them to turn around and face me, but they did not dare. They bopped on down the stairs and onto the platform, not evening knowing the rest of the rhyme.

Listen: I'm a black woman from the South. I was born in the '70s and raised by parents — both educators — who marched for their civil rights. I never could get used to nigga being bandied about — not by the black kids and certainly not by white folks. I blamed the girls' parents for not taking over where common sense had clearly failed. Hell, even radio didn't play the nigga part.

I especially blamed Kanye West for not only making the damn song, but for having the nerve to make nigga a part of the damn hook.

Life in NYC is full of moments like this, where something happens and you wonder if you should speak up or stay silent (which can also feel like complicity). I am the type who will speak up . Boys (or men) cussing incessantly in my presence? Girls on the train cussing around my 70-year-old mama? C'mon, y'all. Do you see me? Do you hear yourselves? Please. Stop.

But on this day, I just didn't feel like running down the stairs to tap those girls on the shoulder and school them on what they damn well already knew. On this day, I just sighed a great sigh, walked up the stairs, past the turnstiles and into the night.

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza

When I was 5 or 6, my mother asked me a question: "Does anyone ever make fun of you for the color of your skin?"

This surprised me. I was born to a Mexican woman who had married an Anglo man, and I was fairly light-skinned compared to the earth-brown hue of my mother. When she asked me that question, I began to understand that I was different.

Robyn Henderson-Espinoza is a visiting assistant professor of ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. Courtesy of Robyn Henderson-Espinoza hide caption

Following my parents' divorce in the early 1980s, I spent a considerable amount of time with my father and my paternal grandparents. One day in May of 1989, I was sitting at my grandparents' dinner table in West Texas. I was 12. The adults were talking about the need for more laborers on my grandfather's farm, and my dad said this:

"Mexicans are lazy."

He called the undocumented workers he employed on his 40 acres "wetbacks." Again and again, I heard from him that Mexicans always had to be told what to do. He and friends would say this when I was within earshot. I felt uncomfortable. Why would my father say these things about people like me?

But I remained silent.

It haunts me that I didn't speak up. Not then. Not ever. I still hear his words, 10 years since he passed away, and wonder whether he thought I was a lazy Mexican, too. I wish I could have found the courage to tell him that Mexicans are some of the hardest-working people I know; that those brown bodies who worked on his property made his lifestyle possible.

As I grew in experience and understanding, I was able to find language that described what he was doing: stereotyping, undermining, demonizing. I found my voice in the academy and in the movement for black and brown lives.

Still, the silence haunts me.

Channing Kennedy

My 20s were defined in no small part by a friendship with a guy I never met. For years, over email and chat, we shared everything with each other, and we made great jokes. Those jokes — made for each other only — were a foundational part of our relationship and our identities. No matter what happened, we could make each other laugh.

Channing Kennedy is an Oakland-based writer, performer, media producer and racial equity trainer. Courtesy of Channing Kennedy hide caption

It helped, also, that we were slackers with spare time, but eventually we both found callings. I started working in the social justice sector, and he gained recognition in the field of indie comics. I was proud of my new job and approached it seriously, if not gracefully. Before I took the job, I was the type of white dude who'd make casually racist comments in front of people I considered friends. Now, I had laid a new foundation for myself and was ready to undo the harm I'd done pre-wokeness.

And I was proud of him, too, if cautious. The indie comics scene is full of bravely offensive work: the power fantasies of straight white men with grievances against their nonexistent censors, put on defiant display. But he was my friend, and he wouldn't fall for that.

One day he emailed me a rough script to get my feedback. At my desk, on a break from deleting racist, threatening Facebook comments directed at my co-workers, I opened it up for a change of pace.

I got none. His script was a top-tier, irredeemable power fantasy — sex trafficking, disability jokes, gendered violence, every scene's background packed with commentary-devoid, racist caricatures. It also had a pop culture gag on top, to guarantee clicks.

