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Racism in the United States comprises negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity which are related to each other, are held by various people and groups in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, and have been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices and actions (including violence) at various times in the
history of the United States The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
against racial or ethnic groups. Throughout American history,
white Americans White Americans are Americans who identify as and are perceived to be white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. As of the 2020 Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone. This represented ...
have generally enjoyed legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights, which have been denied to members of various ethnic or minority groups at various times.
European Americans European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent E ...
, particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, are said to have enjoyed advantages in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure.
Racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagoni ...
against various ethnic or minority groups has existed in the United States since the early colonial era. Before 1865, most
African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
were enslaved and even afterwards, they have faced severe restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms. Native Americans have suffered
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
, forced removals, and massacres, and they continue to face
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of Racial discrimination, r ...
.
Hispanics The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...
,
Middle Eastern The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europea ...
and
Asian Americans Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peopl ...
along with
Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...
have also been the victims of discrimination. In addition, non-
Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
immigrants from Europe, particularly
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
,
Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, who share a common history, culture, the Polish language and are identified with the country of Poland in ...
,
Italians , flag = , flag_caption = The national flag of Italy , population = , regions = Italy 55,551,000 , region1 = Brazil , pop1 = 25–33 million , ref1 = , region2 ...
, and the Irish were often subjected to
xenophobic Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
exclusion and other forms of ethnicity-based discrimination. Racism has manifested itself in a variety of ways, including genocide, slavery,
lynchings Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
, segregation, Native American reservations and boarding schools, racist immigration and
naturalization Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the in ...
laws, and
internment camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
. Formal racial discrimination was largely banned by the mid-20th century and over time, coming to be perceived as socially and morally unacceptable. Racial politics remains a major phenomenon, and racism continues to be reflected in socioeconomic inequality. Into the 21st century, research has uncovered extensive evidence of racial discrimination in various sectors of modern U.S. society, including the
criminal justice Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...
system,
business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." Having a business name does not separ ...
, the
economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...
,
housing Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether ...
,
health care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health pr ...
, the
media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
, and
politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
. In the view of the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
and the U.S. Human Rights Network, "
discrimination in the United States Discrimination comprises "base or the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit, especially to show prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or a similar social factor". This term is used to highlight the difference in t ...
permeates all aspects of life and extends to all communities of color."


Aspects of American life


Citizenship and immigration

The
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free Whit ...
set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by
naturalization Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the in ...
, which limited naturalization to "free white person , thus excluding Native Americans,
indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, ...
,
slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, free Blacks and later Asians from citizenship. Citizenship and the lack of it profoundly impacted various legal and political rights, the most notable of which were suffrage rights at both the federal and state level, the right to hold certain government offices, jury duty, military service in the
United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is ...
, as well as many other activities, besides access to government assistance and services. The second Militia Act of 1792 also provided for the
conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to Ancient history, antiquity and it continues in some countries to th ...
of every "free able-bodied white male citizen". Tennessee's 1834 Constitution included a provision: “the free white men of this State have a right to Keep and bear arms for their common defense.” The
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a treaty which was signed on September 27, 1830, and proclaimed on February 24, 1831, between the Choctaw American Indian tribe and the United States Government. This treaty was the first removal treaty wh ...
, made under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, allowed those
Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
Indians who chose to remain in
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
to gain recognition as US citizens, the first major non-European ethnic group to become entitled to US citizenship. Racial discrimination in naturalization and immigration continued despite the
Equal Protection Clause The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "''nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal ...
in the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered as one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and ...
(ratified in 1868). The Fourteenth Amendment overruled previous court decisions and gave U.S.-born African Americans citizenship through
birthright citizenship ''Jus soli'' ( , , ; meaning "right of soil"), commonly referred to as birthright citizenship, is the right of anyone born in the territory of a state to nationality or citizenship. ''Jus soli'' was part of the English common law, in contras ...
. The Naturalization Act of 1870 extended naturalization to Black persons, but not to other non-white persons, but revoked the citizenship of naturalized Chinese Americans. The law relied on coded language to exclude "aliens ineligible for citizenship" which primarily applied to Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Native Americans were granted citizenship in a piece-meal manner until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which unilaterally bestowed blanket citizenship status on them, whether they belonged to a
federally recognized tribe This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the Unite ...
or not, though by that date, two-thirds of Native Americans had already become US citizens by various means. The Act was not retroactive, so citizenship was not extended to Native Americans who were born before the effective date of the 1924 Act, nor was it extended to indigenous persons who were born outside the United States. Further changes to racial eligibility for citizenship by naturalization were made after 1940, when eligibility was extended to "descendants of races indigenous to the
Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the antimeridian. The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Politically, the te ...
," "Filipino persons or persons of Filipino descent," "Chinese persons or persons of Chinese descent," and "persons of races indigenous to India." The
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (), also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code (), governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. It came into effect on June 27, 1952. Befor ...
now prohibits racial and gender discrimination in naturalization. During the period when only "white" people could be naturalized, many court decisions were required to define which ethnic groups were included in this term. These are known as the " racial prerequisite cases", and they also informed subsequent legislation.


Voting

The
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying or abridging a citizen's right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It was ...
(ratified in 1870), explicitly prohibited denying the right to vote based on race, but delegated to Congress the responsibility for enforcement. During the
Reconstruction era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...
, African Americans began to run for office and vote, but the
Compromise of 1877 The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Wormley Agreement or the Bargain of 1877, was an unwritten deal, informally arranged among members of the United States Congress, to settle the intensely disputed 1876 presidential election between Ruth ...
ended the era of strong federal enforcement of equal rights in the Southern states. White Southerners were prevented by the Fifteenth Amendment from explicitly denying the vote to Blacks by law, but found other ways to disenfranchise.
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
that targeted African Americans without mentioning race included poll taxes,
literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in Writing, written form in some specific context of use. In other wo ...
and comprehension tests for voters, residency and record-keeping requirements, and
grandfather clause A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...
s allowing White people to vote.
Black Codes The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political p ...
criminalized minor offenses like unemployment (styled "vagrancy"), providing a pretext to deny voting rights. Extralegal violence was also used to terrorize and sometimes kill African Americans who attempted to register or to vote, often in the form of
lynching Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
and
cross burning In modern times, cross burning or cross lighting is a practice which is associated with the Ku Klux Klan. However, it was practiced long before the Klan's inception. Since the early 20th century, the Klan burned crosses on hillsides as a way to ...
. These efforts to enforce white supremacy were very successful. For example, after 1890, less than 9,000 of Mississippi's 147,000 eligible African-American voters were registered to vote, or about 6%. Louisiana went from 130,000 registered African-American voters in 1896 to 1,342 in 1904 (about a 99% decrease). Even Native Americans who gained citizenship under the 1924 Act were not guaranteed
voting rights Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
until 1948. According to a survey by the Department of Interior, seven states still refused to grant Indians voting rights in 1938. Discrepancies between federal and state control provided loopholes in the Act's enforcement. States justified discrimination based on state statutes and constitutions. Three main arguments for Indian voting exclusion were Indian exemption from real estate taxes, maintenance of tribal affiliation and the notion that Indians were under guardianship, or lived on lands controlled by federal trusteeship. By 1947, all states with large Indian populations, except
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
and
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...
, had extended voting rights to Native Americans who qualified under the 1924 Act. Finally, in 1948, a judicial decision forced the remaining states to withdraw their prohibition on Indian voting. The
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
resulted in strong Congressional enforcement of the right to vote regardless of race, starting with the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights m ...
. Though this greatly enhanced the ability of racial minorities to vote and run for office in all areas of the country, concerns over racially discriminatory voting laws and administration persist.
Gerrymandering In representative democracies, gerrymandering (, originally ) is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries with the intent to create undue advantage for a party, group, or socioeconomic class within the constituency. The m ...
and voter suppression efforts around the country, though mainly motivated by political considerations, often effectively disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities. These include targeted
voter ID A voter identification law is a law that requires a person to show some form of identification in order to vote. In some jurisdictions requiring photo IDs, voters who do not have photo ID often must have their identity verified by someone else ...
requirements, registration hurdles, restricting vote-by-mail, and making voting facilities physically inconvenient to access due to long distances, long lines, or short hours. The 2013 U.S. Supreme court decision ''
Shelby County v. Holder ''Shelby County v. Holder'', 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states an ...
'' struck down the pre-clearance provisions of the 1965 Act, making anti-discrimination enforcement more difficult. In 2016, one in 13 African-Americans of voting age was disenfranchised, more than four times greater than that of non-African-Americans. Over 7.4% of adult African-Americans were disenfranchised compared to 1.8% of non-African-Americans.
Felony disenfranchisement in Florida Felony disenfranchisement in Florida is currently a contentious political issue in Florida. Though the general principle of felony disenfranchisement is not in dispute, the disenfranchisement of people who had been convicted of a felony and have ...
disqualifies over 10% of its citizens for life and over 23% of its African-American citizens.


Criminal justice system

There are unique experiences and disparities in the United States in regard to the policing and prosecuting of various races and ethnicities. There have been different outcomes for different racial groups in convicting and sentencing felons in the United States criminal justice system.United States. Dept. of Justice. 2008. Bureau of Justice Statistics: Prison Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Justice. Experts and analysts have debated the relative importance of different factors that have led to these disparities. Academic research indicates that the over-representation of some racial minorities in the criminal justice system can in part be explained by socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, exposure to poor neighborhoods, poor access to public education, poor access to early childhood education, and exposure to harmful chemicals (such as
lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, ...
) and pollution. Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as Blacks have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas through actions of the government (such as
redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services ( financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have sign ...
) and private actors. Various explanations within
criminology Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and s ...
have been proposed for racial disparities in crime rates, including conflict theory, strain theory,
general strain theory General strain theory (GST) is a theory of criminology developed by Robert Agnew. General strain theory has gained a significant amount of academic attention since being developed in 1992. Robert Agnew's general strain theory is considered to be ...
,
social disorganization theory In sociology, the social disorganization theory is a theory developed by the Chicago School, related to ecological theories. The theory directly links crime rates to neighbourhood ecological characteristics; a core principle of social disorgan ...
, macrostructural opportunity theory, social control theory, and subcultural theory. Research also indicates that there is extensive racial and ethnic discrimination by police and the judicial system. A substantial academic literature has compared police searches (showing that contraband is found at higher rates in whites who are stopped), bail decisions (showing that whites with the same bail decision as Blacks commit more pre-trial violations), and sentencing (showing that Blacks are more harshly sentenced by juries and judges than whites when the underlying facts and circumstances of the cases are similar), providing valid causal inferences of racial discrimination. Studies have documented patterns of racial discrimination, as well as patterns of police brutality and disregard for the constitutional rights of African-Americans, by police departments in various American cities, including
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
,
New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...
,
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
and
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
.


