Bethany Bryan. Social Change in the Twenty-First Century. Reference Point Press, 2020.
The United States has a long history of racial tension, starting with the European explorers and colonists who arrived in North America starting in the 1500s. Indigenous peoples already lived throughout the continent. The colonists displaced, enslaved, or killed vast numbers of indigenous people. This treatment led to outbreaks of violence and bloodshed that continued for centuries and wiped out entire civilizations of native people.
Some of the earliest African slaves in America were brought to the Jamestown Colony, in what is now Virginia, in 1619. Over the next two centuries, 12.5 million slaves were brought to the American colonies, the Caribbean, and South America. Slavery was officially outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. However, discrimination against black people in the United States was far from over. The country remained a dangerous place for former slaves, their descendants, and other people of color.
The late nineteenth century and early twentieth century ushered in what is known as the Jim Crow era. During this time, state laws—commonly called Jim Crow laws—were passed to enforce racial segregation. The laws prohibited white and African American children from attending the same schools and black people from using the same transportation and occupying the same public spaces as white people. Leaders of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—including Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Dorothy Height, and others—pushed back against Jim Crow laws and worked toward federal legislation that would outlaw discrimination. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned such segregation, seemed to many like a long-awaited first step toward American equality. But the nation remains divided over race issues.
The conflicts that perpetuate these issues aren’t limited to American shores. Over the last decade, conflicts have erupted overseas and displaced people from South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria, among other nations. A Syrian civil war started in 2011, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Millions more fled the country, many seeking safety in Europe and the United States. There were 25.4 million refugees worldwide in 2018, and of these, 3.1 million were asylum seekers. These people have fled their home countries and applied to be taken in and protected by a host nation. But finding a welcoming host nation isn’t easy. Many people in potential host nations view those from nations in the Middle East and South Asia as a threat to national security because of past acts of terrorism committed by people from those regions. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were committed by Muslim extremists, and some people wrongly assume that all Muslims share extremist views. This misconception has ushered in an era of xenophobia, racism, and acts of violence against refugees, immigrants, and nonwhite American citizens. In the United States, certain government policies have tightened security, making it more difficult for refugees to seek asylum. According to 2018 numbers from the Pew Research Center, 13 million Syrians have been displaced by the civil war. Although the United States has historically been a welcoming country to refugees, bringing in more than 3 million people since 1980, it only settled 33,000 refugees in 2017, down from 97,000 the previous year.
Today, the United States continues to struggle with racial unrest and issues of discrimination. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, a number of events have occurred that have fanned the flames of racism in America and heightened the visibility of white supremacy, an ideology that many thought was firmly in America’s past. Social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit help to spread these ideas, making hope and progress seem farther away for those who have always believed that a life in America means a promise of freedom.
The Growth of Racial Tension in the Twenty-first Century
Racism and racial tension continue to thrive in America. They show up on the nightly news, on the internet, and in neighborhoods across the country. But how can a country like the United States, whose founders spoke of seeking individual freedom and liberty, carry such a legacy of discrimination and pain? Many believe that racism is actively passed down from generation to generation. Others, like Jennifer Richeson, a social psychologist from Yale University, believe that racism is learned from the culture as a whole. “The truth is that unless parents actively teach kids not to be racists, they will be. This is not the product of some deep-seated, evil heart that is cultivated,” she said in 2017. “It comes from the environment, the air all around us.” Particular outbursts of racism are often fueled by sudden change or by tragedy, and several such events took place in the early decades of the twenty-first century in the United States.
One of these events occurred on September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen men, who would later be identified as Muslim extremists, hijacked four airliners soon after they departed from airports on the East Coast. With their destinations in California, each aircraft carried a heavy load of fuel. The terrorists crashed two of the planes into the twin World Trade Center towers in New York City. The impact and subsequent explosion and fire damaged the buildings enough that they then collapsed. A total of 2,753 people, including firefighters and law enforcement personnel, were killed in the New York attacks. The hijackers flew the third plane into the exterior of the Pentagon in Washington, DC, where 184 people were killed. The fourth hijacked plane crashed in a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing forty onboard. The passengers, who had become aware of the other attacks, attempted to retake control from the terrorists, and the plane went down in the chaos. Responsibility for the attacks was soon attributed to the terrorist group al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, a Saudi extremist who had been responsible for bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
This day was life-changing in a number of ways for Americans. There were survivors directly impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Others experienced the loss of a loved one, a job, a sense of stability, or their health. But many Americans who were not so closely involved also faced life-changing consequences. After September 11, polls showed that 58 percent of Americans were afraid for their personal safety and the safety of their friends and family. Younger generations had never experienced this level of fear and uncertainty. Never in their lifetimes had so many Americans died through such carefully orchestrated means. How did this happen? What if it happened again?
