During the Civil War, Black Americans were almost never encountered in the north of the country, and even now they are a minority there and make up less than ten percent in the states of the West Coast. According to Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich, we have a classic stereotype about Black people—that they like deep-fried chicken and watermelons. This is about the same as believing that a white American cannot survive for a day without a hamburger and Coca-Cola. Black people are better than white people at running or playing basketball (190–206). Returning to the problem of racism in America, everybody believes that there is racial discrimination in American society, but in my opinion, despite the much-beloved political correctness of Americans, racism in the US is still preserved. It is felt most acutely in the southern states, both from the white and Black sides. It is connected with historical events and with the fact that more than half of the Black population lives in the south of the USA. A large number of Black people in American sports is also linked to the fact that most poor families in this ethnic category are often unable, due to financial constraints, to give a high-quality education to their children; success in sports or other areas (art or show business) is one of the real and highly coveted ways for them to get into the middle, if not the upper, class of American society. There is also a theory of natural selection. Once, slave traders carefully selected in Africa only the strongest people for sale, and then only the strongest of these people survived the journey across the ocean in the holds of ships. Finally, only the strongest of their children survived.
Contemporary Racial Discrimination
For example, one does not have to look far: parishioners of a church in Mississippi raised a protest against the upcoming wedding of a Black couple, the WLBT television channel reported. Two young people—Charles and T’andrea Wilson—planned to hold a wedding ceremony at the Baptist church in Crystal Springs, which they had visited all their lives. However, according to the pastor, a small group of white parishioners resented the couple’s plans to hold a ceremony in their church. Stan Weatherford, the pastor of the First Mississippi Baptist Church, married the newlyweds in another church not far from the first. According to him, he thus tried to avoid a scandal with the protesting group of parishioners, but the Wilson family is sure that the pastor was afraid that he would not be re-elected for a new term. A white protest against the wedding of a Black couple—what is it, if not discrimination?
Sport and Racial Inequality
Today, about 80% of the players in the National Basketball League are Black. In the National League of American Football, about 70% of the players are Black, and more than 10% are in Major League Baseball, in which the first Black player appeared only in 1947—it was Jackie Robinson. At the Eleventh Olympiad in 1936 in Berlin, the United States was represented by eighteen African American athletes who won fourteen medals in total (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 190–206). It is believed that with their victories, Black athletes struck such a blow to Hitler’s myth about Aryan superiority that, as is known, the Fuhrer refused to congratulate the winners after the first day of the Olympics. But in the US, discrimination against Black people in sports continued even after these victories.
The Enduring Legacy of the Ku Klux Klan
We must not forget that in the United States, there are still supporters of the Ku Klux Klan movement, which is considered an extremist terrorist organization built on a radically nationalistic and racist ideology. The organization’s name comes from imitating a sound obtained when charging a rifle. In the first decades of its existence, independent and unregulated associations and groups of Ku Klux Klan supporters operated only in the southern states. They sought to restore the superiority of whites over Black people and to restrict the rights of the latter, including the right to vote, by arranging terrorist acts and killing Black people, as well as whites who defended their interests (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 190–206). In the early 1870s, the US Congress adopted some decisions, as a result of which Ku Klux Klan members were actively pursued under federal law, which helped to reduce the clan’s activities almost to nothing. The clan began to transform into a real organization like a Masonic lodge, with its own hierarchy, membership, and internal regulations. In the 1920s–1930s, about fifteen percent of the adult white male population, that is, four or five million Americans, were members of the clan. The range of its goals expanded, and it began to fight not only against Black people but also against American Catholics, liberals, and immigrants (McConahay, 563–579).
During the years of Prohibition in the US, the clan actively fought for its implementation and even for stronger enforcement. The clan began to penetrate other countries, primarily Canada. In the 1950s, the Ku Klux Klan actively opposed the development of civil society among African Americans and other ethnic and religious minorities. Experts believe that now, in America, there are more than three thousand members of the clan. Over the years of my life in the US, I have never encountered any manifestations of their activities, but in my collection, there are several round metal badges of members of the early 20th-century Ku Klux Klan that I bought at one of the antique auctions near Washington, and several posters of US law enforcement bodies that promise an award for the capture of a number of leaders of this organization. Such items can be found from time to time in sales of historical relics. In my collection, they coexist with Nazi artifacts (McConahay, 563–579).
