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Hist 2104 Final - Spiers
Hist 2104 Final - Spiers
12/5/18
Final Paper
HIST 2104
Dylan Rodriguez has argued that white supremacy is a centripetal force that historically
restructured American society to subjugate non-white bodies. This argument can be supported by
looking at historical events in America including the beginning of the nation of America itself
and throughout history until now in 2018. We continue to see job and housing discrimination,
brutality, racist laws and politicians using fear mongering and racist ideals to try to cater their
platforms when they run for political positions. Though we do not see the traditional slavery
anymore, we still see violence against black people and the mass incarceration of black men that
have to do labor for only a few cents an hour which begs the question, is slavery still happening
in a modern form? White supremacy has always been part of the American government system
and it can be seen throughout history during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement and
even now in the era of Donald Trump. White supremacy has reinvented itself in every decade in
American history and it will continue to manifest itself unless people understand these historical
events and understand how racism can show itself in different ways.
Racism and white supremacy have reinvented themselves into new forms since the
beginning of time. Edward Bonilla-Silva says that “Unlike analysts who believe that ‘racism’ has
withered away, I argue that the persistent inequality experienced by blacks and other racial
minorities in the United States today is due to the continued albeit changed existence of a racial
structure. In contrast to race relations in the Jim Crow period, however, racial practices that
reproduce racial inequality in contemporary America are (1) increasingly covert, (2) embedded
in normal operations of institutions, (3) void of direct racial terminology, and (4) invisible to
most whites” (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 48). Racism is typically defined as “prejudice, ignorance, or a
disease that afflicts some individuals and causes them to discriminate against others just because
of the way they look” (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 21). However, Bonilla-Silva challenges this and says
It’s clear that racism has been engrained into society since the very beginning. It is more than
just ideas that people have, it is an institutional systemic problem. America was created on stolen
land from the Native Americans and then build by slaves that the Europeans brought over on
ships. America’s first presidents and leaders were slave owners. Slaves could not speak their own
language, practice their own religion and they could not name their children (Dierenfield 2008,
3). Eventually in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was established and slavery was abolished.
After slavery was abolished and the Civil War ended, actual slavery still existed in
America throughout the Reconstruction period. Governments were reestablished but they looked
very similar to the Confederate governments they were trying to get rid of; the governments were
full of only white men. Former slaves were promised land but land was returned to the original
land owners, only white men. Sharecropping was established and black people had to work again
to earn their crops. Black codes, codes that “restricted black mobility, economic opportunity, and
political expression” (Dierenfield 2008, 10), were established. The 15th Amendment was
established but it was vague and states had a lot of opportunities to still deny black men their
vote based off literacy level and other things. Black people became office holders and
representatives and schools were established for black children. White southerners could not
understand and deal with black people being able to hold office and being able to vote and the
Ku Klux Klan was developed and violence against black people was continued. After the
Compromise of 1877, the Democrats were in control of the South again and continued to limit
the rights of black people and Jim Crow laws were passed (History 2011).
While America took just a few small steps forward with the 13th, 14th, and 15th
Amendments, many more steps were taken back. It wasn’t just about giving rights to black
people and then taking them away, it was also about brutal violence and murder perpetrated by
white people. The Mississippi Plan was enacted and the KKK “castrated, raped, and lynched
thousands of black men and women” (Dierenfield 2008, 9). They didn’t just want to kill them,
they wanted to torture and dehumanize all black people. In the murder of Sam Hose, they
“chained him to a tree, cut off his ears, fingers and genitals, skinned his face, and plunged knives
into his body before setting him ablaze” (Dierenfield 2008, 9). Frederick Douglass said in “The
Color Line” that the black man “has ceased to be the slave of an individual, but has in some
sense become the slave of society. He may not now be bought and sold like a beast in the market,
but he is the trammeled victim of a prejudice, well calculated to repress his manly ambition,
paralyze his energies, and make him a dejected and spiritless man, if not a sullen enemy to
society, fit to prey upon life and property and to make trouble generally” (Douglass 1883).