Education

In 1954, '' Brown vs. the Board of Education'' ruled that integrated, equal schools be accessible to all children unbiased to skin color. Currently in the United States, not all state funded schools are equally funded.  Schools are funded by the "federal, state, and local governments" while "states play a large and increasing role in education funding." "
Property tax A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inher ...
es support most of the funding that local government provides for education." Schools located in lower income areas receive a lower level of funding and schools located in higher income areas receiving greater funding for education all based on property taxes.  The U.S. Department of Education reports that "many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding, leaving students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers." The U.S. Department of Education also reports this fact affects "more than 40% of low-income schools." Children of color are much more likely to suffer from poverty than white children. The phrase "brown paper bag test," also known as a
paper bag party "The Brown Paper Bag Test" is a term in African-American oral history used to describe a colorist discriminatory practice within the African-American community in the 20th century, in which an individual's skin tone is compared to the color of a ...
, along with the "ruler test" refers to a ritual once practiced by certain African-American sororities and fraternities who would not let anyone into the group whose skin tone was darker than a paper bag.Kerr, A. E. (2006). The paper bag principle: Class, colorism, and rumor in the case of black Washington, DC. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Spike Lee Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee (born March 20, 1957) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, has produced more than 35 films since 1983. He made his directorial debut ...
's film ''
School Daze ''School Daze'' is a 1988 American musical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Spike Lee, and starring Laurence Fishburne (credited as Larry Fishburne), Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell. Based in part on Spike Lee's experience ...
'' satirized this practice at historically Black colleges and universities. Along with the "paper bag test," guidelines for acceptance among the lighter ranks included the "comb test" and "pencil test," which tested the coarseness of one's hair, and the "flashlight test," which tested a person's profile to make sure their features measured up or were close enough to those of the Caucasian race.


Curriculum

The curriculum in U.S. schools has also contained racism against non-white Americans, including Native Americans,
Black Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensla ...
,
Mexican Americans Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
, and Asian Americans. Particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, school textbooks and other teaching materials emphasized the biological and social inferiority of Black Americans, consistently portraying Black people as simple, irresponsible, and oftentimes, in situations of suffering that were implied to be their fault (and not the effects of slavery and other oppression).Elson, Ruth Miller (1964). ''Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century''. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.Au, Wayne, 1972–. Reclaiming the multicultural roots of U.S. curriculum : communities of color and official knowledge in education. Brown, Anthony Lamar, Aramoni Calderón, Dolores,, Banks, James A. New York. . . Black Americans were also depicted as expendable and their suffering as commonplace, as evidenced by a poem about "Ten Little Nigger Boys" dying off one by one that was circulated as a children's counting exercise from 1875 to the mid-1900s. Historian Carter G. Woodson analyzed American curriculum as completely lacking any mention of Black Americans' merits in the early 20th century. Based on his observations of the time, he wrote that American students, including Black students, who went through U.S. schooling would come out believing that Black people had no significant history and had contributed nothing to human civilization. School curriculum often implicitly and explicitly upheld white people as the superior race and marginalized the contributions and perspectives of non-white peoples as if they were (or are) not as important.Mills, Charles W. (1994). "REVISIONIST ONTOLOGIES: THEORIZING WHITE SUPREMACY". Social and Economic Studies. 43 (3): 105–134. ISSN 0037-7651. In the 19th century, a significant number of students were taught that
Adam and Eve Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. ...
were white, and the other races evolved from their various descendants, growing further and further away from the original white standard. In addition, whites were also fashioned as the capable caretakers of other races, namely Black and Native people, who could not take care of themselves. This concept was at odds with the violence white Americans had committed against indigenous and Black peoples, but it was coupled with soft language that, for example, defended these acts. Mills (1994) cites the narrative about Europeans' "discovery" of a "
New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...
," despite the people who already inhabited it, and its subsequent "colonization" instead of conquest, as examples. He maintains that these word choices constitute a cooptation of history by white people, who have used it to their advantage.


Health

A 2019 review of the literature in the ''
Annual Review of Public health The ''Annual Review of Public Health'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes review articles about public health, including epidemiology, biostatistics, occupational safety and health, environmental health, and health policy. In its 4 ...
'' found that structural racism, cultural racism, and individual-level discrimination are "a fundamental cause of adverse health outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and racial/ethnic inequities in health." Studies have argued that there are racial disparities in how the media and politicians act when they are faced with cases of drug addiction in which the victims are primarily Black rather than white, citing the examples of how society responded differently to the
crack epidemic The crack epidemic was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States throughout the entirety of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This resulted in a number of social consequences, such as increasing crime and violence in Amer ...
than the opioid epidemic. There are major racial differences in access to health care as well as major racial differences in the quality of the health care which is provided to people. A study published in the ''American Journal of Public Health'' estimated that: "over 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had received the same quality of care as whites". The key differences which they cited were lack of insurance, inadequate
insurance Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
, poor service, and reluctance to seek care. A history of government-sponsored experimentation, such as the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Study has left a legacy of African American distrust of the medical system. Inequalities in health care may also reflect a
systemic bias Systemic bias, also called institutional bias, and related to structural bias, is the inherent tendency of a process to support particular outcomes. The term generally refers to human systems such as institutions. Institutional bias and structur ...
in the way in which medical procedures and treatments are prescribed to members of different ethnic groups. A
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...
Professor of Public Health, Raj Bhopal, writes that the history of racism in science and medicine shows that people and institutions behave according to the ethos of their times and he also warns of dangers that need to be avoided in the future. A
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
Professor of Social Epidemiology contended that much modern research supported the assumptions which were needed to justify racism. She writes that racism underlies unexplained inequities in health care, including treatments for
heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, h ...
,
renal failure Kidney failure, also known as end-stage kidney disease, is a medical condition in which the kidneys can no longer adequately filter waste products from the blood, functioning at less than 15% of normal levels. Kidney failure is classified as eit ...
,
bladder cancer Bladder cancer is any of several types of cancer arising from the tissues of the urinary bladder. Symptoms include blood in the urine, pain with urination, and low back pain. It is caused when epithelial cells that line the bladder become ma ...
, and
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...
. Bhopal writes that these inequalities have been documented in various studies and there are consistent findings that Black Americans receive less health care than white Americans—particularly where this involves expensive new technology. The University of Michigan Health study found in 2010 that black patients in pain clinics received 50% of the amount of drugs that other patients who were white received. Black pain in medicine links to the racial disparities between pain management and racial bias on behalf of the health professional. In 2011, Vermont organizers took a proactive stand against racism in their communities to defeat the biopolitical struggles faced on a daily basis. The first and only universal health care law was passed in the state. Two local governments in the US have issued declarations stating that racism constitutes a public health emergency: the
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Milwaukee County is located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. At the 2020 census, the population was 939,489, down from 947,735 in 2010. It is both the most populous and most densely populated county in Wisconsin, and the 45th most populous cou ...
executive in May 2019, and the
Cleveland City Council Cleveland City Council is the legislative branch of government for the City of Cleveland, Ohio. Its chambers are located at Cleveland City Hall at 601 Lakeside Avenue, across the street from Public Auditorium in Downtown Cleveland. Cleveland Ci ...
, in June 2020.


Housing and land

A 2014 meta-analysis found extensive evidence of racial discrimination in the American housing market. Minority applicants for housing needed to make many more inquiries to view properties. Geographical steering of African Americans in US housing remains significant. A 2003 study found "evidence that agents interpret an initial housing request as an indication of a customer's preferences, but also are more likely to withhold a house from all customers when it is in an integrated suburban neighborhood (
redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services ( financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have sign ...
). Moreover, agents' marketing efforts increase with asking price for white, but not for black, customers; blacks are more likely than whites to see houses in suburban, integrated areas (
steering Steering is a system of components, linkages, and other parts that allows a driver to control the direction of the vehicle. Introduction The most conventional steering arrangement allows a driver to turn the front wheels of a vehicle using ...
); and the houses agents show are more likely to deviate from the initial request when the customer is black than when the customer is white. These three findings are consistent with the possibility that agents act upon the belief that some types of transactions are relatively unlikely for black customers (statistical discrimination)." Historically, there was extensive and long-lasting racial discrimination against African Americans in the housing and mortgage markets in the United States, as well as discrimination against Black farmers whose numbers massively declined in post-WWII America due to anti-Black local and federal policies. According to a 2019 analysis by University of Pittsburgh economists, Blacks faced a two-fold penalty due to the racially segregated housing market: rental prices increased in blocks when they underwent racial transition whereas home values declined in neighborhoods that Blacks moved into. A 2017 paper by Troesken and Walsh found that pre-20th century cities "created and sustained residential segregation through private norms and vigilante activity." However, "when these private arrangements began to break down during the early 1900s" whites started "lobbying municipal governments for segregation ordinances." As a result, cities passed ordinances which "prohibited members of the majority racial group on a given city block from selling or renting property to members of another racial group" between 1909 and 1917. A 2017 study by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago economists found that the practice of
redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services ( financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have sign ...
—the practice whereby banks discriminated against the inhabitants of certain neighborhoods—had a persistent adverse impact on the neighborhoods, with redlining affecting homeownership rates, home values and credit scores in 2010. Since many African Americans could not access conventional home loans, they had to turn to predatory lenders (who charged high interest rates). Due to lower homeownership rates, slumlords were able to rent out apartments that would otherwise be owned. A 2019 analysis estimated that predatory housing contracts targeting African Americans in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s cost Black families between $3 billion and $4 billion in wealth.


Labor market

Several meta-analyses find extensive evidence of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring in the American labor market. A 2017 meta-analysis found "no change in the levels of discrimination against African Americans since 1989, although we do find some indication of declining discrimination against Latinos." A 2016 meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests – tests where identical CVs for stereotypically Black and white names were sent to employers – in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015 finds that there is extensive racial discrimination in hiring decisions in Europe and North America. These correspondence tests showed that equivalent minority candidates need to send around 50% more applications to be invited for an interview than majority candidates. A study which examined the job applications of actual people who were provided with identical résumés and similar interview training showed that African-American applicants with no criminal record were offered jobs at a rate as low as white applicants who had criminal records. A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research paper found evidence of racial bias in how CVs were evaluated. A 2020 study revealed that discrimination not only exists against minorities in callback rates in audit studies, it also increases in severity after the callbacks in terms of job offers. Research suggests that light-skinned African American women have higher salaries and greater job satisfaction than dark-skinned women. Being "too black" has recently been acknowledged by the U.S. Federal courts in an employment discrimination case under Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
. In ''Etienne v. Spanish Lake Truck & Casino Plaza, LLC'' the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (in case citations, 5th Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts: * Eastern District of Louisiana * ...
, determined that an employee who was told on several occasions that her manager thought she was "too black" to do various tasks, found that the issue of the employee's skin color rather than race itself, played a key role in an employer's decision to keep the employee from advancing. A 2018 study uncovered evidence which suggests that immigrants with darker skin colors are discriminated against.


Media

A 2017 report by Travis L. Dixon (of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) found that major media outlets tended to portray Black families as dysfunctional and dependent while white families were portrayed as stable. These portrayals may suggest that poverty and welfare are primarily Black issues. According to Dixon, this can reduce public support for social safety programs and lead to stricter welfare requirements. African Americans who possess a lighter skin complexion and "European features," such as lighter eyes, and smaller noses and lips have more opportunities in the media industry. For example, film producers hire lighter-skinned African Americans more often, television producers choose lighter-skinned cast members, and magazine editors choose African American models that resemble European features. A content analysis conducted by Scott and Neptune (1997) shows that less than one percent of advertisements in major magazines featured African American models. When African Americans did appear in advertisements they were mainly portrayed as athletes, entertainers, or unskilled laborers. In addition, seventy percent of the advertisements that feature animal print included African American women. Animal print reinforces the stereotypes that African Americans are animalistic in nature, sexually active, less educated, have lower income, and extremely concerned with personal appearances. Concerning African American males in the media, darker-skinned men are more likely to be portrayed as violent or more threatening, influencing the public perception of African American men. Since dark-skinned males are more likely to be linked to crime and misconduct, many people develop preconceived notions about the characteristics of Black men. During and after slavery, minstrel shows were a very popular form of theater that involved white and Black people in
Blackface Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereo ...
portraying Black people while doing demeaning things. The actors painted their faces with Black paint and overlined their lips with bright red lipstick to exaggerate and make fun of Black people. When minstrel shows died out and television became popular, Black actors were rarely hired and when they were, they had very specific roles. These roles included being servants, slaves, idiots, and criminals.


