# data[].attributes.body
This article states, "The racial front is the site of especially keen disappointment. In a 2013 survey pegged to the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the Pew Research Center found that less than half (45 percent) of all Americans agreed that the country had made "a lot" of progress toward racial equality during the previous half-century. Among blacks, only 32 percent shared the same view." This shows that blacks have not reached the promised land and things are still unequal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article appears in the Fall 2014 issue of The American Prospect magazine.

Not so long ago, black Americans were giddy witnesses to what many regarded as a miracle. Election night, November 4, 2008, seemed to be a millennial turning point as a majority of Americans entrusted an African American with the nation's highest office and greatest powers. "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible," Barack Obama declared, "... tonight is your answer." Against the backdrop of that high, a downturn was inevitable. But what many blacks are feeling now is more than a correction; it is depression.

The racial front is the site of especially keen disappointment. In a 2013 survey pegged to the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the Pew Research Center found that less than half (45 percent) of all Americans agreed that the country had made "a lot" of progress toward racial equality during the previous half-century. Among blacks, only 32 percent shared the same view. That dourness stems in part from persistent hard times. The economic meltdown that accompanied Obama to the White House (and probably played a major role in his initial election) devastated the earnings and assets of black Americans. Since his election, they have not recouped their losses in what has only been a tepid recovery tipped in favor of the haves. Adding to the unhappiness is anger at the recalcitrance Obama has faced since the outset of his administration, a resistance mainly from Republicans that many observers believe is substantially fueled by racism.

Slumping morale among blacks, however, is attributable to more than frustration with Obama's enemies; it also reflects frustration with the president himself. Although the overwhelming majority of politically active blacks supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 and continue to rally behind him defensively, an appreciable number feel let down. They maintain that he has been altogether too fearful of being charged with racial favoritism and has done too little to educate the public about the peculiar racial hazards that African Americans routinely face.

Beneath the malaise is a deep current of racial pessimism that has a long history in American and African American thought. Pessimists believe that racial harmony predicated on fairness is not part of the American future. They posit that the United States will not overcome its tragic racial past. They maintain that blacks are not and cannot become members of the American family (even with a black family occupying the White House). They believe that the United States is a white nation that will always be governed on behalf of white folk.

For pessimists, the Obama presidency is no sign of racial transcendence; to the contrary, it is a demonstration of the intractability of American pigmentocracy. For them, the Obama ascendancy shows that in order to rise to the top of American politics, a black politician must be willing to forgo substantively challenging the racial status quo (though he is allowed to cavil about it rhetorically). For them, the Obama administration simply mirrors the racial diversification of an existing order in which a relatively small sector of upper-crust blacks prosper while the condition of the black masses stagnates or deteriorates-the consequence of a misbegotten theory of racial trickle-down. For them, the Obama era is littered with bitter incongruity: While a black man is commander-in-chief, Michael Brown and thousands like him are stalked, harassed, brutalized, and occasionally killed in Ferguson-like locales across America.
SUPPORT THE PROSPECT
The pedigree of black racial pessimism is impressive. In its ranks one finds such figures as Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Randall Robinson, and the extraordinary W.E.B. Du Bois. One encounters Frederick Douglass declaring in 1847, "I cannot have any love for this country ... or for its Constitution. I desire to see its overthrow as speedily as possible, and its Constitution shriveled in a thousand fragments." In that tradition, one also finds Derrick Bell, professor of law at Harvard, teaching in the 1990s that the United States is irredeemably imprisoned by its past, that "racism is an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of this society," and that "black people will never gain full equality in this country."

The tradition of black racial pessimism has its white counterpart. According to Thomas Jefferson, "The two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government." Alexis de Tocqueville doubted that "the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing," but believed "the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere." According to Abraham Lincoln, differences between blacks and whites "will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality."

But the pessimists, black and white, have not been the only influence on American thought about the prospects for racial progress. Arrayed against them are optimists who contend that blacks are (or can become) members of the American family and insist that racial harmony bottomed on fairness is attainable. This, in fact, has been the predominant tradition among blacks. Its adherents include Booker T. Washington, Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, Mary McLeod Bethune, Jesse Jackson, and John Lewis (joined by whites such as the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton). The most memorable spokesman for the optimistic tradition was Martin Luther King Jr. On April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated, he told his followers to take heart because he knew that, eventually, they would overcome the obstacles they faced. He knew this because he had "been to the mountaintop" and glimpsed the Promised Land, though he might not make it there himself.

King was vague, however, about the Promised Land's boundaries and topography. He had famously spoken of a nation where individuals will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Yet that formulation is popular partly because it is open to contending interpretations. Is it a condemnation of all racial distinctions? Or is it a condemnation only of invidious racial distinctions? Is it meant to posit a rule of non-discrimination that should go into effect immediately even at the cost of barring efforts to rectify past racial wrongdoing? Or is it meant to posit a rule of nondiscrimination that should go into effect only after the consequences of past wrongdoings have been ameliorated?

These questions underlie the debate that has been raging for decades over competing conceptions of the racial Promised Land. In one conception, the Promised Land is a society henceforth substantially free of intentional racial discrimination in major domains of the public sphere. In this society, no effort is made to rectify the oppressive consequences of past racial misconduct because, it is argued, trying to do so is futile, unfair to those innocent of past wrongdoing, and conducive to the perpetuation of race-mindedness. This view has been propounded vigorously in the legal writings of Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, mainly in critiques of affirmative action. Chief Justice John Roberts, also a champion of this view, expressed it epigrammatically when, abjuring a race-conscious plan for school integration, he quipped that the best way to stop racial discrimination is to stop racially discriminating-no matter whether the aim is to assist or oppress a vulnerable group. Under this conception, we enter the racial Promised Land when racial discrimination is a negligible feature of social life, even if the vestiges of racial subordination in the past are evident and consequential. Let's call this model of racial justice the conservative conception of the racial Promised Land.
SUPPORT THE PROSPECT
The progressive conception of the racial Promised Land is more ambitious. It envisions two essential landmarks. The first is the requirement of the conservatives that invidious racial discrimination be reduced to a negligible influence. The second condition is that the vestiges of past discrimination-the racial gaps that so dramatically scar the social landscape-be erased. Pursuant to the progressive perspective, we will reach the racial Promised Land when blackness is no longer a uniform that, holding other variables steady, signals that its wearer bears a notably higher risk than whites of premature death, impoverishment, unemployment, incarceration, victimization by criminality, homelessness, police harassment, and similar afflictions.

Today, one can go into a hospital, visit the ward for newborns, and make accurate estimates about the babies' varying life trajectories on the basis of their racial identities.

When accurate estimates of this sort are no longer possible, progressives contend, we will have reached the racial Promised Land.

Some observers insist that what I have dubbed the conservative model of the racial Promised Land is at hand or at least nearby. They maintain that, for the most part, we have overcome. They proclaim "Mission Accomplished" or at least mission near-accomplished.

