Is America a racist country?
There has been a lot of talk of late about whether the United States is a racist country. People on both sides are adamant that it is, or it isn’t. I have been struggling with trying to understand the question, in the hope that I could figure out the answer. As a white person, I wanted to say “NO”, but I knew that was a pre-programmed white response and I wanted to learn the truth.
What exactly is a meant by the phrase “racist country”? And what is systemic racism? If it means that racist laws are codified in our system of justice, then I’d have to say that we are not at present a racist country. I thought systemic racism meant overt written laws and regulations designed and implemented to permit racist behavior, so I’d have to so no, again. But what if the enculturated racism and the racist attitudes of many whites that still pervade our society makes us a systemically racist country?
You can’t watch the events that have transpired in this country over the past month, year, decade and half century, and not see racism. Black men being killed by police is almost an everyday occurance. While we white people don’t mention it, it’s not uncommon for racial epithets and jokes to creep into conversation between some white people. Just try talking to any right-wing “patriot” or Trump supporter and it won’t be long until the N word pops up, along with a long list of all the natural faults and moral deficiencies of American blacks. “Them n****s have nobody to blame but themselves.”
Our country is still littered with thousands of monuments to the Confederate States of America, a treasonous, breakaway nation that was founded upon the premise that slavery was not only good, but the “natural and moral state of negroes”. The following excerpt is from a speech by Alexander Stephens, the Vice-president of the Confederate States of America on March 21, 1861, just before the Civil War began.
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Each and every Confederate statue is a monument to hatred, racism and slavery, so don’t let anyone try and convince you otherwise. When you’re told that the statues and monuments only memorialize Southern culture and heritage, just remember that Southern culture and heritage was entirely based upon the blood, sweat, tears and lives of enslaved black men, women and children.
It was just yesterday that I was discussing the latest brouhaha surrounding another black athlete, Gwen Berry, with a young friend of mine, because I couldn’t understand why this Olympic athlete would be so vehemently opposed to the Star Spangled Banner. He told me that no self-respecting black person would ever respect the anthem, because of what was in the third verse.
Third verse? Who knew there was multiple verses? For some 70 years I only knew the words I’d been taught in school, and I thought that was the whole thing. It turns out I was wrong. There are actually 4 verses, but I doubt many Americans know this.
It seems that Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner, was a white slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family. During a battle in the War of 1812, he wrote the poem that only became our national anthem in 1931, over 100 years after it was written.
It seems that British forces recruited escaped slaves to fight Americans during the war; they promised freedom to blacks who fought on the side of England. A unit of former slaves, called the Colonial Marines, was part of the British force that overran Washington D.C. in 1814 and burned the White House. (Ironic that white “patriots” tried the same thing in January of this year, but according to most Republicans, they were peaceful tourists. Interestingly, this was the first time that the flag of an enemy to the United States was carried into the Capitol since the War of 1812, when those so-called patriots displayed the Confederate Battle flag, as they stormed the Capital, attacking police and yelling to hang the Vice President. )
Francis Scott Key was both a patriotic American and an avowed believer in slavery, and he did not like former slaves taking up arms against his country, so he memorialized his hatred for those blacks in the third verse of the Star Spangled Banner.
Here’s the portion of the third verse in which he mentions slaves:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Just take a moment and consider this. He hated the fact that blacks were fighting Americans. He didn’t care that Americans had enslaved them for over a hundred years. He didn’t care that they were only fighting for their freedom. What right did those damn n*****s have fighting against the United States? After all, they should be grateful for all that America had done for them, and fighting against America was not a question of freedom, but of treason.
So when we ask the question about America being a racist country, let’s look at the facts, and history . . . .
In his speech to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers and the first governor of Virginia, exhorted the Virginia legislature to rise up in the fight for independence with the these words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” What truly remarkable words. This man said he would rather be dead than be a figurative slave of England, yet when he died in 1799, he owed 67 actual slaves. It appears that black slavery was not a problem at all to this great patriot and lover of freedom and independence.
8 of the first 12 Presidents owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, several of whom were his own children! George Washington was one of the largest slave owners in the country. James Madison, Patrick Henry and George Mason all owned slaves. In fact, 17 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention owned a total of some 1,400 slaves between them, an average of over 80 slaves each! It is estimated that 41 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves.
Most of the very people who were responsible for the birth of our great country were unabashed, unapologetic racists. The founders encouraged colonial prejudices about dangerous slaves and used this to unite the colonists in one “common cause.” One of the main reasons the colonies sought independence was to protect the institution of slavery. Britain was opposed, but the Americans wanted and needed slavery to continue. It was very profitable. The United States was conceived and was born as a racist country.
In June of 1776, these so-called great men drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence said that “All men are created equal.” Blacks weren’t included because they weren’t considered men. As a side note, woman weren’t included either.
In September of 1814, Francis Scott Key said that no refuge could save the slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave. These black Americans weren’t fighting against the United States; they were fighting to be free. Freedom was their motivation, not treason. How is it even possible to speak about slavery and the land of the free in the same verse? When a country has slaves, there is no freedom.
In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks were not, and could never become citizens of the United States. In so ruling, the nation’s highest court codified that we were a racist country.
It wasn’t until 1865 and the 13th Amendment that blacks were no longer seen as property, to be bought and sold like so much livestock. The fact that we needed the 13th Amendment to free blacks from slavery means that we were a racist country.
On July 9, 1868, Congress passed the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves, and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the law.” For black Americans, this was a landmark decision. Why would we have needed to make a law that Black Americans were citizens if we weren’t a racist country?
JIm Crow, Redlining, Poll Taxes and a host of other ingenious machinations designed to subjugate blacks followed in a neverending procession. White people were and are nothing if not clever in finding ways to keep blacks in their place.
In 1931, Congress officially adopted the Star Spangled Banner as our national anthem. Think about this. Less than 100 years ago, this country adopted an anthem still in use today that speaks of slavery. Sounds like racism to me.
It wasn’t until August 6, 1965, that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act that outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, and gave blacks the right to vote. The fact that we needed this act to allow blacks the right to vote shows that we were a racist country.
Fast forward to the present. Emmet Till was a 14 year old black boy killed by white trash rednecks in MIssissippi in 1955. They were found innocent by a Mississippi jury, then a year later publicly admitted to the murder and were never punished. A memorial was erected in Emmet’s honor. It has been torn down, vandalized and shot at repeatedly. Who would damage a memorial to an innocent young boy brutally murdered by racist whites except more racist whites? 67 years after his murder, we are a racist country.
Thousands of monuments memorializing racist Confederates are still in place on courthouse grounds and Southern town squares., and taxpayer dollars are still being used to maintain these tributes to racist traitors. Confederate Memorial Day is an official state holiday in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina; while it is commemorated in Kentucky, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee. How can we NOT be a racist country when so many states celebrate racism in this manner.
Being racist is like being pregnant. Even a little pregnant is still pregnant. We may not be as racist as we once were, but make no mistake, America is still a racist country because it was designed and setup that way, and whites have fought long and hard to maintain the status quo..
I, for one, will never hear the Star Spangled Banner again and believe the words “the land of the free, and the home of the brave”, because America has never been the land of the free for black Americans. Now I wonder why any decent white person would ever respect the anthem. Moreover, why would any black American celebrate the 4th of July or our National Anthem? Neither one of these brought freedom or independence to black people in America.
America is still a racist country, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We can make America better so that it one day it might actually be the Land of the Free, where ALL people are created equal and where every person is judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
First we have to recognize that racism exists, then we have to work to end it. We must all be anti-racist.
O say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bomb bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,
'Tis the star-spangled banner - O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust,"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.