The Survival Of Racism

The days of plantation slavery in America are over, but racism against blacks is far more versatile than any forced slavery could ever be.  One mistake (of many) of some in conservative circles is to imagine that the end of slavery signalled the end of racism towards African Americans, as if it is impossible or unlikely for the ideas and attitudes that motivated this form of slavery to survive in slavery's absence.

Racism does not have to look like whites treating blacks like farm animals or blacks shooting whites that move into black-dominated neighborhoods (yes, racism against whites is typically ignored or unjustly downplayed).  To privately stereotype or otherwise invisibly discriminate against someone because of his or her skin color might not be as outwardly destructive as the travesty of American slavery, but it is no less racist to do so.

This is how established racism can survive something like the gradual movement towards social equality after the Civil War.  A person bent on living out an unsound or unjust assumption can always try to find a way to express their assumption(s) in a less socially opposed way, after all.  Dismantling one cultural norm may leave others in need of their own destruction, even if the uprooted and existing norms share common ideology.

That present American culture has long since moved away from normalizing the idea of whites owning blacks in no way means that blacks do not face discrimination in quieter or less vicious ways (whites certainly do as well, but it is often more obvious when blacks are the victims).  It is not that there have not been major victories in combating racism against blacks, but that racism does not need to be as overt and malicious as race-based slavery.

Those who pretend like racism that is anywhere near the same degree of injustice as American slavery is still present in the United States are delusional--but the same is true of anyone who thinks that the absence of slavery equates to a thorough racial equality that permeates all aspects of American culture.  Just like sexism against men and women, racism can be far more subtle, receiving acceptance even by people who would otherwise condemn it.