This is mistaken. Intentional invidious racial discrimination constitutes a force in American life that is far from negligible. It is a substantial headwind that blacks and other racial minorities face in many key areas, including housing, finance, employment, criminal justice, electoral politics, and markets for romance and marriage. There is a library of empirical literature establishing this fact beyond sensible controversy-studies based on similarly situated but racially disparate testers who meet different fates when they seek to buy automobiles, rent housing, get jobs, or obtain loans. And then there are the lessons of everyday life that suggest forcefully that in crucial interactions with police officers, prosecutors, judges, and other authorities armed with discretion, outcomes differ, all too often, depending on the race of the person being assessed. It is difficult to imagine that the dismal train of events surrounding the deaths of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown would have been identical had they been white.

Even more distant is the progressive conception of the racial Promised Land. In practically every key index of well-being, a chasm separates the circumstances in which whites and blacks typically find themselves. The income gap separating blacks and whites widened from about $19,000 in the late 1960s to about $27,000 in 2011. The wealth gap increased from $75,000 in 1984 to $85,000 in 2011. Blacks are nearly three times more likely to live in deep poverty than whites. Black men are six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated. And on. And on. And on.

We have failed to reach the racial Promised Land in either its conservative or its progressive definition. With respect to both of these destinations, our society remains far afield. Still, I put myself in the optimistic camp.

Why?

I am hopeful first and foremost because of the predominant trajectory of African Americans-a history that John Hope Franklin framed with the apt title From Slavery to Freedom. In 1860, four million African Americans were enslaved while another half-million were free but devoid of fundamental rights in many of the jurisdictions where they lived. In 1860, the very term "African American" was something of an oxymoron because the Supreme Court had ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that no black, free or enslaved, could be a citizen of the United States. But within a decade, the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) established birthright citizenship and required all states to accord all persons due process and equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) prohibited states from withholding the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. People who had been sold on the auction block as youngsters helped to govern their locales as public officials when they were adults. In 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi resigned from the United States Senate to join the Confederate States of America, which he led as president. In 1870, Hiram Revels, the first black member of Congress, occupied the seat that Davis abandoned.

The First Reconstruction was overwhelmed by a devastating white supremacist reaction. But the most fundamental reforms it established proved resilient, providing the basis for a Second Reconstruction from the 1950s to the 1970s. During that period, too, the distance traveled by blacks was astonishing. In 1950, segregation was deemed to be consistent with federal constitutional equal protection. No federal law prevented proprietors of hotels, restaurants, and other privately owned public accommodations from engaging in racial discrimination. No federal law prohibited private employers from discriminating on a racial basis against applicants for jobs or current employees. No federal law effectively counteracted racial disenfranchisement. No federal law outlawed racial discrimination in private housing transactions. In contrast, by 1970 federal constitutional law thoroughly repudiated the lie of separate but equal. The 1964 Civil Rights Act forbade racial discrimination in privately owned places of public accommodation and many areas of private employment. The 1965 Voting Rights Act provided the basis for strong prophylactic action against racial exclusion at the ballot box. The 1968 Fair Housing Act addressed racial exclusion in a market that had been zealously insulated against federal regulation. None of these interventions were wholly successful. All were compromised. All occasioned backlash. But the racial situation in 1970 and afterwards was dramatically better than what it had been in 1950 and before.

Today, at a moment when progress has stalled, we need to recall how dramatically and unexpectedly conditions sometimes change. Until recently who'd-a thunk it possible for the president to be an African American? In the 1980s, I used to ask law students how long affirmative action programs ought to last. Champions of such programs, seeking to ensure their longevity, would say that affirmative action would be needed until the country elected a black president. That reply would elicit appreciative laughter as listeners supposed that that formula would preserve affirmative action for at least a century. But then along came Barack Obama and with him the remark that soon became a cliché: "I never thought that I'd live to see a black president."

Obama's election is much more than a monument to one politician's talent and good fortune. Changes in public attitudes, law, and custom have clearly elevated the fortunes of African Americans as individuals and black America as a collectivity. Hard facts may give plausibility to the pessimistic tradition, but they make the optimistic tradition compelling. Despite the many wrongs that remain to be righted, blacks in America confront fewer racist impediments now than ever before in the history of the United States. The courage, intelligence, persistence, idealism, and sacrifice of Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks, Julian Bond and Bob Moses, Medgar Evers and Bayard Rustin, Viola Liuzzo and Vernon Dahmer-and countless other tribunes for racial justice-have not been expended for naught. The facts of day-to-day life allow blacks to sing more confidently than ever before James Weldon Johnson's magnificent hymn "Lift Every Voice and Sing," often referred to as the Black National Anthem:

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past

has taught us

Sing a song full of the hope that the present

has brought us

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun

Let us march on till victory is won.

My optimism involves more than a sociological prediction. I am also swayed by my intuition regarding which of these hypotheses-the pessimistic or the optimistic-will do the most good. Hope is a vital nutrient for effort; without it, there is no prospect for achievement.

The belief that we can overcome makes more realistic the possibility that we shall overcome. Optimism gives buoyancy to thinking that might otherwise degenerate into nihilism

, encourages solidarity in those who might otherwise be satisfied by purely selfish indulgence, invites strategic planning that can usefully harness what might otherwise be impotent indignation, and inspires efforts that might otherwise be avoided due to fatalism.

On Election Day 1996, exit polling showed General Colin Powell beating President Bill Clinton by a comfortable margin. But Powell was not Clinton's opponent. Senator Bob Dole was. Powell had considered seeking the Republican Party nomination but declined in the end to do so. Before he made that decision, polls suggested that he could win the nomination and the general election, but friends were skeptical. Powell recalls that Earl Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, told him, "Look, man ... [w]hen [white voters] go in that booth, they ain't going to vote for you." Maybe Graves was correct. Real voting might have produced different results from the polls. Furthermore, whereas the actual candidates had suffered a year of merciless scrutiny on the campaign trail, Powell on Election Day was a mere hypothetical candidate who suffered from none of the wear and tear that a presidential contest exacts. At the end of a campaign, the general might not have remained so attractive. Still, Powell's apparent popularity does provide a basis for conjecturing that America's readiness to elect a black president had been an unrecognized part of the political landscape for longer than many had appreciated. Powell may well have denied himself the opportunity to make a successful historic leap by being self-defeatingly pessimistic.

A major fear of many blacks is that acknowledging progress will prompt underestimation of racial obstacles that blacks at every socioeconomic level continue to face. When Americans are polled about their perceptions of racial affairs, whites are typically more upbeat than blacks. The more affluent they are, the more upbeat white observers tend to be. Inordinately impressed by progress, they all too often prematurely declare victory over racism.