Military Segregation and Unequal Service
The US Army has long been a strong source of racial hostility and discrimination. For most of its history, Black and white military personnel were divided into different units. There was a system of segregation. White units had great advantages, and the command treated them with extreme caution. As a result, in the First and Second World Wars, units of Black military personnel suffered much greater losses. For African American officers, there was an informal ceiling on career growth, so Benjamin Davis became the first Black brigadier general of the US Army in 1940. Interestingly, his son Benjamin also became the first Black general in the Air Force of America. As part of the US Army in the Second World War, 125 thousand Black military personnel participated, and many were killed. But even after the victory over Nazism, the attitude toward Black war veterans in America was far from equal. The manifestations of racism were quite official. In my collection of American antiques, there are many pieces of evidence from that time—from the famous signs such as Water is Only for Whites and Water for Blacks to bus inscriptions such as Only for Whites and Places for Color in the back rows.
Truman and Military Desegregation
The beginning of major federal civil-rights changes in the armed forces was advanced by President Harry Truman. Truman held prejudiced views earlier in his life, but his record also included a growing commitment to federal civil-rights action. His response developed over time and was influenced by racial violence against Black veterans, political pressure, and civil-rights advocacy; it was not a complete reversal in a single day (Norton, 215–218). In September 1946, Truman met with representatives of the Black public in the White House, and the guests told him about cases of racial crimes during the preceding months. All of them were terrible, but one particularly shocked the president. Black war veteran Isaac Woodard, dressed in his military uniform with awards on his chest, was taken off a bus in the town of Batesburg, South Carolina, and a local white policeman knocked out both his eyes with his baton. As witnesses recall, it was clearly evident that the president, who treated the army and military uniform with boundless respect, was shocked. Tears shone in his eyes. My God! he exclaimed. I had no idea that such terrible things were still happening! We must act immediately! Truman created a special commission for the analysis of racial relations, putting General Electric’s president, Charles Wilson, at the head of the organization (Norton, 215–218).
Federal Civil Rights Reforms
In February 1948, Truman offered Congress a program to protect the Negro population, which included laws against lynching, the restoration of the Committee on Fair Employment, the elimination of discrimination in transport, the protection of the right to vote, etc. Truman became the first President to deliver a speech in Harlem. In July 1948, he abolished segregation in the ranks of military personnel—the Black military received the same opportunities for promotion as whites. The military law forbade making racist statements—this was the foundation of political correctness. It’s amazing, but Americans managed to turn their army from the most important source of racism in the country into one of the most ethnically tolerant institutions of modern America. Today, it is an effective school of racial compatibility, one of the most ethnically varied US structures.
Racism During the Obama Presidency
When a man with a dark complexion entered the White House for the first time in the history of America, it seemed to many that racism in this country had been defeated. It turned out the other way around. The appearance of Obama was even more exciting to yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s slave owners. They always had a reason. Now, they had found an excuse. They always had a goal. Now, they had found the target. When Obama was asked if racism was the reason for the fall in his rating, he replied: According to Nelson, there is no doubt that some people do not like me because they do not like the idea of a Black president (342–358).
Media and Racial Resentment
Racist media began to promote the idea that Obama wanted to put Black people above white people. Extreme right-wing radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, having focused on a fight between a policeman and a Black man, said: In Obama’s America, white children are beaten on the bus by Black children. Rush Limbaugh was heard by fifteen million listeners, and a whole army of imitators repeated his thoughts to a multimillion-person audience on various blogs. The right-wing Fox TV channel broadcasts to millions of viewers. Its daily show Bill Reilly Factor alone is watched by more than three million people. Fox TV, regularly and routinely promoting racial resentment, has already turned into a modern Ku Klux Klan without balaclavas and burning crosses. The propagandists of white racists try to hide behind Freedom of Speech: we have it—in our own way (Nelson, 342–358).
Free Speech and Racially Charged Rhetoric
The First Amendment to the Constitution provides great freedom of political expression. But the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, and the proprietors of American liquor stores, preparing for the election of the first Black president, hung up inscriptions reading The sale of arms under the rule of Obama. There are no boundaries between freedom of speech and inciting hatred in America. For example, the ultraconservative broadcaster Glenn Beck said on Fox Television: This president has repeatedly revealed himself as a man who hates white people and white culture. Beck had no evidence, but it was irrelevant. After this statement, twenty advertisers, including Walmart and Procter & Gamble, withdrew their ads from the Beck show (Chaney, 480–505).
