In the United States, racism and white supremacism have been a problem since before the beginning of the country. Starting with slavery in the transatlantic slave trade, then with Jim Crow era, and continued into the modern era with more covert tactics. Racism has always been a major problem within the country and continues to be to this day with problems concerning police brutality, institutionalized racism based on education, housing, and the justice/prison system, as well as a rising number of white nationalists and white nationalist sympathizers. The solution to each of these problems would be based on reforming the educational system, prison reform, and increased control of media platforms that use propaganda to incite white nationalists to violence and sympathize with racist views.
First, one of the most notable race related problems in the United States in our current times is that of police brutality, more specifically unlawful killings of unarmed black people by police officers. The problem of police brutality has always been a problem for the black community, according to the Smithsonian, “The first American police department was established in Boston in 1838”, where European immigrants were mostly target, but “as African-Americans fled the horrors of the Jim Crow south, they too became the victims of brutal and punitive policing in the northern cities where they sought refuge.”(Nodjimbadem). According to a crime survey based in Chicago in the late 1920s, “African-Americans made up just five percent of the area's population, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings” (Illinois Crime Survey 1929). The most notable case of police brutality was that of the Rodney King case, where four officers beat an already subdued Rodney King with batons and were unknowingly recorded on video tape, resulting in several fractures, broken bones, and bruises for King, this video recording is commonly known as the “Holliday video”. After King sued the four officers, a jury with lack of black representation found that the four officers were not guilt, and they were acquitted of assault and excessive force, which resulted in the L.A. Riots of 1992. During the years of 2012-2018, many more cases in which a police officer was accused of unjustly killing an unarmed black male gained high amounts of media attention. Most of these cases’ high amount of media recognition result from the fact that they were recorded on video just like the Rodney King incident and allowed a large number of people to see. The use of social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allowed much of these incidents to be viewed by an even larger number of people than the Holliday video, as social media is something common for most people to have, including teens and children. An example of a major case that received a large amount of social media attention is the Shooting of Philando Castile, where Philando Castile, a 32 year old black male, was pulled over by a police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, while riding with his girlfriend and 4 year old daughter. The officer shot Castile seven times, who was restrained by a seatbelt, after he stated that he had a firearm. The incident gained high profile as it was livestream recorded by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds on Facebook, which was shared across multiple social media platforms and journal websites. Hours after the shooting multiple people gathered outside of the scene described as being “peaceful but visibly angry”(Pheifer & Peck).And after the officer was found not guilty thousands protested outside of the Minnesota Governor's Residence. The problem of police brutality is something that has taken the lives of many black people, as well as causing psychological stress for thousands of others across the country. The solution to this problem would be based on reformations of different police departments, increased use of body cams, as well as limiting the power and immunity that police officers are given within the justice system.
