Jessica Spiers

12/5/18
Final Paper
HIST 2104

Dylan Rodriguez has argued that white supremacy is a centripetal force that historically

restructured American society to subjugate non-white bodies. This argument can be supported by

looking at historical events in America including the beginning of the nation of America itself

and throughout history until now in 2018. We continue to see job and housing discrimination,

brutality, racist laws and politicians using fear mongering and racist ideals to try to cater their

platforms when they run for political positions. Though we do not see the traditional slavery

anymore, we still see violence against black people and the mass incarceration of black men that

have to do labor for only a few cents an hour which begs the question, is slavery still happening

in a modern form? White supremacy has always been part of the American government system

and it can be seen throughout history during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement and

even now in the era of Donald Trump. White supremacy has reinvented itself in every decade in

American history and it will continue to manifest itself unless people understand these historical

events and understand how racism can show itself in different ways.

Racism and white supremacy have reinvented themselves into new forms since the

beginning of time. Edward Bonilla-Silva says that “Unlike analysts who believe that ‘racism’ has

withered away, I argue that the persistent inequality experienced by blacks and other racial

minorities in the United States today is due to the continued albeit changed existence of a racial

structure. In contrast to race relations in the Jim Crow period, however, racial practices that

reproduce racial inequality in contemporary America are (1) increasingly covert, (2) embedded
in normal operations of institutions, (3) void of direct racial terminology, and (4) invisible to

most whites” (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 48). Racism is typically defined as “prejudice, ignorance, or a

disease that afflicts some individuals and causes them to discriminate against others just because

of the way they look” (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 21). However, Bonilla-Silva challenges this and says

that this an idealist view. Bonilla-Silva then describes

Actors in superordinate positions (dominant race) develop a set of social practices (a

racial praxis if you will) and an ideology to maintain the advantages they receive based
on their racial classification, that is, they develop a structure to reproduce their systemic
advantages. Therefore, the foundation of racism is not the ideas that individuals may have
about others, but the social edifice erected over racial inequality. Eliminate racial
inequality and the practices that maintain it and racism and event he division of people
into racial categories will disappear (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 22).

It’s clear that racism has been engrained into society since the very beginning. It is more than

just ideas that people have, it is an institutional systemic problem. America was created on stolen

land from the Native Americans and then build by slaves that the Europeans brought over on

ships. America’s first presidents and leaders were slave owners. Slaves could not speak their own

language, practice their own religion and they could not name their children (Dierenfield 2008,

3). Eventually in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was established and slavery was abolished.

After slavery was abolished and the Civil War ended, actual slavery still existed in

America throughout the Reconstruction period. Governments were reestablished but they looked

very similar to the Confederate governments they were trying to get rid of; the governments were

full of only white men. Former slaves were promised land but land was returned to the original

land owners, only white men. Sharecropping was established and black people had to work again

to earn their crops. Black codes, codes that “restricted black mobility, economic opportunity, and

political expression” (Dierenfield 2008, 10), were established. The 15th Amendment was
established but it was vague and states had a lot of opportunities to still deny black men their

vote based off literacy level and other things. Black people became office holders and

representatives and schools were established for black children. White southerners could not

understand and deal with black people being able to hold office and being able to vote and the

Ku Klux Klan was developed and violence against black people was continued. After the

Compromise of 1877, the Democrats were in control of the South again and continued to limit

the rights of black people and Jim Crow laws were passed (History 2011).

While America took just a few small steps forward with the 13th, 14th, and 15th

Amendments, many more steps were taken back. It wasn’t just about giving rights to black

people and then taking them away, it was also about brutal violence and murder perpetrated by

white people. The Mississippi Plan was enacted and the KKK “castrated, raped, and lynched

thousands of black men and women” (Dierenfield 2008, 9). They didn’t just want to kill them,

they wanted to torture and dehumanize all black people. In the murder of Sam Hose, they

“chained him to a tree, cut off his ears, fingers and genitals, skinned his face, and plunged knives

into his body before setting him ablaze” (Dierenfield 2008, 9). Frederick Douglass said in “The

Color Line” that the black man “has ceased to be the slave of an individual, but has in some

sense become the slave of society. He may not now be bought and sold like a beast in the market,

but he is the trammeled victim of a prejudice, well calculated to repress his manly ambition,

paralyze his energies, and make him a dejected and spiritless man, if not a sullen enemy to

society, fit to prey upon life and property and to make trouble generally” (Douglass 1883).

