OP-ED

How Can Anyone Claim This Has Never Been a Racist Country?

Chattel slavery, racial segregation, and discrimination disprove their assertions.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," is the phrase that comes to mind after hearing some people repeatedly deny America's legacy of racism. Of course, an English poet, Sir Walter Scott, first used this phrase when writing about betrayal in romance, but it can easily be applied to color-blind denials. America is "not a racist country" and has "never been a racist country," Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who is currently running for president as a Republican, claimed in front of a Fox News audience. Of course, this is an egregious falsehood. The White men who founded this nation maintained a racial hierarchy cultivated in the colonies, keeping a firm grip on social, economic, and political power by subjugating Black people.

Even this country's "founding fathers" understood that America was a nation created for the benefit of White men. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, once argued that White people living in Virginia "would not be able to live peacefully with once enslaved people who are freed because they would always view them as inferior," according to historian David Waldstreicher. Furthermore, Jefferson clarified that "the same old stereotype of blacks as inferiors" was "deeply engrained in the philosophy and practice of this nation." Either Nikki Haley is not well-versed in American history, or she's intentionally spinning yarn with lies. After all, this is the same woman who struggled to admit the Civil War was fought over slavery. What we learn from Thomas Jefferson's musings is that early White Americans were astutely aware that racist stereotypes shaped the cultural and legal practices of this nation. They weren't in denial about it.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison, a man who would become the country's fourth president, said plainly, "We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man." The irony wasn't lost on Madison that Europeans, during a period of artistic and scientific enlightenment, would be engaged in "the most oppressive dominion," subjugating a group of people based on a "distinction of color." However, like many of this country's "founding fathers," Madison's statements about race illuminated his hypocrisy. While he "opposed the African slave trade throughout his career," he became an enslaver and "defended the westward expansion of slavery" later in his life. While Madison loudly claimed that slavery violated "republican principles" he held dear, he never aligned with abolitionists, who wanted to dismantle the system.

The problem with claiming that America has never been a racist country is that you're intentionally ignoring the evidence of the contrary.

How can anyone claim that America is not, and never has been, a racist country? The chattel slavery system in this country was race-based and, as a result, racist. Unlike Irish people, some of whom became indentured servants made to work for free for a "contracted period," chattel slavery was a life-long, hereditary system. Any child born to an enslaved Black woman, regardless of the race of the father, would be born enslaved. While slavery began in the colonies, slavery persisted in the United States from 1776 to 1865. Under this system, early White Americans treated Black people as a perpetually lower-class group. As Thomas Jefferson suggested, this racist stereotype that portrayed Black people as inferior had become "deeply engrained in the philosophy and practice of this nation."

Sadly, Jefferson’s assessment of the widely held negative beliefs about Black people came to fruition, as they became the justification for a new type of barbaric system after slavery, often referred to as Jim Crow. White Southerners passed four hundred "state laws, constitutional amendments, and city ordinances" enforcing racial segregation and discrimination between 1865 and 1967, controlling nearly every aspect of life for Black people. While some White people claimed they wanted a "separate but equal" society, it was a well-known fact amongst Black Americans that separate never meant equal. This mistreatment, whether by racist mobs destroying predominately black towns, the federal government's routine punishment of Black citizens, and failure to protect them from racial discrimination, became the catalyst for the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once said, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Black Americans' shared experience of being subjugated deliberately by local, state, and federal administrations are denied by color-blind racists.

Even in the years after the civil rights era, Black Americans were not provided with equitable access to opportunities in education, healthcare, housing, and the banking industry. The 1968 Kerner Commission shed light on this point in their report regarding the basic causes of civil unrest. "The first is surely the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress through discrimination in employment and education and their enforced confinement in segregated housing and schools. The corrosive and degrading effects of this condition and the attitudes that underlie it are the source of the deepest bitterness and lie at the center of the problem of racial disorder," they wrote. In other words, Black Americans are not lacking in latent potential. Yet racist laws, policies, beliefs, and practices have intentionally set them back. "By the 20th century, the Negro was at the bottom of American society. Disfranchised, Negroes throughout the country were excluded by employers and labor unions from white-collar jobs and skilled trades."