Secondly, racism has been strongly influenced by institutionalization, in the United
States, several systems have started out with institutionalized racism and white supremacy and continue to have this institutionalized racism to this day. One form of institutionalized racism is that of racism within housing. One form of this is racially isolating black people through “the practice of building subsidized housing mainly in existing ghettos instead of in areas that offer low- and moderate-income families access to safe neighborhoods, adequate jobs and schools that allow their children to thrive”(NYTimes Editorial Board). A well known form of housing based racism is redlining, which is when black neighborhoods are denied services such as banking and insurance on a systematic scale. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago even found that “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”(Aaronson, et. al.). Another form of systematic racism that has been used against the black community is in the system of criminal conviction. For example, for years the sentencing for cocaine(a majority caucasian used drug) and the crack rock form of cocaine(a majority black used drug), have had a major difference, with cocaine possession charges being less harsh than those for crack possession. According to U.S. Sentencing Commision, “79 percent of 5,669 sentenced crack offenders in 2009 were black, versus 10 percent who were white and 10 percent who were Hispanic. The figures for the 6,020 powder cocaine cases are far less skewed: 17 percent of these offenders were white, 28 percent were black, and 53 percent were Hispanic.”(Kurtzleben). Our current prison system can also be seen as a form of institutionalized racism. Black people are 13% of the population but make up 40% of the prison population, so they are more likely to be affected by injustices within prison than any other race. The prison system is based on punishment rather than rehabilitation and ex-convicts in the U.S. are said to have a recidivism rate of 76.6% according to the National Institute of Justice. These factors keep a large number of black prisoners from being rehabilitated and instead ending up within the prison system for most of their lives. A school to prison pipeline has also been reported to be focused more on black youth, with a Code of Maryland Regulations study finding that within schools, black students were suspended at over twice the rate of of white ones(Porowski, et. al.). Schools with larger numbers of black students were also reported to more likely use zero tolerance policies, with more punishing forms of discipline, than whites(Welch & Payne, 25-48). These types of disparities within schools and prison are also a factor in keeping many black people uneducated, as black youth are more likely to be suspended and not be at school, and many black people within prison are less likely to receive proper education. These varying forms of institutionalized discrimination and disparities are damaging to black communities through many different ways, keeping a large number of the black population in prison, uneducated, and in low income neighborhoods. The solution to these would be a nationwide prison reform based on rehabilitation rather than punishment, a repeal of zero tolerance policies, as well as decreasing disparities between black offenders and white offenders of the same crime.
Thirdly, the most powerful form of racism is the use of racism ideologically. Through the use of propaganda such as fake news articles, misuse of statistics, and increased media representation, white nationalism and supremacism has gone on the rise within social media. The spreading of fake news is something extremely common on social media, and many white nationalist platforms have used this to spread propaganda that makes viewers either feel under attacked by, feel a form of hate towards, or superiority towards black people. For example, “Snopes has blown the whistle on wildly inaccurate stories about a Black Lives Matter organizer being sued for embezzling millions, ID cards issued by the city of Chicago that supposedly would allow undocumented immigrants to illegally vote in elections and the “Muslim” mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, banning the word ‘Christmas.’”(Sankin). As well as fake stories of Black Lives Matter supporters attacking white people, setting them on fire, or chanting for “dead cops now”. With our current technology it is also easy for white supremacists to edit both photographs and videos of black protest signs to say things advocating for violence against white people, for example I saw a sign that originally said to “end white supremacy” that was edited to say “end white males”, which led to anger and outrage by many white viewers of the edited image, which may have led to many becoming more radical white nationalists. Another problem is the misuse of statistics, the most common one being that Black people are 13% of the population but commit 50% of all crimes, a statement that although partly true, is used by many to suggest that black people are either biologically or culturally more violent than white people. The increase of media and political representation is also one that has caused the rise of white supremacists to come out of secrecy and become more public. An example of this type of representation is when President Donald Trump called the white nationalists and neo-nazis apart of the “Unite The Right” rally to protest against the removal of a confederate statue “some very fine people,”, and shifted the blame to that of counter protesters, despite the fact that one of the racists involved in the rally killed a counter protester with his car. Some white nationalists even said that they didn’t feel as though Trump condemned their movement, with white nationalist Richard Spencer dismissing “Trump’s statement as “kumbaya nonsense” and said he didn’t view it as a repudiation of his movement, which he defended as “non-violent.”(Gray). This form of representation in the media along with the rise of fake news and misuse of statistics has caused a rise of white nationalism throughout the use of the internet, and the solution to this would be for more politicians who identify and/or sympathize with white nationalists to be condemned by more people, and to be recognized by voters, as well as calling for more people who browse the internet to be more skeptical of articles and pictures that are used as propaganda by many hate groups to gain more political support.
In conclusion, to solve the problems of racism and white nationalism in America and to prevent them from rising, we must focus on dealing with the unjust ways that black people are treated by law enforcement, execute a prison reform, and educational reforms, and stop the spread of white nationalist propaganda that influences more people to sympathize and agree with racist forms of thinking by being more skeptical of internet based articles that appear on social media websites.