Although complacency nourished by an overly rosy view of racial affairs is a real danger, I stand by my conviction that a clear-eyed assessment favors black optimism. Who, after all, have been the figures most beneficial to blacks? Was it the Martin Delany who decamped for Africa, thinking America to be irremediably racist? Or was it the Martin Delany who returned, recruited blacks for the Union, and participated significantly in Southern politics during Reconstruction? Was it the pre-1966 Stokely Carmichael who sang "We Shall Overcome" in the splendid early days of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)? Or was it the post-1966 Stokely Carmichael (later renamed Kwame Ture) whose impatient bitterness helped to destroy the SNCC and rationalize an indulgent exile to Guinea that squandered a substantial talent? Was it my long-time colleague of blessed memory, Derrick Bell, who posited the permanence of racist white dominance? Or was it a student who rightly admired Professor Bell but eschewed his pessimism and followed a different path, a black student who, years later, put Bell's hypothesis to a test by seeking the highest elected office in the land under the slogan "Yes We Can!"?

That student, of course, was Barack Obama, and his presidency has been the setting for much debate between pessimists and optimists. Some detractors, perhaps the angriest, started from a position of raised expectations. They thought that Obama embodied the "audacity of hope" and that he would somehow bring about sweeping changes. Disappointed, they have expressed themselves in the angry, accusatory rhetoric of betrayal. Obama, Cornel West charges, "posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit." Others condemn Obama but without disappointment. They see their low expectations as having been validated.

Certain pessimists have maintained that Obama's election indicated little in terms of "real" racial progress. They even discount the symbolic significance of his ascendancy, stressing his exceptionality. Although he calls himself black, Obama is the offspring of a black African father and a white American mother and is thus distinguished genealogically from most African Americans. Much was made of his Muslim-sounding name. But some observers maintain that popular acceptance of that, too, should be viewed skeptically. It would have signaled more, they argue, had America elected a black person raised in, say, Detroit with a name such as Tyrone Washington or Jamal Jefferson. Pessimists argue that, substantively, the Obama presidency has delivered no more to blacks than would have been delivered by any other centrist-liberal Democrat (say, Hillary Clinton), and that in certain respects the Obama presidency delivered less because Obama sought excessively to prove that he was a president for all Americans and not merely black Americans. They contend that Obama's blackness was an asset that he used for personal marketing and that the white establishment seized upon for advertising, "The United States cannot sensibly be accused of practicing or condoning racism! It just elected a black president!" Pessimists will now also enlist the horrifying events in Ferguson, Missouri, to reinforce their claim that despite the civil rights movement, antidiscrimination legislation, affirmative action, and the election of Obama, the narrative of race relations in America is a doleful tale-not a march upward from slavery to freedom, but a trek sideways from plantation to ghetto.

What is an optimist in the waning years of the Obama presidency to say in the face of this challenge?

Obama's election signaled a dramatic, substantive change in racial beliefs and attitudes. In 1960, his victory would have been impossible: Too many whites would have been unwilling to vote for a black candidate-any black candidate-because of doubts about the capacities of anyone of black African ancestry. Recall that there were no black cabinet officers until Johnson appointed Robert Weaver as secretary of housing and urban development in 1966, and no black Supreme Court justices until Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall in 1967. The specter of black intellectual and characterological deficiency stunted the careers of many talented blacks, and still does. That Obama was able to win the presidency-twice-is a sign that rumors of racial inferiority, while still extant, are much diminished in influence.

In thinking about the meaning of Obama, it is important, too, to focus on the special status of the presidency. The person who occupies that office is not only the head of the executive branch of the federal government, the person who nominates all federal judges, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and thus a person with the wherewithal to destroy most, if not all, of humankind. The president is also the nation's mourner-in-chief, booster-in-chief, spouse-in-chief, and parent-in-chief.

That a black man has been the master of the White House for the past six years does indeed reflect and reinforce a remarkable socio-psychological transformation in the American racial scene. If that is "tokenism," give us more of it.

I have emphasized progress that blacks have made in absolute terms: where they stood 50 years ago and where they stand today. But what about the position of blacks relative to whites-those yawning gaps in wealth, income, educational attainment, and risk of imprisonment that have remained unclosed and that have, in some ways, widened even further during Obama's tenure? There is no use denying that reality. America remains racially stratified and will continue to be long after the Obama presidency.

There is also no use, however, in denying other facets of the American racial reality. One is a comparative view. In considering the appropriate attitude to adopt toward America-allegiance, for example, or dis-affiliation-it is sensible to compare the United States to other divided societies. Negrophobia in America is, alas, all too present. But it pales in comparison with the prejudice against racial, ethnic, religious, and national minorities in many countries around the globe. As bad as the American racial problem is, as urgently as it calls for concentrated attention, its condition is less dire and more encouraging than might be gleaned from an analysis that views the American situation in isolation, divorced from international comparisons.

There is also no good purpose served by ignoring manifestations of progress that display themselves even in heartrending crises. Consider the events in Ferguson. The killing of the unarmed teenager, the callous inattentiveness to his body, the militarized police response to protest, and the dubious investigation by local authorities of this tragic death display much of what is terrible in American race relations: an atavistic fear of young black men; quick resort to excessive force against African Americans; racial residential separation; black powerlessness that foments resentment; white dominance that encourages contempt; an utter lack of mutual trust. But the events in Ferguson have also revealed other responses. The federal government took note of what happened and actively involved itself via the president, attorney general, and the director of the FBI. The Ferguson tragedy became the leading news story all over the country. Blacks have not been the only ones calling the police to account and demanding reform. Whites from various walks of life, including right-wing politicians like Rand Paul, have also been doing so. Never in American history, in analogous circumstances, has there been a higher level of interracial empathy.

Overcoming the racial burdens-individual, communal, institutional-that encumber us will take unremitting effort, major deployments of intelligence and imagination, daunting amounts of time, huge expenditures of money, and the resolute conviction that America's racial affairs can and will improve. Is the uncertain prospect of a better future worth that investment? The lessons of American history and a comparison of our society with others around the world impel me to say yes. I am a racial optimist. Only time will tell whether my faith is wise.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black America's Promised Land: Why I Am Still a Racial Optimist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article appears in the Fall 2014 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Not so long ago, black Americans were giddy witnesses to what many regarded as a miracle. Election night, November 4, 2008, seemed to be a millennial turning point as a majority of Americans entrusted an African American with the nation's highest office and greatest powers.

# data[].attributes.body
The article states, "African Americans are Democrats. Since 1968 no Republican presidential candidate has received more than 13% of the African American vote and surveys of African Americans regularly show that upwards of 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
African Americans are Democrats. Since 1968 no Republican presidential candidate has received more than 13% of the African American vote and surveys of African Americans regularly show that upwards of 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats. However, understanding why African Americans…

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, it talks about how African Americans at first considered themselves as Republicans, while african americans didn't have any rights at the time for about a century. They weren't allowed to attend the convention until the 1924. It also talks about how after the freat depression , 71% of African Americans to vote for democrat president.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, it talks about the history of the African American experience and how it affects how the united states run this country. this article also explains why african americans get treated how they get treated based on the struggles and tragic things that happened down in history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An Overview of the African-American Experience

In the mid-1500s, European mariners started bringing black Africans to America as slaves. This forced migration was unique in American history.