Politics

Politically, the " winner-takes-all" structure of the electoral college benefits white representation. This has been described as structural bias and often leads voters of color to feel politically alienated, and therefore not to vote. The lack of representation in Congress has also led to lower voter turnout. As of 2016, African Americans only made up 8.7% of Congress, and Latinos 7%.
Voter ID laws A voter identification law is a law that requires a person to show some form of identification in order to vote. In some jurisdictions requiring photo IDs, voters who do not have photo ID often must have their identity verified by someone els ...
have brought on accusations of racial discrimination. In a 2014 review by the
Government Accountability Office The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the supreme audit institution of the federal gover ...
of the academic literature, three studies out of five found that voter ID laws reduced minority turnout whereas two studies found no significant impact. Disparate impact may also be reflected in access to information about voter ID laws. A 2015 experimental study found that election officials queried about voter ID laws are more likely to respond to emails from a non-Latino white name (70.5% response rate) than a Latino name (64.8% response rate), though response accuracy was similar across groups. Studies have also analyzed racial differences in ID requests rates. A 2012 study in the city of Boston found that Black and Hispanic voters were more likely to be asked for ID during the 2008 election. According to exit polls, 23% of whites, 33% of Blacks, and 38% of Hispanics were asked for ID, though this effect is partially attributed to Black and Hispanics preferring non-peak voting hours when election officials inspected a greater portion of IDs. Precinct differences also confound the data as Black and Hispanic voters tended to vote at Black and Hispanic-majority precincts. A 2015 study found that turnout among Blacks in Georgia was generally higher since the state began enforcing its strict voter ID law. A 2016 study by
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is ...
researchers found that voter ID laws "have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections." Research by University of Oxford economist Evan Soltas and Stanford political scientist David Broockman suggests that voters act upon racially discriminatory tastes. A 2018 study in ''
Public Opinion Quarterly ''Public Opinion Quarterly'' is an academic journal published by Oxford University Press for the American Association for Public Opinion Research, covering communication studies and political science. It was established in 1937 and according to th ...
'' found that whites, in particular those who had racial resentment, largely attributed Obama's success among African-Americans to his race, and not his characteristics as a candidate and the political preferences of African-Americans. A 2018 study in the journal '' American Politics Research'' found that white voters tended to misperceive political candidates from racial minorities as being more ideologically extreme than objective indicators would suggest; this adversely affected the electoral chances for those candidates. A 2018 study in the ''
Journal of Politics ''The Journal of Politics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of political science established in 1939 and published quarterly (February, May, August and November) by University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Associ ...
'' found that "when a white candidate makes vague statements, many onblackvoters project their own policy positions onto the candidate, increasing support for the candidate. But they are less likely to extend black candidates the same courtesy... In fact, black male candidates who make ambiguous statements are actually punished for doing so by racially prejudiced voters." It is argued that the racial coding of concepts like crime and welfare has been used to strategically influence public political views. Racial coding is implicit; it incorporates racially primed language or imagery to allude to racial attitudes and thinking. For example, in the context of domestic policy, it is argued that
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
implied that linkages existed between concepts like "special interests" and "
big government Big government is a pejorative term for a government or public sector that is considered excessively large or unconstitutionally involved in certain areas of public policy or the private sector. The term may also be used specifically in relatio ...
" and ill-perceived minority groups in the 1980s, using the conditioned negativity which existed toward the minority groups to discredit certain policies and programs during campaigns. In a study which analyzes how political ads prime attitudes, Valentino compares the voting responses of participants after they are exposed to the narration of a George W. Bush advertisement which is paired with three different types of visuals which contain different embedded racial cues to create three conditions: neutral, race comparison, and undeserving Blacks. For example, as the narrator states "Democrats want to spend your tax dollars on wasteful government programs", the video shows an image of a Black woman and her child in an office setting. Valentino found that the undeserving Blacks condition produced the largest primed effect in racialized policies, like opposition to affirmative action and welfare spending. Ian Haney López, Professor of Law at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
, refers to the phenomenon of racial coding as dog-whistle politics, which, he argues, has pushed middle class white Americans to vote against their economic self-interest to punish "undeserving minorities" which, they believe, are receiving too much public assistance at their expense. According to López, conservative middle-class whites, convinced that minorities are the enemy by powerful economic interests, supported politicians who promised to curb illegal immigration and crack down on crime, but inadvertently they also voted for policies that favor the extremely rich, such as slashing taxes for top income brackets, giving corporations more regulatory control over industry and financial markets, busting unions, cutting pensions for future public employees, reducing funding for public schools, and retrenching the social welfare state. He argues that these same voters cannot link rising inequality which has impacted their lives to the policy agendas which they support, which resulted in a massive transfer of wealth to the top 1% of the population since the 1980s. A book released by the former attorney of
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
, Michael Cohen, in September 2020, '' Disloyal: A Memoir'' described Trump as routinely referring to Black leaders of foreign nations with racial insults, and that he was consumed with hatred for
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
. Cohen in the book explained that "as a rule, Trump expressed low opinions of all Black folks, from music to culture and politics".


Religion


Wealth

Large racial differentials in wealth remain in the United States: between whites and African Americans, the gap is a factor of twenty. An analyst of the phenomenon, Thomas Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University argues, "The wealth gap is not just a story of merit and achievement, it's also a story of the historical legacy of race in the United States." Differentials applied to the
Social Security Act The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law w ...
(which excluded agricultural workers, a sector which then included most black workers), rewards to military officers, and the educational benefits offered returning soldiers after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. Pre-existing disparities in wealth are exacerbated by tax policies that reward investment over waged income, subsidize mortgages, and subsidize private sector developers. A 2014 meta-analysis of racial discrimination in product markets found extensive evidence of minority applicants being quoted higher prices for products. Historically, African-Americans have faced discrimination in terms of getting access to credit.


African Americans


Antebellum period

Between 1626 and 1860, the
Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and ...
brought more than 470,000 enslaved Africans to what is now the United States. White European Americans who participated in the slave industry tried to justify their economic exploitation of
Black people Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in ...
by creating a "scientific" theory of white superiority and Black inferiority. One such slave owner was
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
, and it was his call for science to determine the obvious "inferiority" of Blacks that is regarded as "an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism." He concluded that Blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." After the importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, the domestic slave trade expanded to replace it. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would "export" their surplus slaves to the South. These sales of slaves broke up many families, with historian Ira Berlin writing that whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people". During the 1820s and 1830s, the
American Colonization Society The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America until 1837, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the migration of freebor ...
established the colony of
Liberia Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast� ...
and persuaded thousands of free Black Americans to move there because many members of the white elite both in the North and the South saw them as a problem to be got rid of. Even figures, such as
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...
, who opposed slavery showed ingrained racist attitudes. Lincoln said during the Fourth Lincoln-Douglas debate held in Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, pplausethat I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." During and immediately after the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
, about four million enslaved African Americans were set free, major legal actions being
President Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
’s
Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, Civil War. The Proclamation c ...
which came into effect on January 1, 1863, and the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representative ...
which finally abolished slavery in December 1865.


Reconstruction Era to World War II

After the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
, the
Reconstruction Era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...
was characterized by the passage of federal legislation which was designed to protect the rights of the formerly enslaved people, including the
Civil Rights Act of 1866 The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (, enacted April 9, 1866, reenacted 1870) was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended, in the wake of the Ame ...
and the
Civil Rights Act of 1875 The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. The bill was passed by the ...
. The Fourteenth amendment granted full citizenship to African Americans and the Fifteenth amendment guaranteed the
voting rights Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise, is the right to vote in representative democracy, public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally i ...
of African-American men (see
Reconstruction Amendments The , or the , are the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution, adopted between 1865 and 1870. The amendments were a part of the implementation of the Reconstruction of the American South which oc ...
). Despite this, white supremacists came to power in all Southern states, by intimidating Black voters with the assistance of terrorist groups like the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
, the Red Shirts and the
White League The White League, also known as the White Man's League, was a white paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing. Its f ...
. "
Black Codes The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political p ...
" and
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
deprived African Americans of voting rights and other civil liberties by instituting systemic and discriminatory policies of unequal
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...
. Segregated facilities extended from white-only schools to white-only graveyards.
Anti-miscegenation laws Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-mi ...
forbade marriage and even sex between whites and non-whites. The new century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Throughout the post-Civil War period, racial stratification was informally and systemically enforced, to solidify the pre-existing social order. Although their vote was guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, poll taxes, pervasive acts of
terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
such as
lynchings Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
(often perpetrated by
hate group A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society. Acc ...
s such as the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
), and discriminatory laws such as
grandfather clauses A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...
kept Black Americans disenfranchised in most Southern states. In response to
de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' ( ; , "by law") describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. In contrast, ("in fact") describes situations that exist in reality, even if not legall ...
racism, protest and lobbyist groups emerged, most notably, the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909. This era is sometimes referred to as the
nadir of American race relations The nadir of American race relations was the period in African American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century when racism in the country, especially racism against ...
because racism, segregation,
racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...
, and expressions of
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White ...
all increased. So did anti-Black violence, including
race riots An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more contending ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's positio ...
such as the Atlanta race riot of 1906, the
Elaine massacre The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30–October 2, 1919 at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas. As many as several hundred African Americans and five white men were killed. Estimates of deaths made in ...
of 1919, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, the Perry massacre of 1922, and the Rosewood massacre of 1923. The Atlanta riot was characterized as a "racial massacre of negroes" by the French newspaper '' Le Petit Journal''. The Charleston '' News and Courier'' wrote in response to the Atlanta riots: "Separation of the races is the only radical solution of the negro problem in this country. There is nothing new about it. It was the Almighty who established the bounds of the habitation of the races. The negroes were brought here by compulsion; they should be induced to leave here by persuasion." Additionally, racism, which had previously been considered a problem which primarily existed in the Southern states, burst onto the nation's consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the rural Southern states to the industrial centers of the North and West between 1910 and 1970. Throughout this period, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and
lynchings Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
—mob-directed hangings, usually racially motivated—increased dramatically in the 1920s. Urban riots—whites attacking Blacks—became a northern and western problem. Many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, while many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as
white flight White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...
. Racially restrictive housing covenants were ruled unenforceable under the 14th Amendment in the 1948 landmark
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case '' Shelley v. Kraemer''. Elected in 1912, President
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...
authorized the practice of racial segregation throughout the federal government's bureaucracy. In
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, Blacks who served in the
United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is ...
served in segregated units. Black soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped, and they were often put on the frontlines and forced to go on
suicide mission A suicide mission is a task which is so dangerous for the people involved that they are not expected to survive. The term is sometimes extended to include suicide attacks such as kamikaze and suicide bombings, whose perpetrators actively commit s ...
s. The U.S. military was still heavily segregated during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. In addition, no African-American was awarded the
Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of val ...
during the war, and sometimes, Black soldiers who traveled on trains had to give their seats up to Nazi prisoners of war.


