Why racism still exists
Banned Histories of Race in America
Whenever the wealthy white people in charge of this country start talking about wanting a color-blind society, I know they’re lying. I know this for a couple of reasons. The first is because they’ve already built one for themselves. Italians used to not be white. Same for the Irish. At one point, even Germans weren’t white, if you can imagine. And just as Muslims aren’t white now, Catholics used to also not be white. The wealthy white people in charge of this country have never been short on ways to divide everyone else into usses and thems.
The thing is, when they’re ok with it, those divisions disappear. For example, there once was an identity-based prejudice brought to this country by its British forefathers. As you might imagine, this prejudice focused on a socially constructed circumstance of birth and its point was to ban certain groups from obtaining rights, wealth and other standing in society. What you probably wouldn’t guess is that that this prejudice had nothing to do with race or gender or immigration status or any of the usuals. I, of course, am talking about bastardy.
Yes, it used to be that if your parents weren’t married when you were born, you were officially “illegitimate” or a “bastard” and your life was considerably harder. Social mobility was limited and any rights you might have could be brought into question, sometimes legal question.
There were Supreme Court cases involving bastardy until the late 1960s. The last one was Levy v. Louisiana, which was brought to the Court because after a woman died allegedly from medical malpractice, her five children weren’t allowed to sue for wrongful death. This wasn’t because they didn’t have a case. It was because, even though the family all lived together, all five children were born out of wedlock.
The Supreme court made the right decision, sided with the Levy family and now “bastard” is a PG-13 cuss and you’re probably questioning if “bastardy” is even a word. It is, but I recognize how silly it sounds. Trust me, this us versus them thing can get a lot sillier.
In 1922 there was a violent 8-day-long riot in New York City. This brutal upheaval was not over race or gender or immigration status or even bastardy. No, this bloody rampage happened because some men were wearing straw hats past September 15th – Felt Hat Day – the unofficial end of straw hat season. Yes, hats used to be such an important part of class, culture and identity that the sight of a straw hat on September 16th could drive men to violence.
So, why does racism have such staying power? It doesn’t, really. Yes, racism is a, if not the functional force in American society, government and business, but not because its stick-to-itiveness. In fact, because classifying people according to the degree of melanin in our skin is such an obviously brainless idea, it has close to zero lasting power. That’s why they have to keep gerrymandering maps and destroying Black voting rights and striking down laws attempting to deconstruct racism. It’s why the Supreme Court destroyed Affirmative Action last June. As I write this, the US House Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) has just been dissolved. An independent and nonpartisan office, the ODI was created under Trump and now disbanded under Biden because… he wants Trump to win?
I don’t know. The truth is that it’s all a lot bigger than candidates. In many democracies around the world the “liberal” party is a center-right party and it’s actually the same here. The only difference is that our system doesn’t allow anything to the left of liberal and so what we lack in social safety nets we more than make up for in our wide menu of white supremacies. How did this happen? That’s a question for another episode of Banned Histories of Race in America!
See you next week!
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/politics/house-office-diversity-inclusion-disbanded/index.html