Threats and Organized Opposition
Racist hostility toward Obama became an industry. A large market filled with crosshairs and mannequins depicting the president appeared in America. On the Internet, there were games where people could shoot at Obama. The number of death threats sent to him was several times higher than that sent to any of the previous presidents. On election night, more than 200,000 racists posted obscene abuse on Twitter. The US Secret Service made significant efforts to protect Obama from racists. The official security measures were secret, but many observers believed that the president was the most carefully guarded man in American history.
Obama’s Cautious Response to Racial Conflict
Obama tried to play down the racial factor during the election campaign and administration. When a white police officer unjustifiably arrested his friend Henry Luis Gates, a professor at Harvard University, instead of punishing the white cop, the president invited him, along with a Negro professor, to the White House for a mug of beer. The incident was hushed up, but only until the next incident. When George Zimmerman shot and killed the unarmed Negro youth Trayvon Martin, and when the whole of Black America was shaken with indignation, the only thing Obama allowed himself was the phrase that if he had a son, he would be like Trayvon Martin. Obama went no further. He did not even mention the word racism in connection with this crime (McConahay, 23–45).
Maneuvering between the Scylla of racism and the Charybdis of the legitimate demands of Black America, Obama lost his way, neither reconciling Scylla with himself nor preventing Charybdis from becoming alienated from him (Frymer, 373–387). He choked in waves of racism and frustration. Neither Scylla nor Charybdis was inclined to forgive him. Racists considered Obama to be a usurper and could not wait until his term as the 44th president ended and he was replaced, so that everything would go as it should. When the Republican legislator John Wilson shouted to Obama under the arches of Congress, you’re lying! the country at first was dumbfounded (Leach, 432–445). This had not happened in the history of the United States. Former President Jimmy Carter, assessing this scandal, said: Many in our country have a hostile feeling that an African-American should not be president. Racism causes this incident. However, the congressman who accused Obama of lying still resisted. He seemed to want to say: You’re a liar, fight! (A classic appeal to a Negro slave, regardless of his age). When, at the Oscars, the coveted statuette for best film was received by the film of a Negro director about 12 Years a Slave, racists squealed that this was done under pressure from Obama. This had its misanthropic logic: a Negro film about Black people also cannot get an Oscar, just as a Black man cannot be president.
Slavery’s Political Legacy in the South
Congressman John Wilson, who called Obama a liar, represents the Second District of South Carolina at the Capitol. There is no longer slavery, but there is still racism. In this regard, I will tell you about a significant published study by three sociologists from the University of Rochester, who, through statistical calculations, found a strong connection between the number of slaves who lived in the south of the country in 1860 and the electoral tendencies of racial conservatism in our day. The more slaves there were in the southern counties and states 150 years ago, the more conservative their current white inhabitants are and the more right-wing Republicans there are among them. The high level of slave ownership makes white heirs of slaveholders racist on all points of the statistical scale (Hutchinson, 119–124).
Inherited Attitudes and Voting Patterns
The authors of the study write that the liberation of slaves led to economic shock. The price of formerly cheap slave labor increased. The reaction to this was an increase in racism and violence against Black people. These attitudes began to be inherited—from fathers to children. On the other hand, those Southerners who had few slaves differed little in their outlook from northerners and, now, from Democrats. And here’s the result. In 2012, 24% of the white population voted for Obama in the South, and 45% did so in the North (Gibbons, 603–605).
The Myth of a Post-Racial America
President Obama tried to remain above the fight even against those close to him. But this did not give him anything. Some conservatives sincerely believed that Obama used racial problems as a devil’s weapon. For example, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann accused Obama of using the guilt of whites toward Black people to capture their votes. This logically lies in the attempts of whites to portray themselves as victims (Golash-Boza, 1485–1489). Their traditional cry is: The Black people are coming to get us! Any reforms Obama tried to pursue in the fields of taxation, health insurance, education, etc., were declared by conservative racists to be handouts to Negroes, naturally, at the expense of their former owners—the slaveholders. Falling into paranoia, they accused the president of releasing the spirit of Americanism and its other values from the country by living in the White House (Chaney, 480–505). Such racism is incurable. It is encoded in the DNA of its carriers. Therefore, no post-racial era came with the election of Obama as President of the United States. I repeat, the opposite happened. Political scientists Michael Tesler and David Sears, after studying the results of the presidential elections of 2008–2009, came to the conclusion that Obama’s victory put the problem of racism at the forefront of politics more than it had been before his appearance. Tesler calls this period a hyper-arousal era. It’s hard to pronounce, but sure…
I had an uncle called Mikhail. His hatred of the Bolsheviks was irrational. He attributed all evil exclusively to their wiles. Once, we sat on the open balcony. Rain was coming. Uncle Misha, hiding behind a newspaper, exclaimed fiercely:
Rain started. Their mother is so and so—and cursed the Communists.
