Before we begin, it is important to be aware that we will be exploring primary sources from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that include potentially upsetting portrayals of Black Americans. These sources may very well make you upset or angry, perhaps out of empathy with Black people of that time, or perhaps because the ideas that circulate in these sources may not seem all that far removed from what we see in the world today.

Systemic Racism

Most historians today agree that racism is a multifaceted problem, both in the American past and in the American present. We are often conditioned to see individual actions or persons as “racist” or “not racist,” but we can learn a lot by seeing how racism works at a societal level instead. For this historical hack, we will look at how racism must be considered a systemic problem. When we talk about systemic racism, we are talking about how racist ideas and assumptions are knitted into the institutions that make a civilization function. Often, it is embedded in laws, unfair political representation, and in access to housing or health care. Racism can also manifest in customs, ideas, or educational practices that govern a society.

The idea of systemic racism is a fairly new one. The term was first used by Black Power activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in 1967. In their work, the two men observe:

Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type^[1]. 

In the 1960s when this was written, this meant that an overt and violent act, such as the 1963 bombing of a Black church in Alabama, receives condemnation. Yet, the historic malnutrition and high child mortality rates among Black children in Alabama did not receive similar attention and outrage, although these conditions also had racialized origins. Let us take a moment to further clarify what we mean by systemic racism.

Connecting the Past to the Present

We can better understand how racism works as a system (and not merely a bunch of discrete acts by bad people) by looking to the past for some insight and practical examples. Few examples are as poignant and longstanding as the system of Jim Crow racism that dominated the South from about 1890 until it was dismantled in the 1950s and 1960s.

Jim Crow Laws

Many of the elements that made up the Jim Crow system were put into place by Southern leaders during the last twenty years of the 19th century. These leaders constructed legal, social, and economic barriers to Black advancement and social equality. From this module, you may remember the

• miscegenation laws, which made marriage or any sexual relationships between Whites and other races illegal. (In practice, this was rarely enforced when White men used their power and influence to have coercive or nonconsensual relations with Black women).
• de jure disenfranchisement, which worked around the 15th Amendment through the use of unequally-applied literacy tests, civics tests, and poll taxes.
• laws mandating separate accommodations for different races, such as waiting rooms, train compartments, toilets, and water fountains.
• You can peruse more examples at this online exhibition.

Justifications for Jim Crow

Public intellectual Lewis Waller lists a number of “justifications, rationalizations, and causes” that may help explain how this system of racial inequality toward Black people in the Jim Crow South took root. These include:

• Propaganda: the manipulation of news and media to frame events in a way favorable to White Southerners.
• Sexuality: fear of miscegenation (or “race-mixing” as it was called then). Remember, a lot of the violence of the Jim Crow era is premised on a fear of Black male sexuality, and interpreting this fear as a threat to White women.
• Scientific Racism: The misuse of scientific data or theories in an attempt to objectively prove differences in ability and potential between races.
• Nostalgia: Remembering an earlier time fondly, particularly when a different racial dynamic was in play.
• Economics: Seeing different races as competitors rather than partners, competing against one another to win scarce resources, such as good-paying jobs.
• Stereotypes: Assigning moral, behavioral, or physical characteristics to an entire racial group. In the case of the South, this would “create a culture of expectations around how Black Americans should act and how Whites should construct their own views.”
• Feelings of Defeat and Victimhood among Southern Whites: “perpetrators of violence often see themselves as victims, the subject of some kind of injustice, either in the past or ongoing.”^[2]

Simply, it isn’t helpful to conclude that someone in the past “hated someone just because of the color of their skin.” Such a conclusion may be partly true, but it does very little to understand how racially loaded ideas spread, propagate, or convince others. Be on the lookout for subtext, and clues in the text that suggest what the writer is saying below the surface. For example, few Southerners of the Jim Crow era would have been so bold as to write in a respectable publication, “I don’t like Black people because they might steal my job.” Instead, language criticizing Blacks as “uppity” or “working above their station” will surface– thus framing the problem as one of Black presumption and insolence.

There are always ideas, assumptions, and material conditions that inform and shape hatred, bigotry, or a sense of racial superiority. However, we can use our skills as thinkers and historians to understand how that process takes place. And in doing so, perhaps we can better understand how racially loaded ideas continue and propagate today.

First Example: Natural Selection and the Race Problem

Race as a system is more than just the sum of racist laws. It interacts with social expectations, economic opportunity, political power, and intellectual life. Let us take a look at how a document from 1905 purporting to be academic reflects and contributes to a system of racism. The author is Benjamin Hays, a physician and public health official in North Carolina. This excerpt was originally printed in a Southern medical journal before it was published as a standalone piece.

This document has barely begun and it’s already upsetting, especially to contemporary readers. Yet, it may be surprising that this source isn’t simply unbridled racial hatred; it is written attempting a cool, scholarly tone. Let’s take a closer look at what Hays is trying to say.

Let’s stop just for a moment to reflect here. There is a lot of material even in this short segment that strikes us as both factually mistaken and ethically problematic. To make sure Hays’ arguments and assumptions are understood, let’s try a few questions.