African Americans: From Segregation
to Modern Institutional Discrimination
and Modern Racism
Chapter Five
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
The mechanization and modernization of agriculture in the
South had a powerful effect on race relations.
 need to maintain a large, powerless workforce declined
 migration northward to urban areas increased
 political power became more feasible for African Americans
•
WWII saw one of the first and most successful applications of
the growing stock of black power.
 A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
 President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order creating the
Fair Employment Practices Commission
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
•
The Civil Rights movement was a multifaceted
campaign to end legalized segregation and
ameliorate the massive inequalities faced by African
Americans.
Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, 1954 reversed
Plessey v. Ferguson, 1896 and ruled that racially
separate facilities are inherently unequal and
therefore unconstitutional.
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
Southern states responded to the Brown (1954) decision
by stalling and mounting campaigns of massive
resistance.
 The Ku Klux Klan, largely dormant since the 1920s,
reappeared along with other racist and terrorist groups.
 Prince Edward County, in central Virginia, chose to close
its public schools rather than integrate.
o For five years, white children attended private, segregated
academies, and the county provided no education at all for
African American children (Franklin, 1967, p. 644).
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
•
•
The Civil Rights movement origin is often traced to
Montgomery, Alabama, where on December 1, 1955, Rosa
Parks, was jailed for violating a local segregation ordinance.
Her case stimulated a protest movement in the black
community and a boycott of the city buses was organized.
Nonviolent direct action became a method by which the
system of de jure segregation was confronted head-on, not in
the courtroom or in the state legislature, but in the streets.
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
•
Nonviolent protest was intended to confront the forces of evil rather
than the people who happened to be doing evil, and it attempted to
win the friendship and support of its enemies rather than to defeat or
humiliate them.
The successes of the protest movement combined with changing
public opinion and the legal principles established by the Supreme
Court coalesced in the mid-1960s to stimulate the passage of two
laws that, together, ended Jim Crow segregation.
 Civil Rights Act of 1964
 Voting Rights Act of 1965
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The End of De Jure Segregation
•
Factors that facilitated the success of the Civil Rights
movement:
 Industrialization and urbanization, particularly in the South
 Post-WWII economic prosperity increased African American
political power
 The goals of the movement were assimilationist
 Widespread, sympathetic mass media coverage of the
movement, particularly television
•
While the Civil Rights movement ended segregation, its
tactics were less useful in the actual distribution of valued
societal resources.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Developments Outside the South
•
•
De facto segregation is segregation resulting from the apparently
voluntary choices of dominant and minority groups alike; it “just
happens” as people and groups make decisions about where to live
and work.
The de facto variety is often the de jure variety in thin disguise as in
cities outside of the South de factor segregation was often the direct
result of intentionally racist decisions made by governmental and
quasi-governmental agencies such as real estate boards, school
boards, and zoning boards (see Massey & Denton, 1993, pp. 74114).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Developments Outside the South
•
•
In the mid-1960s, the frustration and anger of urban black
communities erupted into a series of violent uprisings.
The urban unrest consisted largely of attacks by blacks
against the symbols of their oppression and frustration.
 White-owned businesses operating in black neighborhoods.
 The police who were seen as an army of occupation and whose
excessive use of force was often the immediate precipitator of
riots (Conot, 1967; National Advisory Commission, 1968).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Developments Outside the South
•
•
•
Outside the South, the problems were different and called for
different solutions.
The Black Power movement was a loose coalition of organizations
and spokespersons that encompassed a variety of ideas and views,
many of which differed sharply from those of the civil rights
movement.
Some of the central ideas included:
 Racial pride, interest in African heritage, and Black nationalism
 Malcom X and The Nation of Islam.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Protest, Power, and Pluralism
•
In the context of black-white relations in the 1960s, the Black Power
movement served a variety of purposes.
 It helped carve out a new identity for African Americans as it
supplied a view of African Americans that emphasized power,
assertiveness, seriousness of purpose, intelligence, and
courage.
 Black power served as a new rallying cry for solidarity and
unified action in the “unfinished business” of erasing black-white
inequality.
 The ideology provided an analysis of the problems of American
race relations in the 1960s—only the restructuring of American
society would rid African Americans of their main problem,
institutionalized racism/discrimination.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Gender and Black Protest
•
•
•
The battle against racism and the battle against sexism were
separate struggles with separate and often contradictory agendas as
the black protest movement continued to subordinate women (Amott
& Matthaei, 1991, p. 177).
In the view of many, African American women were the backbone of
the movement, even if they were often relegated to less glamorous
but vital organizational work (Evans, 1979).