World War II to the Civil Rights Movement

The
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the S ...
were state and local laws which were enacted in the
Southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protec ...
" status for Blacks. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those which were provided to whites. The most important laws required that public schools, public places, and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and Blacks. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. Federal tribunals in the United States, federal court cases, and over Stat ...
in 1954 in '' Brown v. Board of Education''. One of the first federal court cases which challenged segregation in schools was
Mendez v. Westminster ''Mendez, ''et al'' v. Westminister icSchool District of Orange County, et al'', 64 F.Supp. 544 (S.D. Cal. 1946), ''aff'd'', 161 F.2d 774 (9th Cir. 1947) (en banc), was a 1947 federal court case that challenged Mexican remedial schools in four dist ...
in 1946. By the 1950s, the
civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
was gaining momentum. Membership in the NAACP increased in states across the U.S. Notable acts of anti-Black violence that sparked public outrage included the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old
Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African Americans, African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and Lynching in the United States, lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a whi ...
and the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist and
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
member
Medgar Evers Medgar Wiley Evers (; July 2, 1925June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi, who was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith. Evers, a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran who had served i ...
by a member of the White Citizens' Council. In both cases, the perpetrators were able to evade conviction with the help of all-white juries. In the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing,
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
smen killed four Black girls, aged 11 to 14. In response to heightening discrimination and violence, non-violent acts of protest began to occur. The Greensboro sit-ins, starting in February 1960, contributed to the formation of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segreg ...
. After many
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
s and other non-violent protests, including marches and boycotts, places began to agree to desegregate. The
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rig ...
on August 28, 1963, with an estimated 250,000 Black and white participants, at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic "
I Have a Dream "I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, Martin Luther King Jr., during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called ...
" speech, helped facilitate the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requi ...
and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights m ...
. In '' Loving v. Virginia'' (1967), the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Segregation continued even after the demise of the Jim Crow laws. Data on house prices and attitudes towards integration suggest that in the mid-20th century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by whites to exclude Blacks from their neighborhoods.''The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto'' David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, Jacob L. Vigdor ''The Journal of Political Economy'', Vol. 107, No. 3 (Jun. 1999), pp. 455–506 Segregation also took the form of
redlining In the United States, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services ( financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investment; these neighborhoods have sign ...
, the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. Although in the U.S. informal discrimination and segregation have always existed, redlining began with the
National Housing Act of 1934 The National Housing Act of 1934, , , also called the Capehart Act and the Better Housing Program, was part of the New Deal passed during the Great Depression in order to make housing and home mortgages more affordable. It created the Feder ...
, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The practice was fought first through passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (which prevents redlining when the criteria for redlining are based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin), and later through the
Community Reinvestment Act The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA, P.L. 95-128, 91 Stat. 1147, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, ''et seq.'') is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to hel ...
of 1977, which requires banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities. Although redlining is illegal some argue that it continues to exist in other forms. Up until the 1940s, the full revenue potential of what was called "the Negro market" was largely ignored by white-owned manufacturers in the U.S., with advertising focused on whites. Blacks, including Olympic champion
Jesse Owens James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lif ...
, were also denied commercial deals. Famous Blacks like Owens and Hattie McDaniel had to suffer humiliating treatment even at events celebrating their achievements. As the civil rights movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern U.S., a Republican Party electoral strategy – the
Southern strategy In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the civil rights movement and dismantling of ...
– was enacted to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. Republican politicians such as presidential candidate
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
and Senator
Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and United States Air Force officer who was a five-term U.S. Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the Republican Party nominee for president ...
developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party.


1970s to the 2000s

While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, Black poverty and lack of education continued in the context of de-industrialization.Ronald Takaki, ''A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America'' (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1993), 400–414. From 1981 to 1997, the
United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...
discriminated against tens of thousands of Black American farmers, denying loans that were provided to white farmers in similar circumstances. The discrimination was the subject of the ''
Pigford v. Glickman ''Pigford v. Glickman'' (1999) was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging that it had racially discriminated against African-American farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance f ...
'' lawsuit brought by members of the National Black Farmers Association, which resulted in two settlement agreements of $1.06 billion in 1999 and of $1.25 billion in 2009. Numerous authors, academics, and historians have asserted that the
War on Drugs The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.Cockburn and St. Clair, 1 ...
has been racially and politically motivated. Continuing the "tough on crime" policies and rhetoric of earlier politicians, President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
announced his administration's
War on Drugs The war on drugs is a global campaign, led by the United States federal government, of drug prohibition, military aid, and military intervention, with the aim of reducing the illegal drug trade in the United States.Cockburn and St. Clair, 1 ...
in October 1982. A few years later, the
crack epidemic The crack epidemic was a surge of crack cocaine use in major cities across the United States throughout the entirety of the 1980s and the early 1990s. This resulted in a number of social consequences, such as increasing crime and violence in Amer ...
spread across the country in the mid 1980s, leading Congress to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Under these sentencing guidelines, five grams of
crack cocaine Crack cocaine, commonly known simply as crack, and also known as rock, is a free base form of the stimulant cocaine that can be smoked. Crack offers a short, intense high to smokers. The ''Manual of Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment'' calls ...
, often sold by and to African-Americans, carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence. However, for powder cocaine, often sold by and to white Americans, it would take one hundred times that amount, or 500 grams, for the same sentence, leading many to criticize the law as discriminatory. The 100:1 sentencing disparity was reduced to 18:1 in 2010 by the
Fair Sentencing Act The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 () was an Act of Congress that was signed into federal law by United States President Barack Obama on August 3, 2010 that reduces the disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine needed to trig ...
. During the 1980s and '90s, a number of riots occurred that were related to longstanding racial tensions between police and minority communities. One of these was the
1992 Los Angeles riots The 1992 Los Angeles riots, sometimes called the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the Los Angeles Race Riots, were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County, California, in April and May 1992. Unrest began in So ...
, after a nearly all-white jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers for the beating of Black motorist
Rodney King Rodney Glen King (April 2, 1965June 17, 2012) was an African American man who was a victim of police brutality. On March 3, 1991, he was beaten by Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers during his arrest after a pursuit for driving whi ...
.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad Khalil Gibran Muhammad (born April 27, 1972) is an American academic. He is a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the Radcliffe Institute. He is the former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a Harlem-based branch ...
, the Director of the Harlem-based
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) ...
has identified more than 100 instances of mass racial violence in the United States since 1935 and has noted that almost every instance was precipitated by a police incident. Violence against Black churches has continued – 145 fires were set to churches around the South in the 1990s, and a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina was committed in 2015 at the historic Mother Emanuel Church.


2008 to the present

Some Americans saw the presidential election of
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
, who was the nation's first Black president, as a sign that the nation had entered a new, post-racial era. The election of President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
in 2016, who was a chief proponent of the birther movement which is considered by many to be racist and has a history of speech and actions that have been widely viewed as racist or racially charged, has been viewed by some commentators as a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama. During the mid-2010s, American society has seen a resurgence of high levels of racism and discrimination. One new phenomenon has been the rise of the "alt-right" movement: a white nationalist coalition which seeks the expulsion of sexual and
racial minorities The term 'minority group' has different usages depending on the context. According to its common usage, a minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number o ...
from the United States. Since the mid-2010s, the
Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-ter ...
and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...
have identified
white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
violence as the leading threat of
domestic terrorism in the United States Domestic terrorism in the United States consists of incidents which are confirmed to be domestic terrorist acts. These attacks are considered domestic because they occurred within the United States and they were carried out by U.S. citizens an ...
. Sociologist Russ Long stated in 2013 that there is now a more subtle racism that associates a specific race with a specific characteristic. In a 1993 study conducted by Katz and Braly, it was presented that "blacks and whites hold a variety of stereotypes towards each other, often negative". The Katz and Braley study also found that African-Americans and whites view the traits that they identify each other with as threatening, interracial communication between the two is likely to be "hesitant, reserved, and concealing". The
Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
movement started in 2013 after
the acquittal ''The Acquittal'' is a 1923 American silent mystery film based on the play of the same name by Rita Weiman. The film was directed by Clarence Brown, who would later start a long career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film stars Norman Kerry, Claire ...
of a man who had killed the African-American teen Trayvon Martin in 2012. In August 2017, the
UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. A third -generation human rights instrument, the Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discr ...
issued a rare warning to the US and its leadership to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and crime, following violence in Charlottesville during a
rally Rally or rallye may refer to: Gatherings * Demonstration (political), a political rally, a political demonstration of support or protest, march, or parade * Pep rally, an event held at a United States school or college sporting event Sports ...
organized by white nationalists, white supremacists,
Klansmen The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and C ...
, neo-Nazis and various right-wing militias in August. On May 25, 2020,
George Floyd George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit tw ...
, a 46-year-old Black man, was
murdered Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...
by a white
Minneapolis Police Department The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the primary law enforcement agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is also the largest police department in Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second-oldest police department in Minnesot ...
officer, who forced his knee on Floyd's neck for a total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Floyd's murder sparked a wave of protests across the United States and worldwide.


Native Americans

Native Americans have inhabited the North American continent for at least 10,000 years, and millions of Native Americans lived in the region composing the modern-day United States prior to
European colonization The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time. Ancient and medieval colonialism was practiced by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs. Colonialism in the modern sense be ...
. Both during and after the colonial period of American history, white settlers waged a long series of wars against Native Americans with the aim of displacing them and colonizing their lands. Many Native Americans were enslaved as a result of these wars, while others were forcibly assimilated into the culture of the white settlers. During the 19th century, the desire to forcibly remove certain Native American nations gained momentum. However, some Native Americans either chose to or were allowed to remain on their land and as a result, they avoided removal but thereafter, the federal government treated them in a racist manner. The Choctaws in
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
described their situation in 1849, "we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died." According to Charles Hudson, Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described the Choctaws as having "no nobility or virtue at all, and in some respects he found blacks, especially native Africans, to be more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt; that is, even worse than black slaves." In the 1800s, ideologies such as
manifest destiny Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. There were three basic tenets to the concept: * The special virtues of the American people and th ...
, which held the view that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the North American continent, fueled U.S. attacks against, and maltreatment of, Native Americans. In the years leading up to the
Indian Removal Act of 1830 The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law, as described by Congress, provided "for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for ...
there were many armed conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans. A justification for the conquest and subjugation of indigenous people emanated from the stereotyped perception that Native Americans were "merciless Indian savages" (as described in the
United States Declaration of Independence The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House ( ...
). Sam Wolfson in ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' writes, "The declaration’s passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of the dehumanizing attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on." Simon Moya-Smith, culture editor at '' Indian Country Today'', states, "Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. uly Fourthis a day when we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions – literally millions – of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism." In Martin Luther King Jr.'s book ''
Why We Can't Wait ''Why We Can't Wait'' is a 1964 book by Martin Luther King Jr. about the nonviolent movement against racial segregation in the United States, and specifically the 1963 Birmingham campaign. The book describes 1963 as a landmark year in the civil r ...
'', he wrote, "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race." In 1861, residents of
Mankato, Minnesota Mankato ( ) is a city in Blue Earth, Nicollet, and Le Sueur counties in the state of Minnesota. The population was 44,488 according to the 2020 census, making it the 21st-largest city in Minnesota, and the 5th-largest outside of the Minne ...
, formed the Knights of the Forest, with the goal of 'eliminating all Indians from Minnesota.' An egregious attempt occurred with the
California gold rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California f ...
, the first two years of which saw the death of thousands of Native Americans. Under Mexican rule in California, Indians were subjected to ''de facto'' enslavement under a system of
peon Peon (English , from the Spanish ''peón'' ) usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over em ...
age by the white elite. While in 1850, California formally entered the Union as a free state, with respect to the issue of
slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
, the practice of Indian
indentured servitude Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an " indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensation or debt repayme ...
was not outlawed by the
California Legislature The California State Legislature is a bicameral state legislature consisting of a lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members; and an upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members. Both houses of the Legislatu ...
until 1863. The 1864 deportation of the
Navajos The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
by the U.S. government occurred when 9,000 Navajos were forcibly relocated to an
internment camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simp ...
in
Bosque Redondo Fort Sumner was a military fort in New Mexico Territory charged with the internment of Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868 at nearby Bosque Redondo. History On October 31, 1862, Congress authorized the construction of For ...
, where, under armed guards, up to 3,500 Navajo and Mescalero Apache men, women, and children died from starvation and disease over the next 4 years.M. Annette Jaimes (1992). ''The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance''. p. 34. South End Press Native American nations on the plains in the west continued armed conflicts with the U.S. throughout the 19th century, through what were called generally
Indian Wars The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...
. Notable conflicts in this period include the
Dakota War The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, or Little Crow's War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several ban ...
, Great Sioux War,
Snake War Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more j ...
and Colorado War. In the years leading up to the Wounded Knee massacre the U.S. government had continued to seize Lakota lands. A
Ghost Dance The Ghost Dance ( Caddo: Nanissáanah, also called the Ghost Dance of 1890) was a ceremony incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. According to the teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wil ...
ritual on the Northern Lakota reservation at Wounded Knee,
South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large po ...
, led to the U.S. Army's attempt to subdue the Lakota. The dance was part of a religion founded by Wovoka that told of the return of the Messiah to relieve the suffering of Native Americans and promised that if they would live righteous lives and perform the Ghost Dance properly, the European American invaders would vanish, the bison would return, and the living and the dead would be reunited in an Edenic world. On December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee, gunfire erupted, and U.S. soldiers killed up to 300 Indians, mostly old men, women and children. During the period surrounding the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, author L. Frank Baum wrote two editorials about Native Americans. Five days after the killing of the Lakota
Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota: /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples in North America. The modern Sioux consist of two major divisions based on language divisions: the Dakota and ...
holy man ''Holy Man'' is a 1998 American television satirical comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Herek, written by Tom Schulman, and starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Goldblum, Kelly Preston, Robert Loggia, Jon Cryer, and Eric McCormack. The film was ...
,
Sitting Bull Sitting Bull ( lkt, Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake ; December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock ...
, Baum wrote, "The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the
Redskin Redskin is a slang term for Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada. The term ''redskin'' underwent pejoration through the 19th to early 20th centuries and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is lab ...
is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by the law of conquest, by a justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are." Full text of both, with commentary by professor A. Waller Hastings Following the December 29, 1890, massacre, Baum wrote, "The ''Pioneer'' has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination icof the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."


