Hello Everyone,
I have been in contact with a professor at UT to gather some resources to help people understand Structural/Systemic Racism and wanted to share with y'all what he shared with me here for anyone interested in learning more.
Before listing the resources, I want to give a quick outline of the main argument for Structural Racism so you can better understand which resources serve which purpose. If you want to skip all that, you can jump to the bottom for resources.
To begin, historians tend to discuss three central periods when dealing with Black History in the US:
The evils of plantation-based slavery should be readily apparent to all, so I will not spend any time discussing that here.
Many believe slavery ended at the end of the Civil War with the 13th amendment. However, this is simply untrue. Slavery was alive and well up until about WWII, just under a different name. During the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Labor was deemed essential to the southern economy. So, Black citizens were "legally" re-enslaved to save the economy. There are many ways this was done, but here are a few:
Many of these practices were essentially dead by the end of WWII as the national economy shifted. However, new systems for holding Blacks back were created and adapted for the new economy. For example, as soldiers returned back from WWII, the federal government supported the construction of suburbs through loans to developers and elements of the GI Bill. However, the federal housing authority expressly forbid the sale of homes built to Blacks under the condition of the loan. Furthermore, they often mandated clauses be included in deeds to keep houses funded by federal loans from every being sold to Blacks. Additionally, Black veterans were not afforded the same privileges granted by the GI Bill that would have allowed them to buy into the housing market.
These steps, combined with the practice of Redlining, held Blacks back from buying into the greatest source of generational wealth available in the last 100 years. For example, a home bought with $75,000 in the 50's (in today's dollars) is now worth about $500,000 on average. This is wealth that gets passed on through generations and equity that could be used to acquire education and small business loans. Blacks were intentionally denied these opportunities and therefore held back from participating in the rapid middle class expansion following WWII. This is perhaps the single greatest reason that People of Color are disproportionately affected by poverty.
Finally, in more recent years, NIxon, Reagan, Old Bush, and Clinton created and sustained a War on Drugs that intentionally placed Blacks behind bars and created a cultural view of Blacks as criminals. This was done through unequal sentencing for crack and cocaine, creating mandatory minimum sentences, and passing truth in sentencing legislation. These all disproportionately affected People of Color and created a cultural view of minorities as "dangerous criminals" that is still very much alive and well today. Additionally, these practices destroyed black communities just beginning to take a foothold in urban areas.
It is really important to know that this was all done intentionally. This was not some sort of de facto creation or accidental. There is evidence to suggest or outright confirm that every element I have mentioned was intentionally put in place to hold Blacks down economically. You can find this evidence in the resources below.
Here are the Resources:
The book Slavery by Another Name and it's PBS documentary explore the early period of segregation leading up to WWII.
The book The Color of Law speaks to Post-WWII segregation: Amazon product ASIN B01M8IWJT2
Here are some NPR resources that overlap with or are based on the above book:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/04/11/601494521/video-housing-segregation-in-everything
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/528822128/the-color-of-law-details-how-u-s-housing-policies-created-segregation
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/526656129/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america
The book The New Jim Crow discusses mass incarceration: Amazon product ASIN B086CFB2NT
The Netflix documentary 13th also covers mass incarceration and is much more approachable: https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
I hope some of y'all can find these resources helpful for understanding what is going on with race relations right now. I'm just here to share resources, so if you are looking for someone to argue with, go somewhere else.
Wreck 'Em
I have been in contact with a professor at UT to gather some resources to help people understand Structural/Systemic Racism and wanted to share with y'all what he shared with me here for anyone interested in learning more.
Before listing the resources, I want to give a quick outline of the main argument for Structural Racism so you can better understand which resources serve which purpose. If you want to skip all that, you can jump to the bottom for resources.
To begin, historians tend to discuss three central periods when dealing with Black History in the US:
- Plantation
- Segregation
- Mass Incarceration
The evils of plantation-based slavery should be readily apparent to all, so I will not spend any time discussing that here.
Many believe slavery ended at the end of the Civil War with the 13th amendment. However, this is simply untrue. Slavery was alive and well up until about WWII, just under a different name. During the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Labor was deemed essential to the southern economy. So, Black citizens were "legally" re-enslaved to save the economy. There are many ways this was done, but here are a few:
- Convict Leasing
- Debt Peonage
- Sharecropping
Many of these practices were essentially dead by the end of WWII as the national economy shifted. However, new systems for holding Blacks back were created and adapted for the new economy. For example, as soldiers returned back from WWII, the federal government supported the construction of suburbs through loans to developers and elements of the GI Bill. However, the federal housing authority expressly forbid the sale of homes built to Blacks under the condition of the loan. Furthermore, they often mandated clauses be included in deeds to keep houses funded by federal loans from every being sold to Blacks. Additionally, Black veterans were not afforded the same privileges granted by the GI Bill that would have allowed them to buy into the housing market.
These steps, combined with the practice of Redlining, held Blacks back from buying into the greatest source of generational wealth available in the last 100 years. For example, a home bought with $75,000 in the 50's (in today's dollars) is now worth about $500,000 on average. This is wealth that gets passed on through generations and equity that could be used to acquire education and small business loans. Blacks were intentionally denied these opportunities and therefore held back from participating in the rapid middle class expansion following WWII. This is perhaps the single greatest reason that People of Color are disproportionately affected by poverty.
Finally, in more recent years, NIxon, Reagan, Old Bush, and Clinton created and sustained a War on Drugs that intentionally placed Blacks behind bars and created a cultural view of Blacks as criminals. This was done through unequal sentencing for crack and cocaine, creating mandatory minimum sentences, and passing truth in sentencing legislation. These all disproportionately affected People of Color and created a cultural view of minorities as "dangerous criminals" that is still very much alive and well today. Additionally, these practices destroyed black communities just beginning to take a foothold in urban areas.
It is really important to know that this was all done intentionally. This was not some sort of de facto creation or accidental. There is evidence to suggest or outright confirm that every element I have mentioned was intentionally put in place to hold Blacks down economically. You can find this evidence in the resources below.
Here are the Resources:
The book Slavery by Another Name and it's PBS documentary explore the early period of segregation leading up to WWII.
Link to Book:
Amazon product ASIN B001NLKT24
Link to Documentary: http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/home/
Amazon product ASIN B001NLKT24
Link to Documentary: http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/home/
The book The Color of Law speaks to Post-WWII segregation: Amazon product ASIN B01M8IWJT2
Here are some NPR resources that overlap with or are based on the above book:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/04/11/601494521/video-housing-segregation-in-everything
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/528822128/the-color-of-law-details-how-u-s-housing-policies-created-segregation
https://www.npr.org/books/titles/526656129/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america
The book The New Jim Crow discusses mass incarceration: Amazon product ASIN B086CFB2NT
The Netflix documentary 13th also covers mass incarceration and is much more approachable: https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
I hope some of y'all can find these resources helpful for understanding what is going on with race relations right now. I'm just here to share resources, so if you are looking for someone to argue with, go somewhere else.
Wreck 'Em
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