History of Racism in the US

The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea By Christopher J. Lebron taps into some key aspects:

  • History reflects that fact that black lives were seen as being a fraction of a human life during slavery. In Southern states where slavery was legal, slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person when counting population. With slavery being eradicated and anti-segregation laws being passed, racist sentiments did not die in the United States
  • Police brutality (especially against African Americans) in America has been prevelant
  • The twitter hashtag that started #BlackLivesMatter as a response to the atrocities
  • The Black Lives Matter Movement didn’t just appear out of nowhere and pick up where the Civil Rights Movement left off
  • American mindset of being "colorblind" is inherently racist
  • This colorblind ideology has contributed to the systematic issues throughout the criminal justice system that then caused disparate racial impacts to manifest.

  • Michelle Alexander (2010), in her book, The New Jim Crow, demonstrated that the legal system and mass incarceration greatly contributed to many of the severe problems faced by the African American community.
  • Previous systems of racialized social control in American history were explicitly racist. 'Whites only' signs, segregated lunch counters, and brutal lynchings characterize racism in the past. Today, the War on Drugs is concealed racism.
  • Colorblindness is concealed racism. 

The charts below highlight statistics proving how black people are subjected to voilence in the United States and are disadvantaged. 

History of Racism in the US