But the slave trade was not new to Europe or Africa. In the eighth century, Moorish merchants traded humans as merchandise throughout the Mediterranean. In addition, many West African peoples kept slaves. West African slaves were usually prisoners of war, criminals, or the lowest-ranked members of caste systems.

An engraving depicting the 1840 convention of the Anti-Slavery Society, held in London. People attended from around the world, including from the U.S. (Wikimedia Commons)

The capture and sale of Africans for the American slave markets were barbaric and often lethal. Two out of five West African captives died on the march to the Atlantic seacoast where they were sold to European slavers. On board the slave vessels, they were chained below decks in coffin-sized racks. An estimated one-third of these unfortunate individuals died at sea.

In America, they were sold at auction to owners, who wanted them primarily as plantation workers. Slave owners could punish slaves harshly. They could break up families by selling off family members.

Despite the hardships, slaves managed to develop a strong cultural identity. On plantations, all adults looked after all children. Although they risked separation, slaves frequently married and maintained strong family ties. Introduced to Christianity, they developed their own forms of worship.

Spirituals, the music of worship, expressed both slave endurance and religious belief. Slaves frequently altered the lyrics of spirituals to carry the hope of freedom or to celebrate resistance.

In time, African culture enriched much of American music, theater, and dance. African rhythms found their way into Christian hymns and European marches. The banjo evolved from an African stringed instrument. The sound of the blues is nothing more than a combination of African and European musical scales. Vaudeville was partially an extension of song-and-dance forms first performed by black street artists.

Abolition and Civil War

In the 17th and 18th centuries, some blacks gained their freedom, acquired property, and gained access to American society. Many moved to the North, where slavery, although still legal, was less of a presence. African Americans, both slave and free also made significant contributions to the economy and infrastructure working on roads, canals, and construction of cities.

By the early 1800s, many whites and free blacks in Northern states began to call for the abolition of slavery. Frederick Douglass, a young black laborer, was taught to read by his master's wife in Baltimore. In 1838, Douglass escaped to Massachusetts, where he became a powerful writer, editor, and lecturer for the growing abolitionist movement.

Frederick Douglass knew that slavery was not the South's burden to bear alone. The economy of the industrial North depended on the slave-based agriculture of the South. Douglass challenged his Northern audience to take up the cause against Southern slavery. "Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us?" he asked. "What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?"

When the Civil War began, many Northern blacks volunteered to fight for the Union. Some people expressed surprise at how fiercely black troops fought. But black soldiers were fighting for more than restoring the Union. They were fighting to liberate their people.

Reconstruction and Reaction

With the defeat of the Confederacy, Northern troops remained in the South to ensure the slaves newly won freedom. Blacks started their own churches and schools, purchased land, and voted themselves into office. By 1870, African Americans had sent 22 representatives to Congress.

Marcus Garvey, a proponent of racial separation. (Wikimedia Commons)

But many Southerners soon reacted to black emancipation. Supported by the surviving white power structure, Ku Klux Klan members organized terrorist raids and lynchings. They burned homes, schools, and churches.

When Northern troops left in 1877, the white power structure returned. Within a couple of decades, this power structure succeeded in completely suppressing blacks. African Americans were excluded from voting. Southern states wrote Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks from white society. Blacks lived under constant threat of violence.

The Great Migration North

Beginning in the 1890s, many blacks started moving North. World War I opened many factory jobs. In the 1920s, strict new laws drastically cut European immigration. The drop in immigration created a demand for industrial workers in the Northern cities. Southern blacks, still oppressed by segregation, began to migrate northward in increasing numbers. Young black men eagerly took unskilled jobs in meat packing plants, steel mills, and on auto assembly lines in Chicago, Omaha, and Detroit.

Black workers unquestionably improved their lives in Northern cities. Indoor plumbing, gas heat, and nearby schools awaited many arrivals from the rural South. Discrimination also met them.

Yet black urban culture blossomed. Musicians like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and King Oliver brought their music north from New Orleans. In the sophisticated urban atmosphere of Chicago, these jazz pioneers took advantage of improvements in musical instruments and new recording technologies to become celebrities in the Roaring '20s, also known as the Jazz Age.

Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant, preached black pride, racial separation, and a return to Africa. By the early 1920s, Garvey had an estimated 2 million followers, most of them Northern city-dwellers.

Harlem, an uptown New York City neighborhood, drew black migrants from the South. Black commerce and culture thrived in Harlem. After World War I, a group of black writers, artists, and intellectuals gathered there. Like Marcus Garvey, many sought cultural identity in their African origins. Unlike Garvey, however, they had no desire to return to Africa. They found creative energy in the struggle to be blacks and Americans.

This gathering of black artists and philosophers was called the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes, a black novelist and poet, used the language of the ghetto and the rhythms of jazz to describe the African-American experience. Jazz continued its development as a uniquely American art form in Harlem, where prominent nightclubs like the Cotton Club featured great jazz composers like Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson. Their music lured whites uptown to Harlem to share the excitement of the Jazz Age. Zora Neale Hurston combined her writing ability with her study of anthropology to transform oral histories and rural black folk tales into exciting stories.

Jazz great Louis Armstrong. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Depression brought many blacks and whites together for the first time. In the cities, a half-million African Americans joined predominantly white labor unions. In the South, poor black and white farmers joined together in farmers' unions.

In 1941, African-American author Richard Wright wrote, "We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America. What we want, what we represent, what we endure is what America is.... The differences between black folk and white folk are not blood or color, and the ties that bind us are deeper than those that separate us. The common road of hope which we all traveled has brought us into a stronger kinship than any words, laws, or legal claims."

Today, black Americans make significant contributions to every segment of American society - business, arts and entertainment, science, literature, and politics and law. Though issues of discrimination remain, African Americans endure, achieve, and lead.

For Discussion and Writing

1. Describe some of the struggles that African Americans have faced in America.

2. Name some African cultural influences that have been absorbed into American society. Which do you think are most important? Why?

For Further Reading
Ash, Stephen V. The Black Experience in the Civil War South (Reflections on the Civil War Era). Santa Barbara: Praeger. 2010.

Foner, Eric. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. New York: Random House. 2005.
Return to Black History Month Home Page

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the mid-1500s, European mariners started bringing black Africans to America as slaves. This forced migration was unique in American history. But the slave trade was not new to Europe or Africa. In the eighth century, Moorish merchants traded humans as, In the mid-1500s, European mariners started bringing black Africans to America as slaves.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, it talks about how there has been attempts to reach the promised land, however it has not fully happened yet. Obama realized that the promised land was not being reached and he spoke out on it to get some things changed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Nov. 4, 2008— -- At once weeping and jubilant, African-Americans glimpsed the Promised Land tonight, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as Barack Obama won the election as the first black American president.

"I feel like 100 pounds are off my shoulders right now," said Preston Johnson, a 22-year-old African-American among the thousands of multi-ethnic Obama supporters gathered tonight in Harlem. "I feel the change right this minute."