Reservation marginalization

Once their territories were incorporated into the United States, surviving Native Americans were denied equality before the law and often treated as wards of the state. Many Native Americans were moved to reservations—constituting 4% of U.S. territory. In a number of cases, treaties signed with Native Americans were violated. Tens of thousands of American Indians and Alaska Natives were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white-settler American values, culture, and economy. Further dispossession of various kinds continues into the present, although these current dispossessions, especially in terms of land, rarely make major news headlines in the country (e.g., the
Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory inclu ...
people's recent fiscal troubles and subsequent land grab by the State of New Jersey), and sometimes even fail to make it to headlines in the localities in which they occur. Through concessions for industries such as oil, mining, and timber and through division of land from the General Allotment Act forward, these concessions have raised problems of consent, exploitation of low royalty rates, environmental injustice, and gross mismanagement of funds held in trust, resulting in the loss of $10–40 billion. The
Worldwatch Institute The Worldwatch Institute was a globally focused environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C., founded by Lester R. Brown. Worldwatch was named as one of the top ten sustainable development research organizations by Globescan Su ...
notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards, while Western Shoshone land has been subjected to more than 1,000 nuclear explosions. However, the last known nuclear explosion testing in the United States occurred in September 1992.


American Indian boarding schools

American Indian boarding schools, were established in the United States during the 19th and lasted through the mid-20th centuries with the primary objective of assimilating Native Americans into the dominant White American culture. The effect of these schools has been described as forced assimilation against Native peoples.Stout, Mary (2012). ''Native American boarding schools''. Santa Barbara: Greenwood. . . In these schools, Native children were prohibited from participating in any of their cultures' traditions, including speaking their own languages. Instead, they were required to speak English at all times and learn geography, science, and history (among other disciplines) as white Americans saw fit. This meant learning a version of history that upheld whites' superiority and rightful "inheritance" of the lands of the United States, while Natives were relegated to a position of having to assimilate to white culture without ever truly being considered equals.


Current issues

While formal equality has been legally recognized, American Indians,
Alaska Natives Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a num ...
,
Native Hawaiians Native Hawaiians (also known as Indigenous Hawaiians, Kānaka Maoli, Aboriginal Hawaiians, First Hawaiians, or simply Hawaiians) ( haw, kānaka, , , and ), are the indigenous ethnic group of Polynesian people of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawa ...
, and
Pacific Islanders Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of Oce ...
remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the country, and according to national mental health studies, American Indians as a group tend to suffer from high levels of alcoholism, depression and suicide.


Asian Americans

Asian Americans Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peopl ...
, including those of
East Asian East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...
,
South Asian South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; ...
, and
Southeast Asian Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...
descent, have experienced racism since the first major groups of Chinese immigrants arrived in America. The
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free Whit ...
made Asians ineligible for citizenship. First-generation immigrants, the children of immigrants, and Asians who are adopted by non-Asian families are still impacted by discrimination. During the Industrial Revolution in the United States, labor shortages in the mining and rail industries were prevalent. Chinese immigrant labor was often used to fill this gap, most notably with the construction of the
first transcontinental railroad North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail netwo ...
, leading to large-scale Chinese immigration. These Chinese immigrants were seen as taking the jobs of whites for lower wages, and the phrase
Yellow Peril The Yellow Peril (also the Yellow Terror and the Yellow Specter) is a racial color metaphor that depicts the peoples of East and Southeast Asia as an existential danger to the Western world. As a psychocultural menace from the Eastern world ...
, which predicted the demise of Western civilization as the result of Chinese immigration, gained popularity.


19th century

In 1871, one of the largest lynchings in American history was committed against
Chinese immigrants Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. Terminology () or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, ...
in Los Angeles, California. It would go on to become known as the
Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racial massacre targeting Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California, United States that occurred on October 24, 1871. Approximately 500 white and Hispanic Americans attacked, harassed, robbed ...
. The 1879 Constitution of the State of California prohibited the employment of
Chinese people The Chinese people or simply Chinese, are people or ethnic groups identified with China, usually through ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, or other affiliation. Chinese people are known as Zhongguoren () or as Huaren () by speakers of sta ...
by state and local governments, as well as by businesses that were incorporated in California. Also, the 1879 constitution delegated power to local governments in California to enable them to remove Chinese people from the borders of their communities. James Whitman, "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law" (Princeton:
Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
, 2017), p. 35
The federal
Chinese Exclusion Act The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. The law excluded merchants, teachers, students, travelers, and diplo ...
of 1882 banned the immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years. The
Geary Act The Geary Act was a United States law that extended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by adding onerous new requirements. It was written by California Representative Thomas J. Geary and was passed by Congress on . The law required all Chinese r ...
of 1892 extended the Chinese Exclusion Act by requiring all Chinese citizens to carry their resident permit at all times or risk either deportation or a year of hard labor, and was upheld by the 1893
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case
Fong Yue Ting v. United States ''Fong Yue Ting v. United States'', 149 U.S. 698 (1893), decided by the United States Supreme Court on May 15, 1893, was a case challenging provisions in Section 6 of the Geary Act of 1892 that extended and amended the Chinese Exclusion Act of 188 ...
. Several mob attacks against Chinese people took place, including the
Rock Springs massacre The Rock Springs massacre, also known as the Rock Springs riot, occurred on September 2, 1885, in the present-day United States city of Rock Springs in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. The riot, and resulting massacre of immigrant Chinese miner ...
of 1885 in
Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...
in which at least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 other Chinese miners were injured, and the Hells Canyon massacre of 1887 in
Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
in which 34 Chinese miners were killed. In 1888, the Scott Act prevented 20,000-30,000 Chinese abroad from returning to the United States and was later upheld in the 1889 Supreme Court case Chae Chan Ping v. United States. Local discriminatory laws were also enacted to stifle Chinese business and job opportunities; for example, in the 1886
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case of ''
Yick Wo v. Hopkins ''Yick Wo v. Hopkins'', 118 U.S. 356 (1886), was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Claus ...
'', a San Francisco city ordinance requiring permits for laundries (which were mostly Chinese-owned) was struck down, as it was evident the law solely targeted Chinese Americans. When the law was in effect, the city issued permits to virtually all non-Chinese permit applicants, while only granting one permit out of two hundred applications from Chinese laundry owners. When the Chinese laundries continued to operate, the city tried to fine the owners. In 1913, California, home to many Chinese immigrants, enacted an
Alien Land Law The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (also known as the Webb–Haney Act) prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship" from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it, but permitted leases lasting up to three years. It affe ...
, which significantly restricted land ownership by Asian immigrants, and extended it in 1920, ultimately banning virtually all land ownership by Asians. Japanese immigrants, who were unaffected by the Chinese Exclusion Act, began to enter the United States in large numbers in 1907, filling jobs that were once filled by Chinese workers. This influx also led to discrimination and President
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
restricted Japanese immigration. Theodore Roosevelt's
Executive Order 589 Executive ( exe., exec., execu.) may refer to: Role or title * Executive, a senior management role in an organization ** Chief executive officer (CEO), one of the highest-ranking corporate officers (executives) or administrators ** Executive dire ...
specifically prevented Japanese and Korean laborers, who possessed valid passports to go to Mexico, Canada, or Hawaii, from entering the continental United States. Later, Japanese immigration was closed when Japan entered into the
Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 The was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States and the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigrants alrea ...
to stop issuing passports to Japanese workers intending to move to the U.S. The immigration of people from all Asian countries was banned by the sweeping
Immigration Act of 1917 The Immigration Act of 1917 (also known as the Literacy Act and less often as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act) was a United States Act that aimed to restrict immigration by imposing literacy tests on immigrants, creating new categories of inadmissib ...
, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals, people with
intellectual disability Intellectual disability (ID), also known as general learning disability in the United Kingdom and formerly mental retardation, Rosa's Law, Pub. L. 111-256124 Stat. 2643(2010). is a generalized neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by signif ...
, and people with an anarchist worldview.


World War II and postwar

During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the
Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeas ...
was an ally of the United States, and the federal government praised the resistance of the Chinese against Japan during the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific T ...
, in an attempt to reduce anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1943, the Magnuson Act was passed by Congress, repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act and reopening Chinese immigration; at the time, the United States was actively fighting against the
Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent form ...
, which was a member of the
Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
. Anti-Japanese racism, which spiked after the
attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...
, was tacitly encouraged by the government, which used slurs such as "
Jap ''Jap'' is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". Today, it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur. In the United States, some Japanese Americans have come to find the term very offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. Prior to t ...
" in propaganda posters. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066 Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the secretary of war to prescribe certain ...
which cleared the way for internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, citing possible security threats. American soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater frequently dehumanized their enemies, leading them to mutilate Japanese war dead. The racist nature of this dehumanization is revealed by the different ways in which corpses were treated in the
Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
and European theaters. Apparently, some soldiers mailed Japanese skulls home as souvenirs, but none of them mailed German or Italian skulls home. This
prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
continued to exist for some time after the end of the war, and anti-Asian racism also affected U.S. policy during the Korean and
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
s, even though Asians fought on both sides during both of those wars as well as during World War II. Some historians have alleged that a climate of racism, with unofficial rules like the "mere gook rule", allowed a pattern to exist in which
South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...
ese civilians were treated as if they were less than human and war crimes were also common. Despite poor treatment by the United States, thousands of Japanese Americans joined the US military during World War II, in the segregated 442nd Infantry Regiment and 100th Infantry Battalion. The 442nd suffered heavy losses during its fight against Nazi Germany while it was rescuing the Lost Battalion, and in recognition of these combat casualties, it was nicknamed "The
Purple Heart The Purple Heart (PH) is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the President to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after 5 April 1917, with the U.S. military. With its forerunner, the Badge of Military Merit, ...
Battalion." On October 18, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 10009 to revoke in part Executive Orders 589 from March 14, 1907, and Executive Order 1712 from February 24, 1913. Prior to 1965, Indian immigration to the U.S. was small and isolated, with fewer than 50,000 Indian immigrants in the country. The Bellingham riots in
Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...
, on September 5, 1907, epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and
Hindus Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized, with U.S. officials casting them as "Hindu menaces" and pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad. In the 1923 case, '' United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind'', the Supreme Court ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship. The Court also argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians.Zhao, X. & Park, E.J.W. (2013). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Greenwood. pp. 1142. It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens. The
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ...
facilitated entry to the U.S. for immigrants other than the traditional
Northern European The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe Northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54°N, or may be based on other geographical factors ...
and Germanic groups, and as a result, it would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix in the U.S. On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg stated the law "declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race." In 1990, Asian immigration was encouraged when nonimmigrant temporary working visas were given to help with the shortage of skilled labor within the United States.


