The History of the USA, Or A Series of Unfortunate Racist Events
A reminder that despite the fervent claims of some, the USA has a long and storied history of racism
Discussions about Critical Race Fact (not Theory) among conservatives all end with the same conclusion - the same conclusion stated in laws designed to prevent CRF from being taught in American schools.
That conclusion is that America is not racist and that individual states are also not racist.
Here’s a timeline of events that does absolutely nothing to support this thesis
(not a complete list):
1626 - 1860 - Over 470,000 Africans were enslaved and brought to America
1787 - Black slaves were designated to equal 3/5 of a person
1790 - The Naturalization Act was codified to limit naturalization to free White people
1808 - Domestic slave trade began after importing slaves was made illegal
1857 - Dred Scott decision by the US Supreme Court that established that Blacks couldn’t claim American citizenship
1865 - The 13th Amendment was ratified. While it outlawed slavery, it also left the door open for Blacks to be persecuted by law enforcement and forced into involuntary servitude
1865 - The country’s first large, organized terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan, is formed for the first of three iterations
1870’s - Jim Crow laws were passed across the Southern states to end reconstruction and ensure that Blacks were disenfranchised. These laws were bolstered by the 15th Amendment.
1906 - The Atlanta Race Riot occurred. Two Whites died and as many as 100 Black people were killed
1913 - Newly elected president Woodrow Wilson instituted racial segregation in the Federal Government
1919 - The Elaine massacre in Arkansas, where five Whites and possibly hundreds of Blacks were killed
1921 - The Tulsa Massacre took place, where numerous Blacks and some Whites died and 35 square blocks of Black Tulsa were destroyed
1955 - 14 year old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi after supposedly whistling at a White woman. His killers admitted killing him in a Life Magazine interview after being found not guilty by an all-White jury. Supposedly, the woman who claimed that Till whistled at her confessed on her deathbed that her story was a lie
1963 - NAACP Field Secretary and notable Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers is assassinated
1963 - Four Black girls ranging in age from 11 to 14 were killed, and another girl blinded by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
1964 - Three Civil Rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were kidnapped, killed, and buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi
1968 - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
Present Day - Blacks are loaned less money than Whites in comparable situations
Present Day - Black homes are appraised at lower values than their White counterparts
Present Day - Blacks are the victims in greater numbers of extrajudicial police killings than Whites
Present Day - Discriminatory voting laws are passed by various states to prevent a repeat of the large turnout of minority voters in 2020
Present Day - The phrase and movement Black Lives Matter is deemed controversial
Present Day - Critical Race Fact is considered controversial and unpatriotic
The amazing thing is that despite these and numerous other incidents in American History, America is deemed by many a non-racist country.
I shudder at the thought that America is the least racist country that humanity can construct.