I asked him why he'd written it. He said it felt "important." I suggested he shelve it. He suggested that that would be a form of censorship. And I realized this: My dear friend had created a racist power fantasy about dismembering women, and he considered it bravely offensive.

I could have said that there was nothing brave about catering to the established tastes of other straight white comics dudes. I could have dropped any number of half-understood factoids about structural racism, the finishing move of the recently woke. I could have just said the jokes were weak.

Instead, I became cruel to him, with a dedication I'd previously reserved for myself.

Over months, I redirected every bit of our old creativity. I goaded him into arguments I knew would leave him shaken and unable to work. I positioned myself as a surrogate parent (so I could tell myself I was still a concerned ally) then laughed at him. I got him to escalate. And, privately, I told myself it was me who was under attack, the one with the grievance, and I cried about how my friend was betraying me.

I wanted to erase him (I realized years later) not because his script offended me, but because it made me laugh. It was full of the sense of humor we'd spent years on — not the jokes verbatim, but the pacing, structure, reveals, go-to gags. It had my DNA and it was funny. I thought I had become a monster-slayer, but this comic was a monster with my hands and mouth.

After years as the best of friends and as the bitterest of exes, we finally had a chance to meet in person. We were little more than acquaintances with sunk costs at that point, but we met anyway. Maybe we both wanted forgiveness, or an apology, or to see if we still had some jokes. Instead, I lectured him about electoral politics and race in a bar and never smiled.

