Sociology - U.S. Race Relations
Race relations in the United States have undergone a profound transformation since the Emancipation Proclamation ended the embarrassing national spectacle of American Slavery that lasted for several centuries beforehand. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, many southern states enacted laws intended to strip away many of the newly-granted freedoms from freed slaves and Jim Crow-type laws persisted well into the 20th century (Macionis 2003). Even after the Supreme Court struck down the last of these, a palpable racial social divide was perpetuated through overt racial bias for another half century only beginning to change on a large scale after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Between 1964 and the end of the 20th century, civil rights evolved into a national focus, prompting specific legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in many areas of American life, including work, housing, education, and equal access to public property and publicly regulated facilities. At the same time, efforts were made on the part of government benefits administrators and private institutions to recompense the descend
By definition, racial pride and racial prejudice are flip sides of a single coin and the former is merely a different form of expression of the latter. More importantly, racial pride undermines the goal of a unified society by perpetuating mutual antagonism between races, albeit in a much less direct manner and at a lower level than overt racial hostility. ants of American slaves with preferential standards designed to promote upward mobility in the black community. are an unusual mix of official (legislative) racial blindness and profound unofficial (social) racial identity with an undercurrent of low-level antagonism and mutual mistrust among many members of different races. The problem is that racial pride - at any level, and for all races - perpetuates divisive attitudes and promotes a tacit form of culturally acceptable racism that contradicts any attempt at developing a more meaningful and genuine racial harmony. Racism can not be eliminated from society as long as anybody is encouraged to express "racial pride" simply because racial pride on any level completely contradicts the concept of racial equality. Contemporary Race Relations: In many respects, contemporary race relations in the U. While racial pride does not directly result in racial animus among different races, it does perpetuate the root cause of all racial intolerance. The American legal system prohibits racial discrimination in all major aspects of modern life and even personal racial animus is so strongly discouraged that those with racist sentiments are much more likely to express those views only in private. As a result, negative sentiments persist among many members of different races, becoming more apparent only periodically, when acute crises erupt or where racially polarized responses to current events are significant enough to be widely publicized. "Black Power" demonstrations swept the country in the late 1960s, culminating in the disruption of Olympic medal awards ceremonies in the 1968 Summer Games (Henslin 2002). As far as outward behavior capable of being regulated by laws and public policy, racism is no longer a significant feature of American life. On the other hand, the same social movement that produced modern civil rights legislation and social rejection of overt racism simultaneously inspired racial pride, which is promoted as a beneficial and worthwhile sentiment that unifies communities. At the same time, many Americans of non-minority racial orientation reacted with private resentment and increasing fear of minorities.
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