Fear is a powerful thing—both on a personal level and for a nation reeling in the aftermath of a large-scale terrorist attack. Suspicion was on the rise, and because the attackers had been Muslim, some people began targeting ordinary American Muslims—or even those who just looked as though they might be Muslim. In the year 2000, twelve attacks on Muslim individuals were reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). That number rose to ninety-three in 2001. President George W. Bush was quick to speak out against violence against Muslims. He said in a speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, on September 17, 2001, “America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.” But his words were not enough to halt discrimination and violence across the country. Muslims continue to be the targets of bias.
A second event that had a significant impact on racial dynamics in the United States was the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. In the years after the September 11 attacks, many Americans looked to political leaders to give them hope and to show them signs of progress. Illinois senator Barack Obama seemed to fit the bill, and on Election Day, he made history, defeating Senator John McCain to become the forty-fourth president of the United States—and the first African American to hold the office. Many people took his win as a sign that the United States was moving forward into what some called a “post-racial” era. In this new world, some people felt, the rise of an African American man into the nation’s highest office meant that racism would fade away.
However, this hopeful notion did not come to pass. While many Americans who disagreed with Obama felt that way on the basis of politics, others objected to his race. Some of the reactions were violent or threatening in nature. In the days leading up to the election, on the University of Kentucky’s Lexington campus, a likeness of Barack Obama was found hanging from a tree. This was a reminder of a terrible chapter of US history in which more than 4,000 lynchings of black Americans were recorded between 1877 and 1950 throughout the United States. After the election, reports of racist activity continued to surface across the country. In Hardwick, New Jersey, and Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania, Obama supporters reported finding burning crosses on their lawns, a reminder of a time in the late 1800s and early 1900s when a racist group called the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) terrorized African Americans, other people of color, and their allies. Racial slurs and death threats against the president-elect were frequently spotted as the nation drew closer to Inauguration Day. Social media services such as Facebook and Twitter were relatively new and played a big part in the Obama campaign. But during and after the election, many also used these social media platforms to share racist memes, false information, and conspiracy theories. Hate was growing, and many felt powerless to stop it.
Michael Brown and Ferguson
Violence carried out by police against black Americans received widespread attention in the 2010s, driving the Black Lives Matter movement and spurring activists to make demands for change. Among the most impactful of these incidents was the killing of Michael Brown. Brown was eighteen years old when he was killed in a confrontation with police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, in the Saint Louis, Missouri, suburb of Ferguson. Brown was walking down the street with a friend when Wilson pulled up beside them and asked Brown to step over to the sidewalk. Wilson said later he believed that Brown was potentially involved in a robbery that had taken place earlier in the day.
The precise details of what happened next may never be known for sure. After the incident, Wilson insisted that an enraged Brown grabbed for his gun, forcing Wilson to react with deadly force. Wilson fired a total of twelve shots, seven of which hit Brown. Eyewitness accounts provided conflicting information, with some insisting that Brown was surrendering and others stating that they saw him attack the officer. Some, including the friend who was with Brown at the time, reported seeing him running away. What is known for certain is that when the last bullet struck Brown, he fell forward into the street and was soon after pronounced dead by paramedics.
As a crowd gathered around the scene, people began to take pictures and videos of Brown’s body. The photos soon spread on social media, and people reacted quickly with anger and heartbreak. Theories ran wild, and false information began to spread alongside the facts about the incident. “Ferguson police just executed an unarmed 17yr old boy that was walking to the store. Shot him 10 times smh,” was written in a Twitter post shortly after the incident. Some speculated that Brown’s body was left on the street for several hours as a warning to others, a claim disputed by former Ferguson chief of police Thomas Jackson in his book Policing Ferguson, Policing America. As the news went viral, anger spread, and the feeling was all too familiar. The nation was still on edge from Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 and the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013. In addition, just a few weeks before Brown’s death, Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York, a black man, died from being placed in a choke hold by police. They had confronted him for the minor crime of selling loose cigarettes—cigarettes that are sold individually to avoid paying city taxes.
Brown was young and unarmed. Why did the officer respond with deadly force when he could have simply taken Brown into custody?
People wanted answers to these questions and for the officer to face charges. They wanted assurances that their own children were going to be safe. “There is no other people on Earth that I love more than my children,” said Ferguson resident Amy Hunter to a gathered crowd in the week following Brown’s death. “And I would really like to stop being afraid every time they leave my house.” Others believed that it was more important to stand by law enforcement and trust Wilson’s account of the event. This ignited debate on social media between Wilson’s supporters and those who wanted to see him punished for the killing.