Nearby, Tejahn Rahman, 25, said an Obama presidency means that " the younger generation sees they can do better than what we've done. I've got chills down my spine."

At 47, Obama is too young to have borne the battle scars of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but he was the beneficiary of all its prizes: the Voting Rights Act, legal acceptance of interracial marriage and affirmative action, among them.

"Change takes time, and to come to this place in time is a sign," King's 81-year-old sister, Christine King Farris, told ABCNews.com from her office at Spelman College, where she is a professor.

"This takes me back to my brother's last speech in Memphis," she said. "He said, 'I may not get there with you,' but we -- not some Americans, but all Americans -- will get to the Promised Land."

Amid dancing, confetti and champagne toasts, thousands of supporters lined 125th Street in historic Harlem in New York City -- the iconic heart of black America and home to early civil rights activists Marcus Garvey, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell and black separatist Malcolm X, who was assassinated here in 1965.

The event, sandwiched between the Apollo Theater, where blues and jazz greats once got their start, and the big-box stores like H&M that have symbolized Harlem's economic renaissance, drew an estimated 8,000, according to security officials.

On a stage lined with American flags, guitarist GQ belted out a rendition of Marvin Gaye's, "What's Going On?" Throngs of African-Americans, surrounded by tourists and European and American news teams, answered, "Obama!"

But Obama's victory is more than symbolism, according to Rainbow Coalition director the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who spoke to ABCNews.com by phone from Chicago on Election Day.

"For blacks who voted for Obama, this is reconciliation, for whites, it is redemption," said Jackson, who worked side-by-side with King and later ran unsuccessful presidential campaigns as a Democrat in 1984 and 1988.

Obama's ascendancy was accomplished by the civil rights movement, Jackson said. "That is the force that made his victory possible," he added. "His accomplishment came from the pain of martyrs."

Perhaps a kind of poetic justice, but Kansas, where Obama was partly raised, was also where the pivotal Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education desegregated education in 1954.

PHOTOS: Black History in America

Obama Promises 'A New Dawn of American Leadership

EXIT POLLS 2008: Results and Breakdown

Election Map: State-by-State Results

Electoral College Calculator: Reaching 270

Complete Vote 2008 Election Coverage

"If Obama can become president, there is nothing else that we cannot be," Jackson said.

The Harlem event, sponsored by the New York Democratic Rep. Charles B. Rangel and the Martin Luther King Jr. Democrats, spilled over into streets that bustled with vendors hawking Obama paraphernalia, among the usual herbal oils, bootleg CDs and incense.

When Florida and North Carolina looked like they were headed into the blue zone, patrons at the Lenox Lounge, a smooth jazz joint and neighborhood hangout filled to the gills broke out in cheers and applause.

At Harlem's landmark restaurant Sylvia's, Mark Ali, 42, a hip-hop producer, said Obama gives hope to children. "My ancestors are singing in heaven," he said.

Jeff Mann, 51, a construction worker, said, "You can't be anything but joyful. Obama is going to change the world."

Outside the restaurant, Obama supporters carved giant, individual ice sculptures of the letters spelling out Obama's name.

Old Guard activists, who for the most part supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in her run for the Democratic primary, also rejoiced in the moment.

David Dinkins, who served as New York City's first black mayor, from 1990 to 1993, acknowledged other African Americans who had laid the groundwork for Obama's presidency. "Everybody stands on everybody else's shoulders," he told ABC News.

"Blacks are swelling with pride," he said of the Harlem event, where he joined other notables like singer Harry Belafonte and Lynn Whitfield.

Dinkins said he remembers a quite different era for blacks in America.

"I am a child of the Depression, in the Marine Corps in 1945 stationed in the South," Dinkins, 81 and now a professor at Columbia University, said. "I know how it was when black soldiers and Marines were treated less well than German prisoners of war. These were the days of white and colored water fountains."

Earlier in the day, lines wrapped around polling stations where what was expected to be a record number of African-American voters -- mirroring record numbers in all demographic groups around the nation -- cast their ballots.

Many, like Atlanta's Andrew Young, who served as King's ally in demonstrations in Selma, Ala., and Florida in the 1960s, said the election has "psychological" implications for black Americans.

"The significance of this election is global and sends a message around the world that America really does believe in democracy and that we practice the values we preach," said Young, who also served as mayor of Atlanta and ambassador to the United Nations under President Jimmy Carter.

"It's natural for Obama," said Young. "He is African he went to school in Indonesia. It forced him be exceptional in his humility and his judgment. His childhood gave him a kind of cultural DNA to hear and understand people from all over the world."

But can Obama deliver Americans, in the midst of two foreign wars and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, to the reality of the Promised Land?

"We may have arrived, but there is work to be done," said Jackson, who sees the civil rights movement is an "unbroken continuum."

"We are now free, but there are still structural inequalities," he said.

Indeed, African-Americans are overrepresented in American prisons, suffer higher infant mortality rates and health issues. The achievement gap between blacks and white in education still exists and from the negative campaign tactics, many Americans believe racism is still alive.

"We celebrate, but there is unfinished business," Jackson said.

Isaac Farris, who played with "Uncle Martin Luther" as a 7-year-old, agrees.

"This is not the fulfillment of the dream," said Farris, who is director of the King Center in Atlanta. "It's huge, though, and we are three-fourths of the way there. The reality is that it can't be -- too many people, both black and white, vote based on race. That was not my uncle's dream."

"We still haven't gotten there yet because this well-meaning guy felt in some instances he had to distance himself from his blackness," Farris told ABCNews before Election Day. "But he cannot be a black president and he cannot be a white president. He must be an American president. He should be looking at how I can help the oppressed and the disadvantaged."

Still, Farris said, "Just to have a guy there who looks like me, my child or my grand child. That sends a huge message."

"Other than the March on Washington that set up the Civil Rights Act, I cannot think of a movement that surpasses this," he said. "Spiritually, this is a serious moment, not the watershed moment of the '60s, but the emotional high is right up there with that."

But his mother, Christine King Farris, knows her brother would have been "pleased" by Obama's crowning glory.

"God granted this because of the struggles and hard work that brought us to this place," she said. "We are accepted as full-fledged citizens of this country."

Martin Luther King surely would have seen the work ahead. And, not being a boastful type, he might turn to Obama and recall one of his own father's favorite expressions, "Don't be chesty."
Brad Martin in ABC News Research contributed to this report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Nov. 4, 2008- -- At once weeping and jubilant, African-Americans glimpsed the Promised Land tonight, 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as Barack Obama won the election as the first black American president.

# data[].attributes.body
This article goes on to speak about how white supremacy plays a role in todays society, creating difficulties for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

Throughout this country's history, the hallmarks of American democracy - opportunity, freedom, and prosperity - have been largely reserved for white people through the intentional exclusion and oppression of people of color. The deep racial and ethnic inequities that exist today are a direct result of structural racism: the historical and contemporary policies, practices, and norms that create and maintain white supremacy.