Fanny Lou Hamer devoted herself entirely to the Civil Rights
Movement and founded the Freedom Party, which successfully
challenged the racially segregated Democratic Party and the allwhite political structure of the state of Mississippi (Evans, 1979;
Hamer, 1967).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Black-White Relations Since the 1960s
•
•
Without denying the progress toward integration,
African Americans and white Americans continue to
live in worlds that are indeed separate and unequal.
Both groups have committed violence and hate
crimes on the other, but the power differentials and
the patterns of inequality that are the legacy of our
racist past guarantee that African Americans will
more often be seen as “invaders” pushing into
areas where they do not belong and are not
wanted—public discrimination lawsuits to race riots
not a thing of the past.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
The Criminal Justice System and
African Americans
•
No area of race relations is more volatile and controversial
than the relationship between the black community and the
criminal justice system.
 Numerous examples of excessive force
 Racial profiling is an ongoing debate
•
The disproportional involvement of African American males
within the criminal justice system is largely the result of
national “get tough” policies that have the “unintended”
effects of targeting certain populations—institutional
discrimination.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Increasing Class Inequality
•
•
•
Urbanization has brought increased class differentiation with black
poverty a serious problem and middle-class blacks lagging far
behind middle-class whites in economic resources.
The greater economic marginality of the black middle class today is
a form of “past-in-present” institutional discrimination and reflects
the greater ability of white parents (and grandparents) to finance
higher education and to subsidize business ventures and home
mortgages (Oliver & Shapiro, 2001).
No matter what their level of success, occupation, or professional
accomplishments, race continues to be seen as their primary
defining characteristic in the eyes of the larger society (Cose, 1993).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Increasing Class Inequality
•
•
•
•
Automation and mechanization in the workplace have eliminated
many of the manual labor jobs that sustained city dwellers in earlier
decades (Kasarda, 1989).
Industrialists have been moving their businesses to areas where
labor is cheaper, unions have less power, and taxes are lower.
As the jobs migrate, so do more affluent segments of the population.
These increasingly isolated neighborhoods are fertile grounds for
the development of oppositional cultures, which reject or invert the
values of the larger society.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Increasing Class Inequality
•
•
•
One of the livelier debates in contemporary race relations concerns
the relative importance of race and class in shaping the lives of
African Americans and other minority groups.
One position argues that race is no longer the primary controlling
influence in the lives of African Americans and that blacks and
whites at the same social class level or with the same credentials
have the same opportunities (Wilson, 1980).
Others argue that race remains the single most important feature of
a person’s identity and the most important determinant of life
chances (Feagin, 2001; Margolis, 1989, p. 99; Willie, 1989).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
The Family Institution and the Culture
of Poverty
•
•
•
In a recent report by Royster (2003), black and white graduates
completed the same curricula and earned similar grades from a
Baltimore trade school yet black graduates were employed less
often in the trades for which they had been educated, had lower
wages, got fewer promotions, and experienced longer periods of
unemployment.
Extensive interviews with subjects showed that white graduates
had access to intraracial networks (family and friends) of referrals
and recruitment that linked them to the job market in ways that
simply were not available to black graduates.
Royster’s work demonstrates that the world of work is controlled
by nepotism, cronyism, personal relationships, and networks of
social relations that are decidedly not open to everyone.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
The Family Institution and the Culture
of Poverty
•
•
•
The nature of the African American family institution has been a
continuing source of concern and controversy.
Rather than poverty being a product of a culture of poverty that is
characteristic of black family structure, the cause of black urban
poverty is a product of the complex forces of past and present
institutional discrimination, American racism and prejudice, the
precarious position of African American women in the labor force,
and continuing urbanization and industrialization.
The solution to black urban poverty lies in fundamental changes in
the urban-industrial economy and sweeping alterations in the
distribution of resources and opportunities.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Mixed Race & New Racial Identities
•
One important study illustrates some of the possible
identities for mixed race individuals:
 Border identity
 Singular identity those individuals saw themselves not as
biracial but as exclusively black or exclusively white
 Transcendent identity those that reject the whole notion of
race, along with the traditional categories of black and white
 Protean identity - changing as the individual moves from group
•
to group
The most common racial identity is border identity –
individuals don’t consider themselves to be either black
or white
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Wealth by Definition of Middle Class by
Race
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Prejudice and Discrimination
• The overall trend is unmistakable: There has
been a dramatic decline in support for
prejudiced statements since World War II.
•
In the early 1940s, a large majority of white
Americans supported prejudiced views.
• In recent years, only a small minority
expresses such views.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
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Prejudice and Discrimination
• Of course, these polls also show that
prejudice has not vanished.
• A percentage of the white population
continues to endorse highly prejudicial
sentiments and opinions.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Prejudice and Discrimination
•
•
A number of scholars reject the idea that prejudice in the
United States has declined and argue that it is simply
changing forms.
