Everlasting Discrimination

By: Leslie Tartt

A post-racial society is a civilization that has an absence of racial discord. There would be no discrimination or prejudice based on a person’s racial background. The definition of a post-racial society in no way describes current or past America. America, as we know, has never been a post-racial society. As we transition through these times, it seems that America will never become a nation where everyone is treated with the same dignity and respect regardless of their ethnicity. An America without racial prejudice is not the America we live in today. America at all. That is the paradox of America. A dreamland. A thing of imagination. America has had
issues against many races in the times since it began. America has had racially charged issues for more than 400 years, and no matter how we wish it to, these things are not likely to change in the near future.

When the Spanish, the first settlers, came to America, they brought their prejudices and racism with them. Though many do not think about it, the Settlers were, in fact, racist to the Native Americans. Some Native Americans were even captured and sold as slaves to the Europeans. The Natives were considered as savages in the way of European expansion. Native American tribes were pushed aside and had their land stolen right from under them. After liberating the native Americans of their land by force, having their land stolen, they were brutally thrust onto Reservations, the land “given” to the Native tribes to live on was not good for farming or grazing animals and caused a great hardship for these people. The reservations dwellers were isolated and are treated horribly. Many were killed if they hunted or left the assigned area allotted to them by the new Americans. Many of the same issues still exist and need to be resolved. To this day, the natives are still not being given the treatment they deserve after all the suffering they were put through. Instead, they are being ignored by the American

government because it is not the white man’s issue proving that from the very beginning, America was far from being or becoming a post-racial society.

Following the first settlers to America, in 1619, the first slaves were brought to America near the Jamestown settlement. Slaves were shipped and bought like they were objects and not people. The only reason for this was because their skin was darker than those of the British settlers. Race played a huge role in the very beginnings of America. One’s skin color defined their entire life. Slaves with lighter skin tones were put to work in the house while those with darker skin tones had to work in the fields. Regardless of skin tone, if a slave even thought about disobeying the master, looked the master in the eye, or made a mistake, they were brutally beaten. All of this gruesome treatment was just because they were black and seen as less than. The family dog was held in higher regard than slaves. Race meant so much that slaves were said to be three fifths of a person and therefore, property. All this pain and suffering just because some people had a different skin tone showed that America was still not a post-racial society.

If we go forward a couple of hundred years to September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation stating that by January 1, 1863, enslaved people “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” However many slaves did not even know that they were granted freedom. Slaves in Galveston, Texas were not made aware of their freedom until June 19, 1865. Though blacks were freed from slavery, they were still not free from racial prejudice and discrimination. Free, but not equal by any means. In fact, people were so stuck in their ways to continue slavery based on race that they went as far as to try to separate from America and become their own country. The southern states called themselves the Confederate States of America. They designed their own flag and started a Civil war, killing many American soldiers,

mainly to hold on to their slaves. This proves that even as hundreds of years passed, America still had not achieved the status of a post-racial society. The only progress America had made was freeing the slaves and the appearance of abolitionists who fought for some sort of racial justice.

On January 1, 1892, Ellis Island was officially opened as an immigration station into America. The opening of Ellis Island was supposed to allow immigrants to come to America and escape the prejudices and persecution in their home countries. Little did they know they would only be coming to a new kind of prejudice. Once in New York, immigrants were forced to live in ghettos based on race. The Irish lived with the Irish, the Jews with the Jews, and the Blacks with the Blacks. These ghettos were run down tenement houses and dangerous. Immigrants also had trouble getting jobs in their new home. Businesses would put signs on their door saying things like “Irish need not apply” or “Jews help not wanted”. It was unfair treatment like this that made many immigrants transition to America more difficult. They were treated badly just because of their race. So, even during a time of American development, America was still not a post-racial society.

America was so racially prejudiced that there were even laws made so that blacks would not be equal to whites. They were called Jim Crow Laws and they were made specifically to disable blacks from having fair, equal treatment. This more evidence that America was not a post-racial society even after hundreds of years of racial injustice. Furthermore, there was a whole countrywide movement just so Black Americans would be treated equally. The Civil Rights Movement called attention to these injustices and forced the government to take a closer look at American’s Jim Crow laws . There were protests, marches, and boycotts for years, but

even after all of that, America was still not a post-racial society. Leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were fighting for fair treatment for people of color, but yet America persisted in its prejudiced ways like it had done for hundreds of years before. There, of course, was progress made in the fight for racial justice like Brown vs. Board of Education, the supreme court case deeming segregation of public schools unethical and unconstitutional. Though it did not always go the way of racial fairness as seen in the case Plessy vs. Ferguson, the supreme court case deciding the segregation of public facilities was constitutional as long as the facilities were equal in quality. The facilities, of course, were not equal. All of this displays that fact even with hard work and fighting America still was not a post-racial society.

If we look at the present time, America is in no way a post-racial society. There is actually quite a lot of racial unrest at the moment. Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, and many more are all proof that, though America has come far, there is still racial discrimination and injustice. There is currently a movement happening called the Black Lives Matter movement that is fighting for the equal treatment of black lives. A post-racial society would not need these things like the Black Lives Matter movement because everything would already be equal and there would be no injustice due to race.

Just as in the 1960’s Negros were beaten by police for marching peacefully across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Now police are beating Black Americans for marching peacefully in Washington, D.C. and Kentucky. Where is the racial harmony that a post-racial society would afford? There is very little change in how people are being treated by our society when they are standing up for their rights. John Lewis said people should stand up for what’s right by getting into “Good Trouble” It seems that it matters not what you are called:

slave, colored, negro, african american, or black american, this America has no racial compass and “Good Trouble” will still get you beaten and jailed.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This implies a nation without judgement due to skin color. America has still not reached this goal of having a nation without racial tensions. America is not currently a post-racial society and there is a plethora of evidence showing that as well. Maybe America will never be a post-racial society because it would require everyone in the country to change their way of thinking and that is to put it simply, impossible. In conclusion, America is not a post-racial society, never was a post-racial society, and futhermore America will never be a post-racial society. It is unfortunate, but it is true.