At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

For decades, our researchers have called attention to the role of race and racism in our public and private institutions and offered evidence-based solutions for how to address these inequities. Our scholars will play a crucial role as we continue to elevate the public discourse around race and racism in America.

Urban Next50 What would it take to overcome the damaging effects of structural racism and ensure a more equitable future?

Interim Project Director, Housing Crisis Research Collaborative

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
At the Urban Institute, we examine how structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color from access to opportunity and upward mobility by making it more difficult for people of color to secure quality education, jobs, housing, healthcare, and equal treatment in the criminal justice system.

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about how racism is still a thing in American society today. Though, it may be done in a different way it still exists. The article states "It’s really Jim Crow laws refashioned into more sophisticated ways of imposing racism, but designed for the same outcome, denying Black people access to what white people call the American Dream."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
158 Resources for Understanding Systemic Racism in America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These articles, videos, podcasts and websites from the Smithsonian chronicle the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, it talks about the keys points of "Is America a Racist Country." theres pros and cons on how america is portrayed being racist or not.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Key points

Politicians in the United States are split on whether America is a racist country.

Racism is a set of beliefs, policies, and practices that limit the opportunities of a category of people identified based on physical traits.

Racism is a complex pattern that operates in different ways at different levels of society. It can be passive or active.

Although many people think that racism is the same as prejudice, they are different. Racism covers a wider range of practices and policies.

Last Wednesday, in the official Republican response to President Biden's address to a joint session of Congress, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina argued that the problems facing the nation are not as great as the President claims and that the previous administration, when Scott's party was in charge, did much to ameliorate them. One of Scott's themes was that Democrats overemphasize racial divisions in the country, especially those centering on the killing of black people by police. Scott, who is himself black, stressed that he has experienced such indignities as being stopped as a motorist by police officers for seemingly no reason and followed by security when in stores. However, those historic infringements do not characterize race relations today. To use his words: "Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country."

Not surprisingly, members of Scott's political party welcomed these comments, especially as they indicated that white people should not see themselves as villains or oppressors. Other commentators, including progressives and civil rights activists, painted Scott as an apologist, who minimizes the difficulties millions of Americans face and whose remarks, whether intended to that end or not, effectively comfort the majority and support the status quo.

In this era of culture wars between right and left, no reader of this post will expect these differences in viewpoint to vanish suddenly or to see their respective proponents join forces in some grand compromise. Instead, I want to examine here what the issue at hand - whether America is (or is not) a racist country - means. My theme will be that racism is a complex pattern that operates in different ways at different levels of society. In this first part of the post, I will discuss the meaning of racism. The second part will focus on different arenas of racism. The intent to make readers judge for themselves whether racism is the appropriate term for our society's current patterns of relationship.

What Is Racism?

As a way of beginning, think about the term "racism." I define it here as a set of beliefs, policies, and practices that effectively limit the opportunities of a category of people identified as different by virtue of skin color and other inherited physical traits. Racism parallels, but is not equivalent entirely to, other patterns of group marking such as sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious discrimination, and classism. In all these cases, dominant groups in society mark off the minority as different and restrict their access to such valued resources as jobs, housing, healthcare, political expression, justice before the law, education, recreation, and other patterns of personal fulfillment and self-respect. It is the essence of discrimination that minorities experience greater difficulty than the majority do in achieving wealth, power, prestige, and knowledge and that they, in consequence, experience their lives as more precarious than the circumstances enjoyed by other, more centrally positioned people.

Although many people believe that racism is the same as, or at least dependent on, racial prejudice, the two concepts are not the same. Prejudice refers to attitudes - often emotionally charged, rigid, and defiantly categorical in spirit - that individuals possess and apply to other individuals and groups. Racism is a much more embracing term, which covers the wide range of policies and commitments by various elements of society, the effect of which is to restrict the lifeways of the groups so designated.

Perpetrators of racism may not be "conscious of" or "intentional about" the consequences of their actions. After all, racism is all too often an outgrowth of learned beliefs or an extension of well-established operating procedures by groups and organizations. The pattern in question - perhaps the use of some phrase, joke, rationale, assault, or other form of mistreatment and exclusion - is usually a residue of some historical practice of isolation and degradation. The user may claim that the expression or behavior is still customary in his social milieu or is just a way of having fun. That user insists that his audience - and more pertinently, the targets of the barb - should not take offense. Those who do so are being overly sensitive, "politically correct." Be clear though that the use of the expression or behavior, whatever its justification, perpetuates the culture of degradation, indeed normalizes it.

Passive vs. Active Racism

Think too about the distinction between active and passive racism. To be sure, many of us would maintain that we recognize offensive behaviors and comments, at least when other people commit them. However, is it also racist if we do little or nothing to stop these actions? Few of us would defend laughing at an aggressive incident or applauding the abuser. But what about pretending that the occurrence isn't what it seems to be, stating that incidents like this "happen," or just ignoring them and returning to our daily routines. Some argue that an ongoing series of events are just "isolated incidents."

All of us know that police departments across the country are now confronting this very issue. Should policies require that officers intervene when a colleague violates professional standards? Is "standing by" an offense of its own sort?

Consider another variant of passive racism. What if a member of the dominant (or majority) group, takes full advantage of opportunities largely denied to minority people? To example, such a person may seek a job with good pay and benefits, buy a house in a comfortable neighborhood, enroll his or her children in an excellent school, join a fancy social club, and so forth all the while knowing that the vast majority of minority people are unable to make these same choices. This "taking advantage of the system" was clearly apparent during the early period of the COVID vaccine distribution. White, educated, middle-class people plied their social and medical contacts, and exercised their computer skills, to get their shots. Who of us would not do the same to protect themselves and their loved ones? Nevertheless, is the ability to take advantage in this way not the manifestation of a system of differential opportunities, where some people have relatively open access to society's bounty and others live on difficult and constrained terms.

I do not offer these remarks to indict those of us, perhaps all of us, who pursue their life ambitions amidst these pathways in the social order. Few people want to think of themselves as an oppressor, opportunist, or racist. Instead, we should acknowledge the inequities that exist, comprehend their foundations, and consider thoughtfully how to manufacture a better society.

In the next post, I will examine three different arenas - cultural, structural, and interpersonal - where racism occurs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Politicians in the United States are split on whether America is a racist country. Racism is a set of beliefs, policies, and practices that limit the opportunities of a category of people identified based on physical traits. Racism is a complex pattern that operates in different ways at different levels of society.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, the democratic party stood with the Africans Americans during the struggles for equality. The democrats laid a new system for economic growth that helps every american. this articles also talks about how being a democrat as an african americna. it saved jobs, created new jobs and new opportunities for small business, reinvents in schools and more.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
" Democrats will promote racial justice through fair, just, and equitable governing of all public-serving institutions and in the formation of public policy... We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country. "

For decades, Democrats have stood with the African American community in the struggle for equality and the enduring struggle to perfect our nation itself.