Though slavery was technically “over,” the violence, racism and white supremacy continued and

white people still tried to take away the very few rights of black people. Even though these
amendments had been passed, there was obviously still racism in America. Racism showed itself

from films like The Birth of a Nation, a film that portrayed black people as rapists, to court cases

like Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 that enforced the “separate but equal” trope and allowed for

states to enforce segregation (Dierenfield 2008, 11). Soon, states were segregating public

transportation, restaurants, pools, beaches and water fountains. This time in America was built

on racism and slavery manifested itself in a way that looked like the continued torture and

dehumanization of black people.

After the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, there were different ideologies that came out

about how black people should go about trying to gain more freedom in America. There were

ideas like Booker T. Washington explaining how black people should just accept their “second-

class citizenship” (Dierenfield 2008, 15) and others like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and W.E.B Du

Bois discredited leaders like Washington and argued that nothing would be solved if black

people just accepted this violence from white people. Soon after, the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established. Leaders of the NAACP lobbied in

Congress for protective legislation, encouraged voting, sued in court to desegregate jobs,

jousting and public facilities and denounced European colonialism in Africa. (Dierenfield 2008,

16) This was just the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in America. There are countless

people involved in this movement that organized and taught people, lobbied, and held nonviolent

protests within this time that made many changes for black people. More people were mobilized

than ever before and many leaders came out to advance this movement. Black people started

moving west during a movement called the Great Migration. These people were trying to escape

the harsh discrimination in the South. While they escaped the South, they moved to these cities
and still faced hard times. They still had to deal with having jobs that did not pay as much and

had to live in very segregated neighborhoods (Dierenfield 2008, 16). Presidents Roosevelt,

Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy enacted laws and decisions like banning discrimination in

war industries, in federal employment and established affirmative action (Dierenfield 2008, xix).

More and more organizations like the Southern Regional Council, Southern Conference

Educational Fund and others were created to work towards the political, social and economic

progress of black people. In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education was decided by the Supreme

Court. Their decision “invalidated ‘separate but equal’ public schools” (Dierenfield 2008, 23).

While there was legal progress for black people and revolutionary moments like Rosa

Parks not giving up her seat on that Montgomery, Alabama bus, there were still steps being taken

back and society moved away from this progress. Violence against black people continued and

people like Emmett Till were falsely accused and lynched at the hands of white people. Children

trying to integrate schools like the Little Rock Nine were met violence and hatred from white

people and the Brown v. Board decision was met with much opposition. Leaders like Martin

Luther King Jr. and Malcom X were assassinated. Just because there were some laws being

passed for the advancement of black people, the FBI still wiretapped the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference and accused them of being communists. Just because President Kennedy

developed some legislation to end segregation in some places doesn’t mean that he was for all of

the mobilization of the effort for desegregation in America. He hoped that the Freedom Ride

would go away and J. Edgar Hoover passed on the Ride’s intended track to people in Alabama

that were violent Klansmen. (Dierenfield 2008, 64) White people felt threatened by this

mobilization of black people and white allies and reacted many times with the same violence that
was shown during the times of Reconstruction. Again, slavery and racism are shown during this

time in a lot of the same ways it was in the time after the Civil War. It’s hard to say that things

were better for black people because they are still being met with violence while they are trying

to gain equality. This violence came from people in America and from white citizens but also it

came from people in governmental power in America.

If we look to 2008, we see the election of America’s first black president, Barack Obama.

Obama served two-terms and made history many times as president. While Obama won both the

Electoral College and popular vote, Obama and other black people in America continued to face

extreme racism. The election and presidency of Obama proved quickly that America was not

entering a post-racial era. Obama’s birth certificate was a hot topic for Republicans trying to

prove that he was not born in the United States. Some American citizens that were opposed to

President Obama carried around puppets and posters with his head in a noose, painting a portrait

of lynching. The controversial case of Shelby v. Holder determined that Section 4(b) of the

Voting Rights Act of 1965 was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. In result of this,

thousands of polling places have been closed in predominantly black counties and this leads to

reducing voter turnout (Oyez n.d.). Racial unrest in places like Ferguson and Baltimore were

recognized on a national level and nine black people were killed in Charleston, South Carolina in

a racially motivated shooting. Though people thought this was still a time of “post-racial”

