Racism and white privilege

Assertions that we are now a “post-racial” society are belied by the 2015 spate of police shootings and killings of unarmed African American men and women, and the murders of nine African Americans in a prayer group in South Carolina by a white man professing white supremacist ideology. These shocking events dramatically illustrate that racism is alive and well in 21st century United States. Attempts to overturn the Voting Rights Act and gerrymander districts to advantage white candidates, as well as deep and ongoing racial and economic segregation, are through lines from an earlier era when de jure segregation was the law of the land. This chapter is intended to help readers understand the patterns and practices that evolved historically to become the system of racism that continues in the U.S. today, a system that impacts everyone-including new immigrants who are incorporated into the racial structure when they arrive.