Racism in America: An Unending Struggle

According to Opposing Viewpoints Online, Racism is “a prejudice or an animosity against a person or group of people who belong to a different race”. Many Americans wrongly assume that the problem of racism is no more simply because our president is a Black man. These are the same Americans supporting the confederate flag, screaming All Lives Matter, and battling blackness through LCD screens.

February 26, 2012, August 9th, 2014, March 3rd 1991 and July 13th, 2015; what do these dates all have in common? These dates are those on which we were shown, in plain view, Just how much black lives matter in this country. Trayvon, Michael, Rodney and Sandra are only four on the list of ever-growing black victims of american racism. Following the

There were buildings set on fire and stores looted in a cry of anger and the need for social justice. However, these riots caught national and global attention. As King states in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, “.... an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.” With Trayvon’s death a term was coined and for a short time “Black Lives Matter” circled the nation. It was not until another child, Michael Brown, was gunned down by Officer Darren Wilson that the term truly caught fire and spread. Three words, fifteen letters hold so much meaning but unfortunately many people of all races only see the surface value of these words. These words go beyond the black lives that seem to only matter to the media. The Oprahs and Michael Jacksons of the world are of equal importance to little Shaniqua and Tommy in Decatur, Georgia and people fail to see that. Jussie Smollett, actor, stated on a visit to NBCBLK that, “You cannot pick and choose when Black lives

A simple way to describe this mental enslavement is with the term Internalized Racism. As Denzel Washington’s character, Dr. Tolson, states in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, “... Keep the slave physically strong but psychologically weak and dependent on the slave master. Keep the body, take the mind...” (The Great Debaters) That was the goal with physical enslavement, to strike fear into the hearts of blacks so that they will slowly lose their minds. With lost minds and dependence on their oppressors, the institution of racism is not only established but it is internalized, and self loathing begins. With the help of internalized racism, during the Reconstruction era, the Ku Klux Klan is formed by several former confederate soldiers. Because they were former confederate soldiers, this terrorist group adopted the confederate flag throughout Reconstruction and it inherently became a racist symbol. Being that it is a racist symbol, the usage of it, in any context whatsoever, is racist. Even though this is a blatantly racist symbol it still held a place in our history as a country and the history of South Carolina. In 1962, the confederate flag was placed atop the statehouse by vote of an all-white legislature. Though it was voted down in both 2000 and 2001, the flag was not taken down until after the shooting at Emanuel AME church in Charleston. It was finally taken down in July 2015