21st century

Since the 20th century, Asians, particularly East Asians, have been
cast Cast may refer to: Music * Cast (band), an English alternative rock band * Cast (Mexican band), a progressive Mexican rock band * The Cast, a Scottish musical duo: Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis * ''Cast'', a 2012 album by Trespassers William ...
as a " model minority". They are categorized as being more educated and successful, and they are also stereotyped as being intelligent and hard-working, but they are also stereotyped as being socially inept. Asians may experience expectations of natural intelligence and excellence from whites as well as from members of other minority groups. This has led to discrimination in the workplace, as Asian Americans may face unreasonable expectations because of this stereotype. According to the ''Journal of Organizational Behavior'', in 2000, out of 1,218 adult Asian Americans, 92 percent of those who experienced personal discrimination believed that the unfair treatment which they were subjected to was due to their ethnicity. These stereotypes can also render the experience of the large number of Asians who are living in poverty in the United States invisible. These stereotypes can also obstruct career paths; because Asians are seen as better skilled in engineering, computing, and mathematics, they are often encouraged to pursue technical careers. They are also discouraged from pursuing non-technical occupations as well as executive occupations which require more social interaction, since Asians are perceived as having poor social skills. In the 2000 study, forty percent of those surveyed who experienced discrimination believed that they had lost hiring or promotion opportunities. In 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that Asians make up 10 percent of professional jobs, while 3.7 percent of them held executive, senior level, or manager positions. Other forms of discrimination against Asian Americans include racial profiling and
hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
s. The FBI noted that in 2015, 3.2 percent of all hate crimes involved anti-Asian bias. In 2016, the
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...
Police Department reported that there was a 40 percent increase in race-based crimes against Asian Americans, both criminal and non-criminal. Research shows that discrimination has led to more use of informal mental health services by Asian Americans. Asian Americans who feel discriminated against also tend to smoke more. There have been widespread incidents of xenophobia, racist bullying, and racist violence against Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
. According to a poll done in 2022, 33 percent of Americans believe Asian Americans are "more loyal to their country of origin" than the US while 21 percent falsely believe Asian Americans are at least "partially responsible" for the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, only 29 percent of Asian Americans believe they "completely agree" with the statement that they feel they belong and are accepted in the US, while 71 percent say they are discriminated in the US.


Anti-Japanese sentiment and legislation


Anti-Filipino sentiment and legislation

In 1927, the four-day
Yakima Valley riots The Yakima Valley riots were an expression of anti-Filipino sentiment that took place in the Yakima Valley of Washington (state) from November 8–11 in 1927. This riot took the homes and jobs lives of many Filipinos in the area. Unable to receiv ...
in Washington state resulted in hundreds of Filipinos being forced to leave the valley under threat of death. In 1930, the
Watsonville riots The Watsonville riots was a period of racial violence that took place in Watsonville, California, from January 19 to 23, 1930. Involving violent assaults on Filipino American farm workers by local residents opposed to immigration, the riots high ...
in California involved a mob of 500 white men and youths causing five days of violent attacks on Filipino farm workers, and the death of one worker who was shot through the heart. In 1934, the Tydings–McDuffie Act allowed the
Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...
, then an American colony, to become an independent country after ten years. The act established a quota of 50 Filipino immigrants to the United States per year. The
Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 The Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 established for Filipino people living in the United States a repatriation program. It provided free transportation for Filipino residents of the continental United States who wished to return to the Philippi ...
provided voluntary one-way passage for Filipinos in the United States to return to the Philippines. However, if they wanted to return to the United States, they would then be subject to the quota of 50 Filipino immigrants per year.


European Americans

Various
European American European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent Eu ...
immigrant groups have been subjected to discrimination on the basis of their religion (see Religious discrimination in the United States and Anti-Catholicism in the United States), immigrant status (which is known as " Nativism") or ethnicity (country of origin). In the 19th century, this was particularly true because of anti-Irish prejudice, which was based on anti-Catholic sentiment, and prejudice against the Irish as an ethnicity. This was especially true for Irish Catholics who immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century; the large number of Irish (both Catholics and Protestants) who settled in America in the 18th century had largely (but not entirely) escaped such discrimination and eventually blended into the white American population. During the 1830s in the U.S., riots over control of job sites broke out in rural areas among rival labor teams whose members were from different parts of Ireland, and riots also broke out between Irish and local American work teams which were competing for construction jobs. The Native American Party, commonly called the
Know Nothing The Know Nothing party was a nativist political party and movement in the United States in the mid-1850s. The party was officially known as the "Native American Party" prior to 1855 and thereafter, it was simply known as the "American Party". ...
movement was a political party, whose membership was limited to Protestant men, that operated on a national basis during the mid-1850s and sought to limit the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativism and anti-Catholic sentiment. There was widespread anti-Irish job discrimination in the United States and "No Irish need apply" signs were common. The second era
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...
was a very large nationwide organization in the 1920s, consisting of between four to six million members (15% of the nation's eligible population) that especially opposed Catholics. The revival of the Klan was spurred by the release of the 1915 film ''
The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clan ...
''. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "
Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
blood". Anti-Catholic sentiment, which appeared in North America with the first Pilgrim and
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
settlers in New England in the early 17th century, remained evident in the United States up to the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, who went on to become the first Catholic U.S. president in 1961. The 20th century saw discrimination against immigrants from
Southern Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
and Eastern Europe (notably Italian Americans and
Polish Americans Polish Americans ( pl, Polonia amerykańska) are Americans who either have total or partial Polish ancestry, or are citizens of the Republic of Poland. There are an estimated 9.15 million self-identified Polish Americans, representing about 2.83 ...
), partially as a result of anti-Catholic sentiment (as well as discrimination against Irish Americans), partially as a result of
Nordicism Nordicism is an ideology of racism which views the historical race concept of the " Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book '' The Passing of the Great Ra ...
. The primary spokesman for Nordicism was the eugenicist Madison Grant. His 1916 book, '' The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History'' about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinkers and government policy makers in the U.S. An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard primarily wrote about the alleged dangers which "
colored ''Colored'' (or ''coloured'') is a racial descriptor historically used in the United States during the Jim Crow Era to refer to an African American. In many places, it may be considered a slur, though it has taken on a special meaning in Sout ...
" peoples posed to white civilization, with his most famous book ''
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy ''The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy'' (1920), by Lothrop Stoddard, is a book about racialism and geopolitics, which describes the collapse of white supremacy and colonialism because of the population growth amon ...
'' in 1920. Nordicism led to the reduction in Southern European, along with Slavic Eastern European and Russian immigrants in the
National Origins Formula National Origins Formula is an umbrella term for a series of qualitative immigration quotas in America used from 1921 to 1965, which restricted immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere on the basis of national origin. These restrictions included l ...
of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the
Immigration Act of 1924 The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act (), was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern ...
, whose goal was to maintain the status quo distribution of ethnicity by limiting immigration of non-Northern Europeans. According to the U.S. Department of State the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity". The racial term ''
Untermensch ''Untermensch'' (, ; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a Nazi term for non-Aryan "inferior people" who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians). The ...
'' originates from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book ''The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man''. It was later adopted by the Nazis (and its chief racial theorist
Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
) from that book's German version ''Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen'' (1925).


Hispanic and Latino Americans

Americans of
Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...
n ancestry ( often categorized as "
Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...
" or
Hispanic and Latino Americans Hispanic and Latino Americans ( es, Estadounidenses hispanos y latinos; pt, Estadunidenses hispânicos e latinos) are Americans of Spaniards, Spanish and/or Latin Americans, Latin American ancestry. More broadly, these demographics include a ...
) come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. As a result, not all Latinos are distinguishable as members of a single racial minority. After the
Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the ...
(1846–1848), the United States annexed much of the current Southwestern region from Mexico. Mexicans who resided in that territory were subjected to discrimination. According to conservative estimates, 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928, corresponding to a per capita lynching rate second only to that suffered by the African American community. Many public institutions, businesses, and homeowners associations officially excluded
Mexican Americans Mexican Americans ( es, mexicano-estadounidenses, , or ) are Americans of full or partial Mexican heritage. In 2019, Mexican Americans comprised 11.3% of the US population and 61.5% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexica ...
as a matter of policy. School children of Mexican American descent were subjected to racial segregation in the public school system. In many counties, Mexican Americans were excluded from serving as jurors in court cases, especially in those that involved Mexican American defendants. In many areas across the Southwest, they lived in separate residential areas, due to laws and real estate company policies. During the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, the U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage Mexican immigrants to voluntarily return to Mexico, however, many were forcibly removed against their will. At least 355,000 persons of Mexican ancestry went to Mexico during the 1930s, 40 to 60 percent of those individuals were U.S. citizens – overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was more common than formal deportation. The government formally deported at least 82,000 people to Mexico between 1929 and 1935. The Zoot Suit Riots were incidents of racial violence against Latinos in Los Angeles in 1943 which lasted several days. During the 1960s, young Mexican Americans formed the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.


Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans

People of
Middle Eastern The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europea ...
and South Asian descent historically occupied an ambiguous racial status in the United States. Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants were among those who sued in the late 19th and early 20th century to determine whether they were "white" immigrants as required by naturalization law. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence", including the notion of a "
Caucasian race The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, de ...
" including Middle Easterners and many South Asians, was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.