America, black men faced mass-incarceration, unfair sentencing for minor offenses or criminal

records for life. (Alexander 2010) Michelle Alexander says in her book “The New Jim Crow”

that

once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment

discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational
 opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury
service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably
less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not
ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” (Alexander 2010)

While there was societal racism, there was also racism and white supremacy convicting black

men at high rates and this continues to happen. Even if we are not incarcerating black men,

society still outcast them whether that is calling the cops on them for a barbeque or when the

cops themselves shoot and kill them for no reason other than they had a “suspicion” that they

were criminals. Men like Philando Castile are murdered by police for obeying orders. The police

officers who commit these acts of violence against black men are often acquitted of charges

against them like Jeronimo Yanez who was acquitted of charges in the death of Castile (Berman

2017).

Fast-forwarding to the era of Trump that is happening now, America has gone from its

first black president to one who blasts groups like Black Lives Matter and insists that in the

Charlottesville rally that there were very fine people there when referring to the white

supremacists and modern-day Nazi’s that were there. Trump has said that immigrants from Haiti

“all have AIDS” and insisted for years that Obama was born in Kenya. He refuses to

acknowledge the racism police brutality and murder than has been happening in America and has

the support of David Duke who led the KKK. Trump also uses hateful rhetoric when speaking of

immigrants and migrants, trying to close the southern border of the United States and preventing

people of color from coming to the United States to gain asylum, even when that is their right.

Donald Trump became the president because people in America elected him. This continues to

show that racism and white supremacy is very alive in modern-day America.
 A study done by three political scientists found that among the 6.7 and 9.2 million people

that voted for Obama then voted for Trump, most people in that group scored high on racist and

xenophobic ideology. Just because they voted for America’s first black president does not mean

that they are not racist (Beauchamp 2017, para. 16). Racism has been engrained in society. White

supremacy is upheld by white people and white people profit off it, meaning that they will

continue to vote for politicians that will uphold these values of wanting to remain the superior

race. The study said that they, “find a much stronger association between symbolic racial and

immigration attitudes and switching for Trump and Clinton than between economic marginality

or local economic dislocation and vote switching. In fact, we find marginally small or no

associations between any of our economic indicators and vote switching in either direction”

(Reny et. al.). Many people and news sources continually talk about the issue of class and how

that related to the outcomes of the 2016 presidential election. However, this study and other

studies like it, show that it had to do more with race and anti-immigration policies. Trump used

racial politics in his campaign and it ultimately landed him the presidency. Though Obama won

the presidency in both 2008 and 2012, white people voted in favor of the Republican candidate

both times with 55% for McCain in 2008 (CNN 2008) and 59% for Romney in 2012 (CNN

2012). White people also overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump, seemingly repeating white

voting habits from the previous elections. It seems as if racial relations in America will continue

to be a major point of elections.

The history of America has upheld Rodriguez’s claim that white supremacy is central to

society’s subjugating non-white bodies. Racism continues to manifest itself in corners of

America and now in 2018, on the national stage. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in his “Three

Evils of Society” speech that “if America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish

racism, some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked

the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men” (King 1967). The evilness of

racism and its presence in America will continue to enslave black and other bodies of color until

it is addressed. Looking at these historical and current events, it is shown that white supremacy

can be upheld if nothing is learned from these events. In his speech on Black Power, Kwame

Ture discussed whether or not man can condemn himself. If man cannot condemn himself,

progress will never be made. He uses an example of the Nazi’s after they were charged with war

crimes. They would not admit what they had done was wrong because that would have caused

pain and guilt for themselves. As humans, we do not want to admit what we have done has

caused harm. If white people do not condemn the systematic problem of racism and the way the

American governmental system was build off racism, nothing will change. “We have allowed

ourselves to be willfully blind to the emergence of a new caste system—a system of social ex-

communication that has denied millions of African Americans basic human dignity. The

significance of this cannot be overstated, for the failure to acknowledge the humanity and dignity

of all persons has lurked at the root of every racial caste system (Alexander 2010). We must

realize that before we can create progress and dismantle the system of racism, we must

acknowledge that it is still a problem, it has never just been a problem of the past.
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