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COMMENTS

Racism in the Structure of Everyday Worlds: A Cultural-Psychological
The term racism is often used synonymously with prejudice (biased feelings or affect), stereotyping (biased thoughts and beliefs, flawed generalizations), discrimination (differential treatment or the absence of equal treatment), and bigotry (intolerance or hatred). This practice implicitly conceptualizes racism as a set of basic social-psychological processes underlying the psychologies of ...
11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
Nash (1964) focused his argument on the way racism is functional for the dominant group, for example, suggesting that racism morally justifies a racially unequal society. Consider the way slave owners justified slavery in the antebellum South, by suggesting Black people were fundamentally inferior to White and preferred slavery to freedom.
PDF Sociology of Racism
race; racism; sociology; social psychology; stereotyping; stratification Body text At root, racism is "an ideology of racial domination" (Wilson, 1999, 14) in which the presumed biological or cultural superiority of one or more racial groups is used to justify or prescribe the inferior treatment or social position(s) of other racial groups.
The Meaning of "Racism"
Abstract. This article explores the meanings of racism in the sociology of race/ethnicity and provides a descriptive framework for comparing theories of racism. The authors argue that sociologists use racism to refer to four constructs: (1) individual attitudes, (2) cultural schema, and two constructs associated with structural racism: (3 ...
Ayn Rand's Individualist Perspective on Racism
In stark contrast to mainstream thought today, Rand argues that the only antidote to racism is "the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism.". To explore Rand's perspective on racism, you can read "Racism" in Rand's collection of essays in The Virtue of Selfishness, or online here on ...
Opinion
In an essay for The Atlantic, they conclude: "Speculating about whether America will have a white majority by the mid-21st century makes little sense, because the social meanings of white and ...
Working together against racism
Psychologists conduct research on the causes and effects of racism, including disparities in mental health care. Clinical research Clinician-scientists design interventions to mitigate the effects of racism. Clinical psychology Clinicians treat patients in culturally competent practices to address the consequences of racism. Advocacy and policy
The Psychology of Racism
The psychological study of racism can be summed up in one word: evolving. How society thinks about race and racism has changed and with it, the psychological discourse has changed as well. Many Americans, particularly White Americans, were complacent going into the year 2020. When the coronavirus pandemic started, the complacency started to ...
A Systematic Review of Black People Coping With Racism: Approaches
Racial discrimination occurs when a person is mistreated because of their perceived race or ethnic group (Haeny et al., 2021).A person who is regularly exposed to racial discrimination must integrate coping mechanisms into their everyday life to combat the many and ongoing adverse effects associated with race-based stress and trauma.
Race and Ideology
racism will be examined as it developed from the beginning of Black-White relations in this country. The model presented here provides a chronological scheme for the study of the problem and represents a logical scheme for studying the changing character of the oppressed conditions of Black people. From a historical perspective, one must ...
Culture, Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
Summary. Prejudice is a broad social phenomenon and area of research, complicated by the fact that intolerance exists in internal cognitions but is manifest in symbol usage (verbal, nonverbal, mediated), law and policy, and social and organizational practice. It is based on group identification (i.e., perceiving and treating a person or people ...
What Students Are Saying About Race and Racism in America
We will remain frozen in time until equality is reached. — Maria, Recife, Brazil. "Racism does exist in people … but America and the system as a whole is not racist in any way.". 'Blue ...
A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism
Abstract. This article contests the contention that sociology lacks a sound theoretical approach to the study of race and racism, instead arguing that a comprehensive and critical sociological theory of race and racism exists. This article outlines this theory of race and racism, drawing from the work of key scholars in and around the field.
Black Americans' Views of Racial Inequality, Racism, Reparations and
Black adults were asked in the survey to assess the current nature of racism in the United States and whether structural or individual sources of this racism are a bigger problem for Black people. About half of Black adults (52%) say racism in our laws is a bigger problem than racism by individual people, while four-in-ten (43%) say acts of ...
158 Resources for Understanding Systemic Racism in America
In a short essay published ... a group convened by President Lyndon Johnson, found that white racism, not black anger, was the impetus for the widespread civil unrest sweeping the nation. As Alice ...
Sociological Perspectives on Racism
Functionalist Perspective of Racism. The functionalist perspective perceives society as a composite system whose parts labor together to uphold harmony and steadiness. According to functionalism, racism and discrimination have had a significant role to play in altering humanity. The approach, however, is problematic since the vices mentioned ...
Racism, bias, and discrimination
Racism, bias, and discrimination. Racism is a form of prejudice that generally includes negative emotional reactions to members of a group, acceptance of negative stereotypes, and racial discrimination against individuals; in some cases it can lead to violence. Discrimination refers to the differential treatment of different age, gender, racial ...
Racism in America: Resources to help you understand a history of
Stories, videos, photo essays, audio and graphics on black history, progress, inequality and injustice. ... Perspective: "Sixty years ago, I ... Black Americans say racism and police conduct are ...
Resisting Racism: Memoir & Essays
We Gon' Be Alright by Jeff Chang. ISBN: 9780312429485. Publication Date: 2016-09-13. In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country.
How people globally see racial, ethnic discrimination in the U.S.
The ideological gap on this question is widest in the U.S. itself: 92% of those on the left (liberals, in common U.S. parlance) say racial and ethnic discrimination is a serious problem, compared with 47% of those on the right (conservatives), a difference of 45 points. The next-largest ideological gap is in Australia, where 80% of those on the ...
Racism
racism, the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called "races"; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others. The term is also applied to political, economic, or legal institutions and ...
Psychological perspectives on racism
Highlights. Psychological perspectives on racism. Professor Martha Augoustinos MAPS, Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide. In 1998 the APS position paper on 'Racism and prejudice' was published in the Australian Psychologist(Sanson et al., 1998). At that time, public debates about prejudice and racism had gained political ...
Racism, Hate Speech, and Social Media: A Systematic Review and Critique
In a review and critique of research on race and racism in the digital realm, Jessie Daniels (2013) identified social media platforms—specifically social network sites (SNSs)—as spaces "where race and racism play out in interesting, sometimes disturbing, ways" (Daniels 2013, 702).Since then, social media research has become a salient academic (sub-)field with its own journal (Social ...
Personal Essays About Casual Racism With Friends And Family ...
Personal Essays About Casual Racism With Friends And Family ... Aaron E. Sanchez is a Texas-based writer who focuses on issues of race, politics and popular culture from a Latino perspective.