But this is a natural phenomenon, I interjected, to annoy my uncle.
The uncle muttered, you’ll grow up and find out what a natural phenomenon it is.
By the way, many observers compare the current racist hysteria in America with anti-communist McCarthyism.
Coded Racial Language
A racist vocabulary is a whole system of allusions and allegories. Now no politician will allow himself to utter the word nigga in public. That would be the end of his career. (This also infuriates racists.) But he can take risks and use such words as battle, skinny, arrogant, and ungrateful… You may be surprised by this circumstance—they say that these words are racist. Then listen to the following phrase: This skinny guy took advantage of all the benefits of our system, was educated at Harvard… became a professor of elitism, arrogant and conceited. He has an ungrateful nature. Now, he wants to break everything that he used before. This is the canonical portrait of Obama, as he is painted by the right (Gibbons, 603–605). When President Obama once visited Arizona, the governor of this state, Jen Brewer, who met him at the airport in front of a large audience, pointed a finger in his face. It was like Wilson’s you’re lying! All froze as in the silent scene of Gogol’s Inspector.
Racism Among Immigrant Communities
However, I must say that racist sentiments, in my opinion, are much stronger in ethnic diasporas and areas of recent immigrants who only face the realities of America (Chaney, 480–505). So, I was able to notice that visitors from Asia or Eastern Europe most often refer negatively to Black Americans. I almost never met Russians in America who would not say any nasty things about Black Americans, whether they were Russian students, immigrants from Brighton Beach, or intellectuals from Washington. Even some employees of Russian official representations in the United States often use the word Negro, intentionally or unconsciously, perhaps without even realizing that it is not appropriate to use it in the US (Golash-Boza, 1485–1489). I still cannot understand whether this is a result of their poor knowledge of the country and a lack of understanding of the delicate moments of its history and American political correctness, which many people who have recently moved to the US also perceive with noticeable irony and skepticism. Or is this attitude a mirror image of patriotic and interethnic education in the specific conditions of the Soviet Union? Or, finally, is it a reflection of the realities of modern Russia, where the level of mutual ethnic tolerance is changing before our eyes?
Works Cited
Bonilla-Silva, E., and D. Dietrich. The Sweet Enchantment of Color-Blind Racism in Obamerica. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 634, no. 1, 2011, pp. 190–206.
Chaney, Cassandra, and Ray V. Robertson. Racism and Police Brutality in America. Journal of African American Studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 2013, pp. 480–505.
Frymer, Paul. Racism Revised: Courts, Labor Law, and the Institutional Construction of Racial Animus. American Political Science Review, vol. 99, no. 3, 2005, pp. 373–387.
Gibbons, Y. M. Racism and Anti-Racism in Europe. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, vol. 35, no. December, 2006, pp. 603–605.
Golash-Boza, Tanya, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Rethinking Race, Racism, Identity and Ideology in Latin America Introduction. Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 36, no. August 2014, 2013, pp. 1485–1489.
Hutchinson, J. AIDS and Racism in America. Journal of the National Medical Association, vol. 84, no. 2, 1992, pp. 119–124, https://ovidsp.ovid.com/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=reference&D=med3&NEWS=N&AN=1602509.
Leach, Colin Wayne. Against the Notion of a ‘new Racism.’ Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, vol. 15, no. 6, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Nov. 2005, pp. 432–445, doi:10.1002/casp.841.
McConahay, John B., and Joseph C. Hough. Symbolic Racism. Journal of Social Issues, vol. 32, no. 2, 1976, pp. 23–45.
McConahay, John B., et al. Has Racism Declined in America? It Depends on Who Is Asking and What Is Asked. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 25, no. 4, 1981, pp. 563–579, doi:10.1177/002200278102500401.
Nelson, Jacqueline K. ‘Speaking’ Racism and Anti-Racism: Perspectives of Local Anti-Racism Actors. Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2015, pp. 342–358, doi:10.1080/01419870.2014.889837.
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