Common values and concerns such as family, jobs, and education unite Democrats everywhere. Democrats across the country continue to work tirelessly to fight back against bigotry and discrimination, and to advance the issues that matter most to African Americans, from civil rights to economic opportunity.

The economic crisis had an especially brutal impact on communities of color that were already struggling long before the financial crisis hit.

Democrats laid a new foundation for long-term economic growth that helps every American, not just those at the top. We are working to save jobs, create new jobs and new opportunities for small businesses, reinvest in our schools, close the educational achievement gap, make college more affordable, and expand opportunities for African Americans and for all Americans.

Democrats are committed to ending the epidemic of senseless gun violence in our communities and reforming the broken criminal justice system that tears families apart. We are fighting against environmental injustices that have allowed low-income children to be exposed to lead and African American children to suffer asthma at twice the rate of white children. We are fighting voting restrictions as Republican legislatures around the country enact laws to keep minority voices away from the ballot box.

Democrats are proud to stand and declare that Black Lives Matter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
" Democrats will promote racial justice through fair, just, and equitable governing of all public-serving institutions and in the formation of public policy... We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris states that American is not a racist country. Vice President Kamala Harris also said that " But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today." The article also explains that American is racist and that now in days its makes it okay.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott shocked many people when, in response to President Joe Biden's congressional address, he stated that " America is not a racist country ." He admitted that he himself had experienced " the pain of discrimination, " and noted, " I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while I'm shopping. " When asked o n ABC's Good Morning America the following day , Vice President Kamala Harris s eemed to agree with Scott when she s aid , "I don't think America is a racist country." Yet immediately following this sentence she quickly pointed out , "But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today."

As Soledad O'Brien said, "It sounds like a racist country to me," in to Scott-but it seemingly applies to comments by Harris as well. President Biden, who seemed to not pull any punches during his speech, stated, "W e have a real chance to root out systemic racism that America ." However, Biden appeared to his remarks on The Today Show to align more with Harris and Scott (to a certain degree) by noting that slavery and Jim Crow laws had a cost.

It is almost as if simply saying America is not racist, but then turning the other cheek and saying it is racist in subtler terms and that racist things have been done to you makes it ok. It is confusing to Americans and the international community. To supporters, these comments are disappointing . To others, they were shocking. For me , the cognitive dissonance of some of our elected leaders is real and explainable . The re is an oversimplification of racism in America, because as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva notes, there can be systemic racism without racists.

W hen a person critique s America for the racism that i s deeply embedded in our social institutions, some feel they are being personally attacked. This is because deep down they realize that they benefit from unearned assets associated with whiteness. Scott, Harris, and Biden recognize this and try to balance these varying perspectives as they worry about voters nationally and in a state like South Carolina.

Recently, a at a city council meeting had a meltdown when trying to explain why she does not want critical race theory taught in her children's school. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that s ystemic racism as a concept is " a bunch of horse manure ." So, not only has Florida made it legal to harm people protesting, but he banned teaching critical race theory in schools. For a deeper dive on critical race theory , people should read the work of sociologists Victor and Ted , who lay out why DeSantis' perspective is problematic .

I conducted with Matt Hunt on what predicts who believes they are middle class. For education, income, and occupational prestige, Black people are less likely to identify as middle class compared to whites with comparable levels of these socioeconomic outcomes. Why? It is because social class is not just about what a person looks like on paper , but how people experience social class in everyday life and t he deference that one receives for their socioeconomic status. Black people are less likely to get that deference, while white people are often afforded more. It is so commonplace for white people that some cannot fathom living without it. This is because many white people, particularly white people with lower levels of education and income, realize that comes with a premium that extends beyond economics to include cultural and social capital. As Pr esident Lyndon Johnson said, " If you can the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and h e'll empty his pockets for you."

Harris and Scotts' comments are puzzling at a broader level as well considering how much of a collective memory their experiences with racism are- Harris reliving her systemic experiences with bussing and Scott recounting the nearly 20 times he has been pulled over by police, where being an elected official potentially made the interaction worse.

These stories acknowledge that life is different if you are Black, and unfortunately systemic racism seems to ripple through our social institutions and into our daily social interactions, whether in Congress or at a coffee shop down the street from the Capitol. These type s of experiences-racialized cuts and hurdles- have a cumulative effect on . Sociologist s Pam Jackson and Jason Cummings' research documents that middle-class Blacks have worse health profiles than working-class whites. They attribute this difference to the daily racialized trauma experienced in predominately white environments like work and neighborhood settings.

Systemically, we know that Black people compared to whites are more likely to attend schools with less funding per student, less likely to obtain a job because of our "Black-sounding" name or even when attending an Ivy League university , less likely to obtain a (even when having the same credit score ), have their homes appraised for equitable value, more likely to experience pregnancy complications and maternal mortality , and more likely to have contact with police and the criminal justice system .

Systemic racism inhibits (rather than prohibits like in the past) people's ability to actualize all aspects of the American Dream. This occurs  even for highly-educated Black people with high incomes and no criminal record. In fact, research documents that white people with a criminal record are more likely to get called back for a job than Black people without one.

Research documents that hard work (or lack thereof ), intellect, or criminality do not explain these outcomes. Instead, it is the embedded deeply within our social institutions' , rules, regulations, and laws that segment people's experiences along racial lines. It is the same for gender. Women can achieve but have a much harder time doing so. If not, America would have had a woman vice president and speaker of the House sitting behind the p resident long before 2021.

What people do not seem to realize is that being upwardly mobile does not negate encountering racist hurdles on the pathway to success. Our current system is set up for some people to have to jump over hurdles to succeed, while others get to simply run to the finish line without those sa me racial hurdles. Rather , it is about whether the pathways to success are equitable . This is what America says it is: an equitable democracy. People are pushing for America to reach its true ideal s and the only way this can properly occur is acknowledging the systemic barriers that prevent us from getting there. Moreover, it is not that racial progress has not been made. It is that the United States has yet to make enough progress. In this regard, comment s of our top elected officials are disappointing, yet predictable.

Black people who succeed often walk on pins and needles because they realize that their success, and more so maintaining it, is precarious.   As a result, some Black people aim to make white pe ople feel comfortable. Many of us are mostly socialized to do so. I t is often a survival strategy for our lives during police encounters or economic survival in boardrooms. Some of us who succeed may experience "survivor's remorse" because we are some of the few to "make it." We actually embody the American Dream and become the in-person example to people who do not want to admit that systemic racism exists. We may even convince ourselves that racism is more prominent on the individual level than the institutional level. We simultaneously represent racial progress but are also most likely to be subjugated to racial discrimination because of the predominately white spaces we are embedded within. We experience a chronic form of double-consciousness   and admitting as such can often lead us to being conscious of the slow death we often experience through the cumulative racist cuts and hurdles we encounter.   The American Dream being achievable for a few does not absolve the system and an imperfect union, even when some of those successful people try to rationalize systemic racism away.