Arab Americans

Racism against Arab Americans and racialized
Islamophobia Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism. The scope and precise definition of the term ''Islamophobia'' ...
against Muslims have risen concomitantly with tensions between the American government and the Islamic world. Following the
September 11, 2001, attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
in the United States, discrimination and racialized violence has markedly increased against Arab Americans and many other religious and cultural groups. Scholars, including Sunaina Maira and Evelyn Alsultany, argue that in the post-September 11 climate, the markers of the racialization of Muslim Americans are cultural, political, and religious rather than
phenotypic In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological pr ...
. There have been attacks not only against
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
Arabs, but also numerous Christian Arabs have been attacked based on their appearances. Non-Arab and non-Muslim Middle Eastern people, as well as South Asians of different ethnic/religious backgrounds (
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
s, Muslims and
Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...
s) have been stereotyped as "Arabs" and racialized in a similar manner. The case of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh who was murdered at a
Mesa, Arizona Mesa ( ) is a city in Maricopa County, in the U.S. state of Arizona. It is the most populous city in the East Valley section of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. It is bordered by Tempe on the west, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Communit ...
gas station by a
white supremacist White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
for "looking like an Arab terrorist" (because of the turban, a requirement of
Sikhism Sikhism (), also known as Sikhi ( pa, ਸਿੱਖੀ ', , from pa, ਸਿੱਖ, lit=disciple', 'seeker', or 'learner, translit=Sikh, label=none),''Sikhism'' (commonly known as ''Sikhī'') originated from the word ''Sikh'', which comes fro ...
), as well as that of Hindus being attacked for "being Muslims" have achieved prominence and criticism following the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
. Racial profiling is a growing problem for Arab Americans following the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
. Particularly in airports, Arab Americans are often subject to heightened
security screening A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to classified information (state or organizational secrets) or to restricted areas, after completion of a thorough background check. The term "security clearance" is ...
, pre-boarding searches and interrogations, and are sometimes denied passage "based solely on the belief that ethnicity or national origin increases passengers' flight risk." On January 27, 2017, President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
signed Executive Order 13769, titled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States", otherwise known as the "Muslim Ban". Entry was suspended for persons coming from
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
,
Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...
,
Somalia Somalia, , Osmanya script: 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘𐒕𐒖; ar, الصومال, aṣ-Ṣūmāl officially the Federal Republic of SomaliaThe ''Federal Republic of Somalia'' is the country's name per Article 1 of thProvisional Constitut ...
,
Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
,
Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
, and
Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...
. More than 700 travelers were detained, and up to 60,000 visas were "provisionally revoked".


Iranian Americans

The November 1979 Iranian hostage crisis of the U.S. embassy in
Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
precipitated a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States, directed both against the new Islamic regime and Iranian nationals and immigrants. Even though such sentiments gradually declined after the release of the hostages at the start of 1981, they sometimes flare up. In response, some Iranian immigrants to the U.S. have distanced themselves from their nationality and instead identify primarily on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliations. Since the 1980s and especially since the 1990s, it has been argued, Hollywood's depiction of Iranians has gradually shown signs of vilifying Iranians.


Indian Americans

In the United States,
Indian Americans Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...
have sometimes been mistaken for
Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
or
Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
, and thus, many of the same prejudices which have been experienced by Arab Americans have also been experienced by Indian Americans, regardless of their actual religious or ethnic background. In the 1980s, a gang known as the Dotbusters specifically targeted Indian Americans in
Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.racial discrimination Racial discrimination is any discrimination against any individual on the basis of their skin color, race or ethnic origin.Individuals can discriminate by refusing to do business with, socialize with, or share resources with people of a certain g ...
, as well as
stereotyping In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
and scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years. In particular, racial discrimination against Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with Indophobia due to the rise in outsourcing/
offshoring Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state gove ...
, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring white-collar labor to India.Worries about technical-job losses, discrimination
, by Amy Yee, The Financial Times Ltd., 2004
According to the offices of the Congressional Caucus on India, many Indian Americans are severely concerned of a backlash, though nothing serious has taken place yet. Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community. Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented. Since the
September 11, 2001, attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, there have been scattered incidents of Indian Americans becoming mistaken targets for
hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
s. In one example, a
Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...
, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered at a Phoenix gas station in a hate crime. This happened after September 11, and the murderer claimed that his
turban A turban (from Persian دولبند‌, ''dulband''; via Middle French ''turbant'') is a type of headwear based on cloth winding. Featuring many variations, it is worn as customary headwear by people of various cultures. Communities with promin ...
made him think that the victim was a Middle Eastern American.


Jewish Americans

Antisemitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
has also played a role in the
history of the United States The history of the lands that became the United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, and many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely ...
. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
escaped from the
pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...
s which were occurring in Europe.Ronald Takaki, ''A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America'' (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1993), 277–283. Beginning in the 1910s, Southern Jewish communities were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, which objected to Jewish immigration, and frequently used " The Jewish Banker" caricature in its
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
. In 1915, Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia while he was serving a life sentence after being convicted of
murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...
.Phagan, 1987, p. 27, states that "everyone knew the identity of the lynchers" (putting the words in her father's mouth). Oney, 2003, p. 526, quotes Carl Abernathy as saying, "They'd go to a man's office and talk to him or ... see a man on the job and talk to him," and an unidentified lyncher as saying "The organization of the body was more open than mysterious." This event was a catalyst in the re-formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Universities, such as
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, introduced
Jewish quota A Jewish quota was a discriminatory racial quota designed to limit or deny access for Jews to various institutions. Such quotas were widespread in the 19th and 20th centuries in developed countries and frequently present in higher education, o ...
s which effectively placed a limit on the number of Jews admitted to the University. According to the historian David Oshinsky, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (
Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
,
Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...
,
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
, and
Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935 Yale accepted 76 applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and only five got in." He notes that Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, and take no blacks at all." Events in
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
attracted attention in the United States. Jewish lobbying for intervention in Europe drew opposition from the isolationists, amongst whom was Father
Charles Coughlin Charles Edward Coughlin ( ; October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979), commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the ...
, a well known radio priest, who believed that the Jews were leading the United States into the war.Father Charles Edward Coughlin (1891–1971)
By Richard Sanders, editor, ''Press for Conversion!''
He preached weekly, overtly anti-Semitic sermons and, from 1936, he began the publication of a newspaper, ''
Social Justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals ...
'', in which he printed anti-Semitic accusations such as those which are contained in '' The Protocols of the Elders of Zion''. A number of Jewish organizations, Christian organizations, Muslim organizations, and academics consider the
Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
. Specifically, they claim that the Nation of Islam has engaged in revisionist and antisemitic interpretations of
the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...
and exaggerates the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade. The
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
(ADL) alleged that the NOI's Health Minister, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, accused Jewish doctors of injecting Blacks with the
AIDS virus The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...
, an allegation that Muhammad and ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' have refuted. Although Jews are often considered white by mainstream American society, the relationship between Jews and the concept of whiteness remains complex, so some prefer not to identify as white.Seth Korelitz, "The Menorah Idea: From Religion to Culture, From Race to Ethnicity," ''American Jewish History'' 1997 85(1): 75–100. 0164–0178Lerner, Michael (May 18, 1993). "Jews Are Not White". ''
The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...
''. XXXVIII (20). pp. 33–34.
Prominent activist and rabbi Michael Lerner argues, in a 1993 ''
Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...
'' article, that "in America, to be 'white' means to be the beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world" and that "Jews can only be deemed white if there is massive amnesia on the part of non-Jews about the monumental history of anti-Semitism". On October 27, 2018, Robert D. Bowers opened fire in a synagogue in Pittsburgh with an AR-15 style rifle, AR-15-style rifle while he was shouting Antisemitism, anti-Semitic List of ethnic slurs, racial slurs. Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, This attack resulted in 11 dead and 6 wounded, leaving the assailant charged with 29 criminal counts, one of which was the obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs. Continuing antisemitism has remained an issue in the United States and the 2011 ''Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America,'' which was released by the
Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...
(ADL), has found that the recent Late-2000s recession, world economic recession increased the expression of some antisemitic viewpoints among Americans. Most of the people who were surveyed expressed Philo-Semitism, pro-Jewish sentiments, with 64% of them agreeing that Jewish people have contributed much to U.S. social culture. Yet the polling also found that 19% of Americans answered "probably true" to the antisemitic canard that "Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street" (see Economic antisemitism) while 15% of Americans concurred with the related statement that Jews seem "more willing to use shady practices" in business than other people do. Reflecting on the lingering antisemitism of about one in five Americans, Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, has argued, "It is disturbing that with all of the strides we have made in becoming a more tolerant society, anti-Semitic beliefs continue to hold a vice-grip on a small but not insubstantial segment of the American public."


Consequences


Developmental

Using Psychometrics of racism, The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), an 18-item self-report inventory which assesses the frequency of racist discrimination, Hope Landrine and Elizabeth A. Klonoff found that racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and as a result, it is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms. A study on racist events in the lives of African American women found that lifetime experiences of racism were positively related to lifetime histories of both physical disease and the frequency of recent common colds. These relationships were largely unaccounted for by other variables. Demographic variables such as Income inequality in the United States, income and Educational inequality in the United States, educational inequality were not related to experiences of racism. The results suggest that racism can be detrimental to African Americans' well-being. The physiological stress caused by racism has been documented in studies by Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer on what they term "stereotype threat." Much research has been done on the effects of racism on adults, but racism and discrimination also affect children and teens. From infancy to adolescence, studies document a children's growth in understanding of race from being aware of race to later understanding how race and prejudice affects their life, the lives of others’, and society as a whole. The comprehensive literature review of 214 published articles with key words related to the topic, such as Racial discrimination, discrimination, racism, and
prejudice Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
for adolescents aged 10–20 years (Benner et al., 2008) highlighted a link between teens' experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination and "their socioemotional distress, academic success, and risky health behaviors". This study chose larger sample sized and peer reviewed studies, over smaller sampled and non-peer reviewed studies. In this review, researchers showed links between racial discrimination and lower socioemotional, academic, and behavioral outcomes. The socioemotional variable included depression, internalized symptoms, self-esteem, and positive well-being; academics included achievement, engagement, and motivation; and behavioral outcomes included externalized behaviors, substance abuse, deviant peer associations, and risky sexual behaviors. Researchers examined the links between discrimination and other demographic variables such as race, age, and country of residence. When looking at the impact of race/ethnicity, results show that Asian and Latino youth show greater socioemotional distress and Latino youth show lower academic outcomes. Younger teens (10 to 13 years) experience more socioemotional distress than those in middle or late teens. Furthermore, when looking at county of residence, teens in the United States have a much stronger link to socioemotional distress than other countries included in the review.


Societal


Schemas and stereotypes

Media Popular culture (songs, theater) for European American audiences in the 19th century created and perpetuated negative stereotypes of African Americans. One key symbol of racism against African Americans was the use of blackface. Directly related to this was the institution of Minstrel show, minstrelsy. Other stereotypes of African Americans included the fat, dark-skinned "Mammy archetype, mammy" and the irrational, hypersexual male "buck". Many of these stereotypes entered public media with an from the highest levels of white society. In a 1943 speech on the floor of Congress quoted in both The Jewish News (Detroit), ''The Jewish News'' of Detroit and the antisemitic magazine ''The Defender'' of Wichita
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
Representative John E. Rankin stated that Jewish Communists were arranging for white women to be raped by Black American men. In recent years increasing numbers of African-American activists have asserted that rap music videos commonly use scantily clothed African-American performers posing as thugs or pimps. The
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&n ...
and the National Congress of Black Women also have called for the reform of images on videos and on television. Julian Bond said that in a segregated society, people get their impressions of other groups from what they see in videos and what they hear in music.Felicia R. Lee,
Protesting Demeaning Images in Media
''New York Times'' November 5, 2007
It is understood that representations of minorities in the media have the ability to reinforce or change stereotypes. For example, in one study, a collection of white subjects were primed by a comedy skit either showing a stereotypical or neutral portrayal of African-American characters. Participants were then required to read a vignette describing an incident of sexual violence, with the alleged offender either white or black, and assign a rating for perceived guilt. For those shown the stereotypical African-American character, there was a significantly higher guilt rating for black alleged offender in the subsequent vignette, in comparison to the other conditions. While schemas have an overt societal consequence, the strong development of them have lasting effect on recipients. Overall, it is found that strong in-group attitudes are correlated with academic and economic success. In a study analyzing the interaction of assimilation and racial-ethnic schemas for Hispanic youth found that strong schematic identities for Hispanic youth undermined academic achievement. Additional stereotypes attributed to minorities continue to influence societal interactions. For example, a 1993 ''Harvard Law Review'' article states that Asian Americans are commonly viewed as submissive, as a combination of relative physical stature and Western comparisons of cultural attitudes. Furthermore, Asian Americans are depicted as the model minority, unfair competitors, foreigners, and indistinguishable. These stereotypes can serve to dehumanize Asian Americans and catalyze hostility and violence.


