Racial Policy in Post-Civil War America: White Is White, Black Is Black

On April 29, 1992, a U.S. district court in Los Angeles acquitted four white police officers in the fatal beating of Rodney King, a black teenager, on March 3 last year. This unfair verdict has aroused strong dissatisfaction among the American public, especially the majority of black people. That night, thousands of black people gathered on the streets of Los Angeles for a demonstration that spiraled out of control and turned into massive violence. On May 25, 2020, after the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of violent white police officers, massive demonstrations broke out across the United States, with statues of Washington and Columbus toppled by angry blacks and sympathizers.

Racial discrimination in the United States has become increasingly prominent in the process of social development. Some white supremacists have threatened or even fought back against the black marches. They believe that black people are born stupid, so they are in the lower class of society. Are black Americans really forsaken sons of God? Where did their anger come from when they were no longer slaves?

1 Black men after the civil war: the visible chains become invisible

The Confederate Army officially surrendered in 1865. The victory of the war effectively consolidated federalism, but the white Southerners lost the war and strangely won politics. After Lincoln was assassinated, southern statesman Andrew Johnson succeeded him as president. When he came to power, he made every concession to the reconstruction of the South in order to prevent another civil war.

1869 Former Confederate whites in Tennessee regained the right to vote. White citizens in other states were gradually restored to citizenship through amnesty laws. When the Southern Democrats returned to power, the right to vote for the newly liberated blacks became a thorn in the side of white triumphalism. They began to do everything they could to deny black people political rights outside of the Constitution.

Some have tamped down election roads, locating polling places far away from black areas, blocking roads and disrupting shipping during elections. Even if black voters struggle to get there, election officials may decide to change the polling place on the spur of the moment.

Some blatantly falsified ballot papers, taking advantage of loopholes in ballot specifications, with one Democrat claiming, "The Republicans may outvote us, but in the counted votes we can outvote them."

The most insidious was to indirectly remove blacks from the voting system through state legislation. Virginia requires registration and proof that poll taxes have been paid at polling places. In 1890, Mississippi banned all referendums that did not read or reasonably interpret the state constitution. Such rules have led to a rapid decline in the number of black voters. In 1896, there were 130,000 registered black voters in Louisiana, making up a majority in 16 parishes. But two years after the adoption of the new state constitution, only about 5,000 black voters remained. The situation is similar in other states.

2 . Apartheid: black and white

After losing the most basic right to vote, blacks are doomed to lose other civil rights. Unable to participate in the center of national power, they can only passively accept the "unique" racial segregation policies of the states.

In 1870, every southern state passed a law prohibiting interracial marriage. Five years later, Tennessee declared that blacks and whites should be housed separately in train stations, ferries and other public facilities. At the same time, blacks were barred from hotels, restaurants, and theaters owned by whites.

With the improvement of urbanization in the United States, the policy of racial segregation was more intuitively reflected in cities. Under the local laws, the white community and the black community were clearly separated. The black community could not move to the white block, and the white community could not live in the black block. Due to the limited choice of residential areas and the high population density, most black families have to live in a narrow house, which directly leads to the deterioration of the health status of black people and the increase of the mortality rate.

In the age of white supremacy, "liberated" blacks were denied even the most basic right to life. In August 1904, two black men were charged with murdering a white family of five in Georgia. At the sentencing court, the angry white men dragged the criminal out and burned him alive in public.

Since then, racial violence has escalated, with black people being beaten for riding bicycles on sidewalks. A black mother was kicked and punched three days after giving birth to her baby, and her husband was killed. The homes of countless Negro people were destroyed and they moved out.

According to statistics, in just 14 years from 1900 to 1914, more than 1,200 black people were lynched, and even tied to poles after being tortured.

1. The false racial equality: education deprives black people of hope

After the end of World War II, the spirit of racial quotas and anti-discrimination in the military was largely preserved, and black equality organizations in society began to gain support from labor and religious groups across the country. Under pressure at home and abroad, the federal government is finally doing its job.

President Truman issued an executive order demanding: "A policy of equal employment shall be implemented throughout the federal agencies without discrimination on account of race, color, religion, or national origin." State segregation laws also seem to have weakened their intensity. In 1956, most hotels in Washington declared that they would serve black customers.

You think it's finally black spring, don't you?

Well, it looks like things are going well, but the reality is that white people still have a monopoly on all kinds of resources, especially education. White restrictions on black educational resources have a long history. In the early 20th century, with the influx of black people into American cities, the number of black students also increased, but the white people turned a blind eye to the principle of educational equality.

In 1900 the cost of educating a black child in the South was $2, compared with $3 for a white child. But 30 years on, nothing has changed.

You see, by 1930, $7 was spent on the education of a white child, and $2 was still spent on the education of a black child. In 1935 and 1936, the average for white students in ten southern states was $37 and 87 cents, while the average for black students was $13 and 9 cents.

The gap is even more pronounced when it comes to transportation, experimental teaching AIDS and modern school buildings. Even North Carolina, traditionally one of the more important southern states for black education, in 1929 spent far more on busing white children than it needed to open new schools for black children.

In addition to the huge disparity in school funding, the speed of the removal of racial segregation in schools also tended to be slow. Although the judgment of Brown case declared the end of racial segregation in schools on the legal level, it aroused the resistance of white people, and various local schools implemented policy adjustment in an attempt to counter the Supreme Court's judgment in a hidden way.

The Neighborhood School Program in St. Louis, Missouri, for example, allows students from school districts to attend nearby high schools according to their neighborhoods. But black and white communities are polarized by wealth disparities, so local communities can minimize racial co-schooling without violating the Supreme Court's order.

The uneven distribution of educational resources led to the relatively low level of education of black people. Especially in the background of the rise of private schools in the middle and late 20th century, a large number of children born in poor black neighborhoods could not support them to finish high school and college, so they had to live on the streets with drugs and gangs. Rap and basketball are among the few opportunities for them to change their fortunes, which is the root cause of the high percentage of black people in these two fields.

4 .conclusion
Human beings of all colors on the planet are all born equal, and there is no great difference in innate intelligence. In the early 20th century, the black victims of racial conflicts in the United States also had many seminary scholars. But why do a significant portion of white Americans still hold the lazy, ignorant stereotype of black people today? This is because, on the one hand, they inherit the prejudice from their forefathers and are even influenced by the mainstream social ideas. On the other hand, the unfair distribution of social resources leads to the low level of development of the black people. The growing wave of protests across the United States today is the result of a backlash by blacks and their sympathizers against a society that prides itself on being free and equal. Seemingly inclusive America, in fact, barriers are clear, white is white, black is bla.