In most instances: When Black parents worry about their straight-A student's traffic encounters with the police more than they do a potential accident, this is because of experiences with racism. When a Black couple is about to have a baby and has to think consciously about what hospital to deliver in so they can obtain equitable care, this is racism. When a Black parent worries about their child attending a prestigious university outside of an urban area, this is often because of the racism they worry about them encountering driving to the school and even once physically on the campus of the school. And even more urban universities are not absolved from .

Systemic racism is not simply a thing of the past. It is up close and personal in the present.

R acism may be no more transparent in an institution with the least representative racial progress like the Senate. There have only been 11 Black senators in roughly 232 years. Clearly, the Senate is the exact space we need people with the courage to say the blunt, honest truth about our nation's past and present. Only then can we actualize a future where systemic racism does not exist. It is imperative for a , reconciliation, and reparative process to commence. This starts with atoning for the enslavement of of Africans whose descendants contin uously fall systemically behind , whether they end up being the lone Black Republican senator or a Black police officer who might have the power to pull him over.   We must have the courage to speak truth to power and one of the places it starts is in Congress.   "If not now, then when?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott shocked many people when, in response to President Joe Biden's congressional address, he stated that " America is not a racist country ." He admitted that he himself had experienced " the pain of discrimination, " and noted, " I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store while I'm shopping.

# data[].attributes.body
In this article, it talks about how as a country, we still on the road to the promise land, we still have things to change systematically and politically. It also mentions how we still our protesting for equality, justice and to end police brutality towards africans americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land."

Just a day before his assassination on April 4th, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke these words in his final speech, " I've Been to the Mountaintop."

Through peaceful protests beginning in the mid-1950s, he was able to drive monumental change in our society, and spread his vision of equality - despite being deemed an " outside agitator," by his opposition. And while we celebrate him today, we also recognize we still haven't reached his Promise Land.

In just 2020 alone, we've seen protests against police brutality and the over-policing of Black communities. We've lived through a pandemic that disproportionately affected Black and impoverished people. We've witnessed systemic racism's dark hold on our country, from our judicial system to our healthcare to our housing practices to our education system. It was a year that reopened wounds that truly never healed, and it showed us just how far from the Promised Land we are.

In the years since his speech, laws have been passed that enabled equal treatment for African Americans, but now more than ever it's glaringly obvious that those laws haven't changed the culture of racism - the culture that much of this country was founded on. We may no longer have segregated establishments and legalized racism, but both overt and covert racism still exists. And to truly understand how we can make Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream a future reality, we have to understand how we got here.

With labor needs growing throughout the American colonies in 1619, white European settlers turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper and more available means of labor. The first shipload of African captives arrived in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Read more.

Cuffe's petition ultimately failed, but it paved the way for the creation of a new Constitution in 1783, which granted equality for all Massachusetts citizens. Read more.

In 1808, Congress passed the act which "prohibits the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States...from any foreign kingdom, place, or country." Read more.

The 13th amendment was the first explicit statement regarding slavery written in the U.S. Constitution. The amendment declares "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Read more.

While the 13th amendment gave written freedom to some 4 million slaves postwar, there was still a lot to be settled. Black Codes were introduced in 1866, which were created to hinder African American's freedom and required them to sign annual labor contracts. Read more.

On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that represented the first major test of the meaning of the 14th Amendment's provision of full and equal citizenship to African Americans. Read more.

Following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, "Jim Crow" laws were put in place at the local and state levels. These laws prevented African Americans from voting, getting and keeping a job, and the ability to get an education, to name a few. Read more.

One of the lesser known racial violence incidents, the Tulsa Race Massacre involved a white mob who attacked the Black Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Read more.

The Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, was founded by Jonathan Farmer in 1942. CORE was one of the leading activist organizations during the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Read more.

In 1948, Harry Truman signed an executive order calling for the desegregation within the Armed Forces, marking the first time a U.S commander used an executive order to implement a civil rights policy. Read more.

The 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board Supreme Court case ruled that the segregation of children in schools based on skin color is unconstitutional. Read more.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus in Alabama. This inspired a civil rights protest amongst the local black community in Montgomery, and is a cornerstone event in the civil rights movement. Read more.

Following the 1954 ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, nine black students enrolled and attended Central High school, a formerly all-white school, becoming known as the Little Rock Nine. Read more.

The 1960 ruling of Boynton v. Virginia declared the segregation of interstate travel such as bus terminals, restrooms, and other facilities unconstitutional. Read more.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order requiring government contractors to hire more African American workers stating in an executive order, "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." Read more.

Considered one of the crowning legislative movements in the civil rights movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Read more.

Protesters, including Martin Luther King, Jr. marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama across a three-day period. Along the 54-mile march, protesters were attacked with nightsticks, tear gas, and whips by authorities and white vigilante groups. Read more.

The March to Selma showcased challenges faced by black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which aimed to remove state and local barriers that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. Read more.

The 1968 ruling of Loving v. Virginia declared interracial marriage to be legal. This ruling is remembered annually on June 12th as Loving Day. Read more.

To circumvent racially discriminatory housing practices, The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. The Fair Housing Act is celebrated as one of the most significant achievements of the Civil Rights Movement. Read more.

Allan Bakke was unfairly denied admission twice to the medical school at the University of California at Davis because of the school's quota system. In his decision, Powell unknowingly shifted the meaning of affirmative action and inadvertently changed the ways colleges and universities recruit and enroll racial minorities. Read more.

In 2010, Chastity Jones received a job offer that was later rescinded after she refused to cut off her locks. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit, where two courts ruled the employer was not discriminating based on race and dismissed the case. Since then, numerous court cases have received mixed rulings, setting the precedent for natural hair to receive continued discrimination in the workplace. Read more.

The March Continues

This timeline is just a piece of our journey as a country thus far, and it's only been accomplished thanks to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others like him. The activists, organizers, and leaders who aren't afraid of the work it takes to become better. With their help and our own resolve, we have to keep going - because we aren't where we're supposed to be. Not yet.

This is the uncomfortable truth of our nation. What we do from here is what defines our journey on the path to the Promised Land. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. left us with many great messages to guide us in his wake, but the message of his last address is perhaps the one we need to commit to heart today.

It'd be easy to simply point to the worst parts of our country and admit that we've fallen short, but that's not quite what his "I've Been to the Mountaintop," sermon urges us to do. Instead, Dr. King said, "The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."

This year, as we celebrate a civil rights hero, let's work together towards his Promise Land. Next year on this day, let's have accomplished the kind of change that would make Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proud. There's real progress to be made. Let's make it to the stars.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why We're Still on the Road to MLK's "Promised Land" Over 50 Years Later

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land." Just a day before his assassination on April 4th, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

# data[].attributes.body
Homeownership amongst the Black community had/has been at a extreme low in comparison to many other races. Within the span between the 1970's through 2019, Black homeownership sat around a low of 1.2%, while towered by the 9.2 White, 11.9 Hispanic, and 25.1% Asian.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Owning a home is a part of the American dream. It’s also the key to building intergenerational wealth. But Black Americans continue to face discrimination in housing, including through higher costs.