How can Nikki, the daughter of Indian immigrants, be oblivious to the blatant racism in America? It was Black Americans' struggle to desegregate society that enabled her parents to migrate to this country in the first place. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was used as legal justification for passing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, opening the door for immigrants of color to become citizens. Before President Lyndon Johnson signed this act, a quota system limited access, and “immigration law favored immigrants from northern Europe and the British Isles" and "discriminated against those from southern and eastern Europe, and barred those from Asia and non-whites from entering the country."

Nikki, whose real first name is Nimarata, seems to be endorsing color-blind racism, a worldview that denies the racism Black people and people of color experience. The reason why the former South Carolina governor goes by "Nikki" and not "Nimarata" is because she's trying to assimilate into white culture and distance herself from her ethnic ties. Growing up, Nikki shared that she "was bullied because" students "didn't know if" she "was black" or "white." However, she's still, somehow, unconvinced that America is a racist country. What would Nikki say about India, her parent's home country, where a color-based caste system confines many dark-skinned people to the lowest rung of the social hierarchy? Would she also deny the colorism of the so-called "untouchables" experience? "Untouchability" is a cultural practice legitimized by religious practices "attached to certain hereditary Indian castes."

Nikki Haley was well aware that her parents experienced racism in this country. As she wrote in her book, “My parents told us about how no one would rent them a house when they first came to Bamberg. They were clearly foreigners. Plus, the word had gotten around that my father worked at the ‘black school.’ He had found a job as a professor of biology at Voorhees College, a historically black college in nearby Denmark, South Carolina. When my parents finally found a house, the seller said they had to buy it, not rent it. And he had conditions. They couldn’t entertain black people in it. And they had to sell it back to him when they wanted to move.” How can Nikki’s parents pass down this story, that they had to agree not to “entertain” Black people in their home, and she walks away with the conclusion that America is not a racist country?

Nikki's color-blind ideology is reminiscent of Vivek Ramaswamy, an Indian man who recently dropped out of the Republican presidential primary to support former president Donald Trump. When his wife, Apoorva, asked supporters why other Republicans were not supporting his nomination, the responses exposed the racism people like Vivik and Nikki pretend doesn't exist." Members of the town hall cited his "dark skin" and the fact that many people believe "he's a Muslim," as to why they didn't support him as the Republican nominee. Ultimately, Vivek's skin color and Hindu faith hindered his campaign even though months ago, he was declared a "right-wing star," in the party after declaring an all-out war on "woke" ideology. Vivek aligned with conservatives politically, but that wasn't good enough because he wasn't White.

Saying that America is a racist country doesn't mean the country will always be that way. Instead, it traps us in a world of illusions, a house of cards built from white lies. However, just as an addict's path to recovery must begin by accepting they have a problem, so too must this country be honest about its racism if it has any hope of turning over a new leaf. The "founding fathers" knew that a racial hierarchy was embedded in American society. It makes no sense to lie and claim America has never been racist when this country's history of chattel slavery, racial segregation, and discrimination disproves this assertion.

References

Apfelbaum, E. P., Norton, M. I., & Sommers, S. R. (2012). Racial color blindness. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 205–209. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411434980

Carlquist-Sagers, Andrea B., "Jefferson's Sensitivities: How Thomas Jefferson's Discussions of Race and Slavery are Influenced by Audience" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 483. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/483

Kachanoff, F. J., Kteily, N., & Gray, K. (2022). Equating silence with violence: When White Americans feel threatened by anti-racist messages. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 102, 104348. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2022.104348

Kerner, O., Lindsay, J. V., Harris, F. R., Abel, I. W., Brooke, E. W., Thornton, C. B., Corman, J. C., Wilkins, R., McCulloh, W. M., Peden, K. G., & Jenkins, H. J. (1968, February 29). National Advisory Commission on civil disorders, report. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/national-advisory-commission-civil-disorders-report

Waldstreicher, D. (2010). Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to ratification. Hill and Wang.

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