Minority-minority racism

Minority racism is sometimes considered controversial because of theories of power (sociology), power in society. Some theories of racism insist that racism can only exist in the context of social power so it can be imposed upon others. Yet discrimination and racism has also been noted between racially marginalized groups. For example, there has been ongoing violence between African American and Mexican American gangs, particularly in Southern California. Conflict has also been noted between recent immigrant groups and their established ethnic counterparts within the United States. Rapidly-growing communities of Africans in the United States, African and Caribbean immigrants have come into conflict with African Americans. The amount of interaction and cooperation between Black immigrants and African Americans are considered to be disputable. One can argue that racial discrimination and cooperation are not ordinarily based on skin color, but are instead based on shared or common, cultural experiences and beliefs.


Interpersonal discrimination

In a manner that defines interpersonal discrimination in the United States, Darryl Brown of the ''Virginia Law Review'' states that while "our society has established a consensus against blatant, intentional racism in the decades since Brown v Board of Education and it has also developed a sizeable set of legal remedies to address it", our legal system "ignores the possibility that 'race' is structural or interstitial, that it can be the root of injury even when it is not traceable to a specific intention or action". Unlike formal discrimination, interpersonal discrimination is often not an overt or deliberate act of racism. For example, in an incident regarding a racial remark which was made by a professor at Virginia Law, a rift was created by conflicting definitions of racism. For the students who defended the professor's innocence, "racism was defined as an act of intentional maliciousness". Yet for African Americans, racism was broadened to a detrimental influence on "the substantive dynamics of the classroom". As an effect, it is argued that the "daily repetition of subtle racism and subordination in the classroom can ultimately be, for African Americans, even more reductive of stress, anxiety and alienation than blatant racist acts can be." Moreover, the attention which is given to these acts of discrimination diverts energy from academics, becoming a distraction that white students do not generally face.


Ethnic-racial socialization

Ethnic-racial socialization refers to the transfer of knowledge about various aspects of race or ethnicity through generations. Parents of color use ethnic-racial socialization to transfer cultural knowledge to their children to protect them from potential biases which they may face as a result of their ethnicity and/or race. However, how parents choose to socialize their children regarding issues of ethnicity and race may affect children differently. For example, when parent's socialization efforts focus on positive aspects of their race or ethnicity, children of color tend to report higher self-esteem. On the other hand, if the focus of socialization mainly revolves around mistrust about interracial or inter-ethnic relations, children's self-concept, or how children view themselves might suffer. Promotion of socialization that centers on mistrust is especially harmful when parents present it without also teaching positive coping skills. Wang et al. (2020) conducted a meta-analytic review of 334 articles examining the effects of ethnic-racial socialization on children of color's psychosocial adjustment. Researchers evaluated the stage of children's development in which the effects of ethnic-racial socialization would be most prominent. Their findings using their systematic review process showed a positive relationship between parental ethnic-racial socialization and psychosocial well-being measures, including self-perception, confidence, and interpersonal relationships. The effects of age varied based on the psychosocial well-being measure a study used. Results showed that the link between positive self-perception and ethnic-racial socialization was most effective when it occurred in childhood and early adolescence. On the other hand, children who reported positive relationships between their interpersonal relationships and ethnic-racial socialization showed this paper in middle to late adolescence. The effects of ethnic-racial socialization also varied based on children's race/ethnicity. Self-perception and ethnic-racial socialization are related more positively among African Americans, suggesting that parents used ethnic-racial socialization to buffer against the deep-rooted stigma and biases African Americans face in the United States. Contrary to the experiences of African Americans, ethnic-racial socialization was related to low self-perception among Asian Americans. Extensive research is required to better understand the connection of ethnic-racial socialization for Asian American children's psychosocial well-being. To better understand the effects of ethnic-racial socialization and psychological development, research should take into account known moderating factors similar to stereotype threat. It is important to note that the research findings were correlational and as such does not imply causality.


Institutional racism

Institutional racism is the theory that aspects of the existing social structure, pervasive attitudes, and established institutions in society disadvantage some racial groups, but not with an overtly discriminatory mechanism. There are several factors which play into institutional racism, including: accumulated wealth/benefits for racial groups which have benefited from past discrimination, educational and occupational disadvantages which are faced by non-native English speakers in the United States, ingrained stereotypical images which still exist in American society (e.g. black men are likely to be criminals). Institutional racism impacts the lives of racial groups negatively as although legislations where passed in the mid 20th century to abolish any sort of segregation and discrimination it still does not change the fact that institutional racism is still able to occur to anyone. Peter Kaufman, a former sociology professor at the State University of New York published an article in which Kaufman describes three instances in which institutional racism has contributed to current views of race. These are: # The mis- and Missing Education of Race, in which he describes problems which the educational system has in discussing "slavery, race, racism, and topics such as white privilege." He goes on to say that schools are still segregated based on class and race, which also contributes to the poor state of race relations # Residential Racial Segregation. According to Kaufman, schools are still segregated because towns and cities are still largely segregated. # Media Monsters. This describes the role which the media plays in the portrayal of race. The mass media tends to play on "depictions of racialized stereotypes in the mass media [which are] ubiquitous, and such caricaturized images shape our perceptions of various racial groups." An example of this is the stereotyping of Blacks as criminals.


Nazi Germany's inspiration from American racism

The U.S. was a global leader in codified racism, and its race laws fascinated Adolf Hitler and other German Nazi Party, Nazis, who praised America's system of institutional racism, believing it to be a model to follow in their Reich. Hitler's book ''Mein Kampf'' praised America as the only contemporary example of a country with racist ("völkisch") citizenship statutes in the 1920s. The ''National Socialist Handbook for Law and Legislation'' of 1934–35, edited by lawyer Hans Frank, contains a pivotal essay by Herbert Kier on the recommendations for race legislation which devoted a quarter of its pages to U.S. legislation—from segregation, race based citizenship, immigration regulations, and anti-miscegenation. Nazi lawyers were inspired by American laws when they designed their Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany, own laws in
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, including racist citizenship laws, and anti-miscegenation laws which inspired the two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Hitler and other Nazis were also inspired by America's 19th century westward expansion, believing it to be a model for the Lebensraum, expansion of German territory into the territories of other nations and Generalplan Ost, elimination of their indigenous inhabitants. In 1928, Hitler praised the United States for having "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage". On Nazi Germany's expansion eastward, in 1941 Hitler stated, "Our Mississippi [the line beyond which Thomas Jefferson wanted all Indians expelled] must be the Volga, and not the Niger." In a later speech Hitler stated, "in the East a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America", and Nazi troops "had a duty to look upon natives as Redskins".


Contemporary issues


Hate crimes and terrorism

In the United States, most crimes in which victims are targeted on the basis of their Race (human categorization), race or Ethnic group, ethnicity are considered
hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...
s. Leading forms of bias which are cited in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, based on law enforcement agency filings include: anti-Black, anti-Jewish, Homophobia, anti-homosexual, and Hispanophobia, anti-Hispanic bias in that order in both 2004 and 2005. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, whites, Black people, and Hispanic people had similar rates of violent hate crime victimization between 2007 and 2011. However, from 2011 to 2012, violent hate crimes against Hispanic people increased by 300%. When considering all hate crimes, not just violent ones, African Americans are far more likely to be victims than other racial groups.


Hateful views

Following the passage of the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The ...
, the racist preference for white immigrants which dated back to the 18th century was ended, and in response to this change, white nationalism grew in the United States as the Conservatism in the United States, conservative movement developed in Society of the United States, mainstream American society. Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington argues that it developed in reaction to the perceived decline in the essence of America's identity, an identity which was believed to be European, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and English-speaking. An ABC News report which was released in 2007 recounted that past ABC polls which were conducted over a period of several years have tended to find that "six percent have self-reported harboring prejudice against Jews, 27 percent have self-reported harboring prejudice against
Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
s, 25 percent have self-reported harboring prejudice against
Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
," and "one in 10 have conceded harboring at least a little bit of prejudice " against Hispanic and Latino Americans, Hispanic Americans. The report also stated that a full 34% of Americans reported harboring "some racist feelings" in general as a self-description. An Associated Press and Yahoo News survey of 2,227 adult Americans in 2008 found that 10% of white respondents stated that "a lot" of discrimination still exists against African-Americans while 45% of white respondents stated that only "some" discrimination still exists against African Americans compared to 57% of African American respondents who stated that "a lot" of discrimination still exists against them. In the same poll, more whites applied positive attributes to African Americans than negative ones, with black people describing whites even more highly, but a significant minority of whites still called African Americans "irresponsible", "lazy", or other such things. In 2008, Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman remarked that, in the modern U.S., racism and prejudices are "a deep challenge, and it's one that Americans in general, and for that matter, political scientists, just haven't been ready to acknowledge fully." In 2017, citizens gathered in the college community of Charlottesville, Virginia to attend the Unite the Right rally. One woman was killed and dozens of other people were injured when a white supremacist Charlottesville car attack, drove his car into a group of counter-protesters.


Social media

In Contemporary history, contemporary times, many racist views have found a means of expression through social media. Among the popular social networks, in particular, the American platform Reddit has been defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the "home of the most violently racist internet content." The SPLC pointed at how racist views had gained more and more traction on Reddit, which was even replacing traditionally far-right websites such as Stormfront (website), Stormfront in both the quantity and frequency of its racist content. Several prominent intellectuals and publications have agreed with this view, considering Reddit a platform which is filled with hateful, racist and harassing content. So far, however, little or nothing has been done to address this problem.


Alleviation

There is a wide plethora of societal and political suggestions on how to alleviate the effects of continued discrimination in the United States. For example, within universities, it has been suggested that a type of committee could respond to non-sanctionable behavior. It is also argued that there is a need for "white students and faculty to reformulate white-awareness toward a more secure identity that is not threatened by black cultural institutions and can recognize the racial non-neutrality of the institutions which whites dominate" (Brown, 334). Paired with this effort, Brown encourages the increase in minority faculty members, so the embedded white normative experience begins to fragment. Within the media, it is found that racial cues prime Ethnic stereotype, racial stereotypic thought. Thus, it is argued that "stereotype inconsistent cues might lead to more intentioned thought, thereby suppressing racial priming effects." Social psychologists, such as Jennifer Eberhardt, have done work that indicates such priming effects subconsciously help determine attitudes and behavior toward individuals regardless of intentions. These results have been incorporated into training, for example, in some police departments. It has also been argued that more evidence-based guidance from psychologists and sociologists is needed for people to learn what is effective in alleviating racism. Such evidence-based approaches can reveal, for example, the many psychological biases to which humans are subject, such as In-group favoritism, ingroup bias and the fundamental attribution error, which can underlie racist attitudes. Psychologist Stuart Vyse has argued that argument, ideas, and facts will not mend divisions but there is evidence, such as that which is provided by the Realistic conflict theory#Robbers cave study, Robbers Cave Experiment, that seeking shared goals can help alleviate racism.


See also


Notes


References


Further reading


Articles

* * Randall Kennedy, Kennedy, Randall, "Racist Litter" (review of Eric Foner, ''The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution'', Norton, October 2019, , 288 pp.), ''London Review of Books'', vol. 42, no. 15 (July 30, 2020), pp. 21–23. Kennedy quotes Foner (p. 23): "A century and a half after the end of slavery, the project of equal citizenship remains unfinished." * *


Books

* * * {{Authority control Racism by country, United States Racism in the United States, Terrorism in the United States White supremacy in the United States Racism in North America, United States Bullying in the United States