Though slavery was technically “over,” the violence, racism and white supremacy continued and
white people still tried to take away the very few rights of black people. Even though these
amendments had been passed, there was obviously still racism in America. Racism showed itself
from films like The Birth of a Nation, a film that portrayed black people as rapists, to court cases
like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 that enforced the “separate but equal” trope and allowed for
states to enforce segregation (Dierenfield 2008, 11). Soon, states were segregating public
transportation, restaurants, pools, beaches and water fountains. This time in America was built
on racism and slavery manifested itself in a way that looked like the continued torture and
After the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, there were different ideologies that came out
about how black people should go about trying to gain more freedom in America. There were
ideas like Booker T. Washington explaining how black people should just accept their “second-
class citizenship” (Dierenfield 2008, 15) and others like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and W.E.B Du
Bois discredited leaders like Washington and argued that nothing would be solved if black
people just accepted this violence from white people. Soon after, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established. Leaders of the NAACP lobbied in
Congress for protective legislation, encouraged voting, sued in court to desegregate jobs,
jousting and public facilities and denounced European colonialism in Africa. (Dierenfield 2008,
16) This was just the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in America. There are countless
people involved in this movement that organized and taught people, lobbied, and held nonviolent
protests within this time that made many changes for black people. More people were mobilized
than ever before and many leaders came out to advance this movement. Black people started
moving west during a movement called the Great Migration. These people were trying to escape
the harsh discrimination in the South. While they escaped the South, they moved to these cities
and still faced hard times. They still had to deal with having jobs that did not pay as much and
had to live in very segregated neighborhoods (Dierenfield 2008, 16). Presidents Roosevelt,
Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy enacted laws and decisions like banning discrimination in
war industries, in federal employment and established affirmative action (Dierenfield 2008, xix).
More and more organizations like the Southern Regional Council, Southern Conference
Educational Fund and others were created to work towards the political, social and economic
progress of black people. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme
Court. Their decision “invalidated ‘separate but equal’ public schools” (Dierenfield 2008, 23).
While there was legal progress for black people and revolutionary moments like Rosa
Parks not giving up her seat on that Montgomery, Alabama bus, there were still steps being taken
back and society moved away from this progress. Violence against black people continued and
people like Emmett Till were falsely accused and lynched at the hands of white people. Children
trying to integrate schools like the Little Rock Nine were met violence and hatred from white
people and the Brown v. Board decision was met with much opposition. Leaders like Martin
Luther King Jr. and Malcom X were assassinated. Just because there were some laws being
passed for the advancement of black people, the FBI still wiretapped the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and accused them of being communists. Just because President Kennedy
developed some legislation to end segregation in some places doesn’t mean that he was for all of
the mobilization of the effort for desegregation in America. He hoped that the Freedom Ride
would go away and J. Edgar Hoover passed on the Ride’s intended track to people in Alabama
that were violent Klansmen. (Dierenfield 2008, 64) White people felt threatened by this
mobilization of black people and white allies and reacted many times with the same violence that
was shown during the times of Reconstruction. Again, slavery and racism are shown during this
time in a lot of the same ways it was in the time after the Civil War. It’s hard to say that things
were better for black people because they are still being met with violence while they are trying
to gain equality. This violence came from people in America and from white citizens but also it
If we look to 2008, we see the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama.
