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Transforming America from Jim Crow to Post-Racial
President Theodore Roosevelt once said: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . [rather than to] those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." Those willing to examine issues of race deserve credit for their willingness to enter this most divisive of arenas. Too often today, many refuse to discuss racial topics, particularly with someone of another race. As the recent shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the surrounding confrontation between mostly black peaceful protestors and mostly white local law enforcement personnel indicate, it is imperative that this arena remains open for constructive dialogue.
THE WORLD OF JIM CROW
I would like to enter this arena by reminding you of our repressive racial past. From the nation's founding in 1789 to the late 1960s, Jim Crow laws provided a systematic framework that separated blacks and other racial minorities and sustained a racial hierarchy that relegated blacks to the bottom of the economic ladder. Black separation was maintained through government policies in education and housing, which perpetuated the physical separation of blacks and whites. The racial hierarchy was reinforced by practices preventing black advancement in virtually all walks of life: employment, housing, education, politics, military service, sports, and business. The pervasive separation of blacks in these areas of life directly increased the proliferation of notions of black inferiority. By the early 1950s the racial divide was rigidly maintained throughout the country by government enforcement and private acts. In this way, separation of blacks became firmly entrenched in American society. The resulting long-term racial isolation made blacks extremely susceptible to economic and political victimization.
B lacks were kept separate in order to eliminate their competition with whites and to control the perceived threat of their integration into society. Central to this method of controlling blacks was the ruling in Plessyv. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), introducing the harmful "separate but equal" doctrine. This infamous case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned segregation in public accommodations, resulted in decades of blatant separation of blacks in public settings. In this way, the racial hierarchy was intensified and expanded, and segregation...