Racism Social Science Literature Has Largely Defined

Racism

Social Science literature has largely defined racist societies as those where: official ideology proclaims that racial differences are unbridgeable; the ideal is "race purity"; social segregation is mandated by law; and stigmatized groups have limited access to economic opportunities so that they are kept impoverished (Fredrickson, p. 101). Thus, it is evident that the historical definition of racism has emerged from a construct of political, sociological and economic ideology, which overtly practices racial discrimination. Since modern day America professes an ideology of equality, the question thus arises as to whether anti-black racism is now a part of the nation's ignoble past. Unfortunately, it appears that the answer to that question is in the negative, as racial prejudices continue to perpetuate an economic and social divide between African-American blacks and "white" America, albeit under the guise of Laissez-faire racism or persistent negative stereotyping (Martin & Tuch, p. 16). Logically, therefore, it follows that the ideology of inherent black inferiority is still alive in America but is now expressed in subtler, more socially palatable ways.

Racism as an ideology of inherent black inferiority first emerged into the clear light of day in the 1830s when defenders of black servitude needed a justification, which they found in theories that made white domination and black servitude both natural and unavoidable. One such theory was the eighteenth century scientific ethnology school of thought that believed that blacks had irreversibly degenerated from the original race of white Adamites. Thus, anti-black racism in America was rooted in both economic and sociological ideology. The latter especially, was obviously rather deeply ingrained. For, even in areas where slavery had been abolished, the segregation, discrimination, and violence experienced by the black community stands mute testimony to the fact that "white" America believed that "being the wrong color was an insuperable obstacle...to membership." Indeed, this fact grew more evident when the federal effort to enforce political and civic equality during Reconstruction failed in the light of violent white resistance (Fredrickson, p. 79-81). But perhaps the biggest evidence of America's belief in "black inferiority" lies in the practices of social segregation, depriving black males of suffrage rights, and hate-filled lynching mobs that took place in the South till as recently as the twentieth century (Fredrickson, p. 111).

Racial prejudices and discrimination persisted in an overt fashion in America for a good part of the twentieth century in spite of increasingly enlightened thinking on the part of the government, the courts and some sections of society (Fredrickson, p. 115). Despite such improvements, the black community in America continued to suffer, even in the more liberal North, at the hands of racial prejudices and bigotry that manifested itself in practices such as lower wages and social rebuffs in places such as restaurants. Finally, the increasing activism of the blacks, under the leadership of men such as Martin Luther King, Jr., led to desegregation and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Indeed, King's "I Have a Dream" speech, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, is perhaps the most moving expression of the plight of the blacks in America: "...the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty...still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land." (King, 1963)