Obama served two-terms and made history many times as president. While Obama won both the
Electoral College and popular vote, Obama and other black people in America continued to face
extreme racism. The election and presidency of Obama proved quickly that America was not
entering a post-racial era. Obama’s birth certificate was a hot topic for Republicans trying to
prove that he was not born in the United States. Some American citizens that were opposed to
President Obama carried around puppets and posters with his head in a noose, painting a portrait
of lynching. The controversial case of Shelby v. Holder determined that Section 4(b) of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. In result of this,
thousands of polling places have been closed in predominantly black counties and this leads to
reducing voter turnout (Oyez n.d.). Racial unrest in places like Ferguson and Baltimore were
recognized on a national level and nine black people were killed in Charleston, South Carolina in
a racially motivated shooting. Though people thought this was still a time of “post-racial”
America, black men faced mass-incarceration, unfair sentencing for minor offenses or criminal
records for life. (Alexander 2010) Michelle Alexander says in her book “The New Jim Crow”
that
While there was societal racism, there was also racism and white supremacy convicting black
men at high rates and this continues to happen. Even if we are not incarcerating black men,
society still outcast them whether that is calling the cops on them for a barbeque or when the
cops themselves shoot and kill them for no reason other than they had a “suspicion” that they
were criminals. Men like Philando Castile are murdered by police for obeying orders. The police
officers who commit these acts of violence against black men are often acquitted of charges
against them like Jeronimo Yanez who was acquitted of charges in the death of Castile (Berman
2017).
Fast-forwarding to the era of Trump that is happening now, America has gone from its
first black president to one who blasts groups like Black Lives Matter and insists that in the
Charlottesville rally that there were very fine people there when referring to the white
supremacists and modern-day Nazi’s that were there. Trump has said that immigrants from Haiti
“all have AIDS” and insisted for years that Obama was born in Kenya. He refuses to
acknowledge the racism police brutality and murder than has been happening in America and has
the support of David Duke who led the KKK. Trump also uses hateful rhetoric when speaking of
immigrants and migrants, trying to close the southern border of the United States and preventing
people of color from coming to the United States to gain asylum, even when that is their right.
Donald Trump became the president because people in America elected him. This continues to
show that racism and white supremacy is very alive in modern-day America.
A study done by three political scientists found that among the 6.7 and 9.2 million people
that voted for Obama then voted for Trump, most people in that group scored high on racist and
xenophobic ideology. Just because they voted for America’s first black president does not mean
that they are not racist (Beauchamp 2017, para. 16). Racism has been engrained in society. White
supremacy is upheld by white people and white people profit off it, meaning that they will
continue to vote for politicians that will uphold these values of wanting to remain the superior
race. The study said that they, “find a much stronger association between symbolic racial and
immigration attitudes and switching for Trump and Clinton than between economic marginality
or local economic dislocation and vote switching. In fact, we find marginally small or no
associations between any of our economic indicators and vote switching in either direction”
(Reny et. al.). Many people and news sources continually talk about the issue of class and how
that related to the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election. However, this study and other
studies like it, show that it had to do more with race and anti-immigration policies. Trump used
racial politics in his campaign and it ultimately landed him the presidency. Though Obama won
the presidency in both 2008 and 2012, white people voted in favor of the Republican candidate
both times with 55% for McCain in 2008 (CNN 2008) and 59% for Romney in 2012 (CNN
2012). White people also overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, seemingly repeating white
voting habits from the previous elections. It seems as if racial relations in America will continue
The history of America has upheld Rodriguez’s claim that white supremacy is central to
Evils of Society” speech that “if America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish
racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked
the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men” (King 1967). The evilness of
racism and its presence in America will continue to enslave black and other bodies of color until
it is addressed. Looking at these historical and current events, it is shown that white supremacy
can be upheld if nothing is learned from these events. In his speech on Black Power, Kwame
Ture discussed whether or not man can condemn himself. If man cannot condemn himself,
progress will never be made. He uses an example of the Nazi’s after they were charged with war
crimes. They would not admit what they had done was wrong because that would have caused
pain and guilt for themselves. As humans, we do not want to admit what we have done has
caused harm. If white people do not condemn the systematic problem of racism and the way the
American governmental system was build off racism, nothing will change. “We have allowed
ourselves to be willfully blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social ex-
communication that has denied millions of African Americans basic human dignity. The
significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity
of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system (Alexander 2010). We must
realize that before we can create progress and dismantle the system of racism, we must
acknowledge that it is still a problem, it has never just been a problem of the past.
References
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Douglass, Frederick. "The Color Line." The North American Review 132, no. 295 (June 1881).
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25100970.
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. New York, NY: New Press, 2012.
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