The Saint Louis Police held a press conference on August 10, the day after the shooting, in which they said that Brown was killed because he reached for Wilson’s gun. In response, Ferguson residents and supporters gathered in peaceful protest outside of the Ferguson police department. Across the country, similar protests cropped up. In Ferguson, the protests eventually turned violent, resulting in looting, rumors of gunshots, and riots. Riots continued into the next day and the day after, and the National Guard was called in to help calm the situation. Missouri governor Jay Nixon called for a curfew to keep people off the streets. Only after US attorney general Eric Holder flew to Ferguson to meet with Brown’s family on August 20 did the riots cease.
A few months after the shooting, on November 24, 2014, the Saint Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, made the announcement that Wilson would not be facing charges for the incident. The reaction online and in Ferguson was almost immediate. People marched in protest, and some protests again led to violence. In online reactions, many people were angry at the outbreak of violence and resulting property damage. Others were quick to defend protesters, noting that only a few individuals, rather than the widespread protest movement, were responsible for the problems.
To some, Brown’s death was an isolated tragic incident. But others saw it as part of a long-term pattern of mistreatment of black Americans by police. In Missouri, black drivers are 85 percent more likely than whites to be pulled over. They are also 51 percent more likely to be searched during a traffic stop, even though, according to a Missouri report on vehicle stops, white people are more likely to be found with illegal drugs. Police are also more likely to use deadly force against black individuals. Various studies have found that black men between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four are between nine and sixteen times more likely to be killed by police than other people. These imbalances in policing are reflected in the prison population, with black people five times more likely than whites to be incarcerated. Black people made up 33 percent of the prison population in 2016, despite only accounting for 12 percent of the US population.
As people in the black community try to speak out about these disparities, they often face racist backlash online. Many who read their comments misinterpret questions about police violence as opposition to law enforcement, flipping the narrative to paint police as victims of criminal misbehavior. Black Lives Matter activism in the wake of the Brown shooting was met with chants of “Blue Lives Matter,” an attempt to shift the focus toward police, who often wear blue uniforms. Others responded with the chant “All Lives Matter,” again drawing the focus away from the specific problem of violence against black people. Many in the black community continue to struggle as they feel their concerns have gone unaddressed, particularly by the government.
White Supremacy in the Trump Era
On June 16, 2015, businessman and TV personality Donald Trump announced that he would be running for president in 2016. In his comments that day to gathered supporters at Trump Tower, his skyscraper in New York City, he said of immigration issues, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Trump almost immediately faced backlash online for his comments, which many considered to be racist. He doubled down on his position, frequently talking about how gang members and terrorists sought to illegally enter the United States. Trump called for a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, those who have entered the United States outside of the official legal channels or who have remained in the country after their original paperwork has expired. Many such people flee to the United States to escape violence in their home countries. He also proclaimed repeatedly that he would order the construction of a wall along the US border with Mexico.
Many voters liked Trump’s brash way of speaking. They liked his stance on immigration. Some were easily able to link his statements and policies to their own biases against people of color. These ideas spread particularly widely online. Groups professing white supremacy became more visible on online forums and social media. In 2000, there were 602 documented hate groups operating in the United States. By 2018, that number had increased to 953.
After Trump won the presidential election and was sworn into office in January 2017, many immigrants became concerned for their safety and the safety of their families. Undocumented individuals felt more at risk for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a government agency founded in 2003 to closely monitor those who are undocumented. During the Obama administration, ICE was tasked with deporting people guilty of crimes other than lacking documentation, but when Trump became president, his administration pushed ICE to remove anyone residing in the United States illegally. Additionally, people seeking asylum in the United States in early 2018 found themselves detained by US Customs and Border Protection. Parents were separated from their children at the border and often struggled to regain custody once released. These government actions were frightening for many Americans who view the United States as a symbol of freedom.
In August 2017, an outburst of racism found its way onto the front page of newspapers around the country. More than 200 white supremacists marched in a Friday night August rally at the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They carried torches and chanted racist slogans. Antiracist counterprotesters clashed with them. The police finally intervened, and people on both sides suffered injuries. The next day, another round of protests and counterprotests erupted into more widespread violence. Events turned deadly when one white supremacist intentionally rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman. On the same day, two police officers who had been monitoring the events from a helicopter died when their aircraft crashed.
Trump made public remarks in response to the events in Charlottesville. He said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” People took issue with Trump’s phrase “on many sides.” He seemed to be drawing an equivalency between the racist protesters and those who were standing against racism. At a later press conference, Trump went further, stating, “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” Public figures from both major political parties condemned his remarks.
America remains on unstable ground when it comes to issues of race, but many hope that education and an antiracism narrative from the government will help to ease some of the concerns. Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, says, “There has not been a society-wide and intensive challenge to racist ideas in the US.” He and many other antiracism experts agree that one of the most important antidotes to racism in America is to challenge racist ideas and realign people’s way of thinking.