They have been investigating symbolic or modern
racism, a more subtle, complex, and indirect way to
express negative feelings toward minority groups and
opposition to change in dominant-minority relations (see
Bobo, 1988, 2001; Kinder & Sears, 1981; Kluegel &
Smith, 1982; McConahy, 1986; Sears, 1988).
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Modern Institutional Discrimination
• Specifically, modern racism assumes that:
 (a) there is no longer any serious or important
racial, ethnic, or religious discrimination in
American society,
 (b) any remaining racial or ethnic inequality is the
fault of members of the minority group, and
 (c) demands for preferential treatment or
affirmative action for minorities are unjustified.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Modern Institutional Discrimination
• Modern racism tends to “blame the victim”
and place the responsibility for change
and improvements on the minority groups,
not on the larger society.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Modern Institutional Discrimination
•
•
Although the traditional, more overt forms of
prejudice have certainly not disappeared,
contemporary expressions of prejudice are often
amorphous and indirect—modern racism.
The clarity of Jim Crow has yielded to the ambiguity
of modern institutional discrimination and the
continuing legacy of past discrimination in the
present.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Assimilation and Pluralism:
Acculturation
• The centuries of cultural domination and
•
•
separate development have created a unique
black experience in America.
African Americans share language, religion,
values, beliefs, and norms with the dominant
society but have developed distinct variations on
the general themes.
The acculturation process may have been
slowed (or even reversed) by the Black Power
movement.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Secondary Structural Assimilation
•
•
Today, the extent of residential segregation varies
around the nation, but blacks continue to be the most
isolated of minority groups, especially in the older
industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest (Pollard &
O’Hare, 1999, p. 29).
Continuing patterns of residential segregation reflect the
social class differences between the races and are
reinforced by a variety of discriminatory practices—racial
steering, redlining, white flight.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
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Secondary Structural Assimilation
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
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Assimilation and Pluralism:
Acculturation
• Today, 70% of African American children
still attend schools with a black majority,
and one third attend schools that are 90%
to 100% minority.
• In terms of the quantity of education, the
gap between whites and blacks has
generally decreased over the century.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
25 Years of Age and Older with College
Degree 1960-2010
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Secondary Structural Assimilation
•
•
•
Movement out of the rural south and the dismantling of
institutionalized voting barriers have increased black political power.
The number of black elected officials at all levels of government
increased from virtually zero at the turn of the century to almost
9,000 in 1999 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002, p. 250).
However, African American political power is limited as...
 Local economic conditions are shaped mainly by corporation officials on
the basis of short-term profits and not community needs” (Marger,
1994, p. 254).
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© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Secondary Structural Assimilation
•
•
•
•
The situation of African American jobs and income has
improved since the end of de jure segregation but has
stopped well short of equality.
Unemployment has been at least twice as high for blacks
as for whites since the 1940s and vary by sex and by
age, with black males frequently having higher
unemployment rates than do black females.
The differences in education and jobs are reflected in a
persistent racial income gap.
Poverty affects black Americans at much higher rates
than it does white Americans.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Primary Structural Assimilation
•
•
•
Interracial contact in the more public areas of
society is certainly more common today, which has
led to increases in more intimate contacts across
racial lines.
On the other hand, further increases in this area
are limited by continuing structural pluralism and
separate black and white institutional and
organizational structures.
Interracial marriages are increasing in number but
still make up a tiny percentage of all marriages.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
The Election of Barack Obama
• Barack Obama took the oath of office and
•
became the 44th president of the U.S.
A Post-Racial Society?
 What could the term “post-racial” mean in the context
of Obama’s victory?
o Anti-black prejudice, racism, and discrimination have lost
their force.
o Diminishing power of racial identity in American society.
o Empty rhetoric, a mistaken and greatly exaggerated
interpretation of the significance of Obama’s victory.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
The Election of Barack Obama
•
Conclusions
 Which of the three versions of the interpretation for
“post-racial” seems most viable in the light of the
information presented here?
 The truth perhaps lies in some mixture: while race
may be losing some of its historic power to shape our
perception and control our lives, our society continues
to be deeply divided by race.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.
Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?
•
•
Perhaps the most reasonable approach is to recognize
that in many ways, the overall picture of racial progress
is “different” rather than “better” and that a large
percentage of the African American population has
traded rural peasantry for urban poverty and faces an
array of formidable and deep-rooted problems.
Urban poverty, modern institutional discrimination, and
modern racism are less dramatic and more difficult to
measure than an overseer’s whip, a lynch mob, or a
sign that says “Whites Only,” but they can be just as real
and just as deadly in their consequences.
Healey. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 4e
© 2014 SAGE Publications, Inc.