The United States was created from the ideal of an equal society for all, built on foundational truths of truth, justice, and growth. However, even since our earliest years of existence, there has been a division between the so-called ideals that were preached and the truth of our existence. Our forefathers were proponents of equality yet kept slaves that they would brutalize or kill for any misdemeanors. In a way, our American society is built upon the paradoxical ideal of division just as much as anything else. Some of the biggest issues throughout our country’s existence have been driven by this foundation of division, whether racial, gender-wise, economic, or political.
Perhaps the single largest problem our modern American society now faces is the division that is tearing apart our country. As of right now, we are in a period of civil unrest not seen since the years leading up to the civil war. Our society is currently plagued by narrow-minded individuals who refuse to adhere to any beliefs but their own. Many recent events have set us on this slippery slope we now find ourselves on.
There have been many political movements such as Black Lives Matter that highlight the fundamental flaws in how we treat our fellow man. Many radicals from both ends of the political spectrum are fighting for control of our country, in turn exacerbating the issues plaguing it. The division that has grown in America has begun to fracture the very ideals upon which our country was founded. For these reasons, I adamantly believe the modern United States we live in is not a post-racial society.
Racism has plagued our country since its inception and continues to cast a shadow over our lives to this day. While countless steps have been taken to destroy the foundations upon which racism was built in this country, systematic racism still remains. The racism that still endures in the U.S. is one of the worst issues our country still faces, and this issue is severely unaddressed.
The Reconstruction Era was an era of learning from the mistakes of the past and moving toward a better future. As so often happens, we seem to be repeating history by aching the events of this paradoxical era. The last few decades have been marked by the militarization of the police force. In the years that have passed since 1997, more than “$7,400,00,000 worth of equipment has been transferred to local law enforcement entities.”
With the massive increase of police presence in our everyday life, the incarceration rate has shot up dramatically. More disheartening is the fact that despite representing a far smaller portion of the population, minorities make up the vast majority of these arrests. This has led to many condemning the new system, holding it up less as a “system of prisons” and more of a “system of mass criminalization” and discrimination. In the last year, the tension brought upon by the problems present in this system reached a tipping point.
The Black Lives Matter movement highlighted the corruption in the police force. The misconduct by police has reached abysmal heights in the past few years, with more than a thousand police killings each year. The idea that massive portions of the youth of America have to grow up with the knowledge that those sworn to protect them could use excessive force against them is horrific. Despite making up a tenth of the U.S. population, African Americans are continuously singled out and brutalized by law enforcement.
In yet another instance of the racial discrimination that still exists in modern America, there is a massive gap between the income and opportunities of white and black Americans. This issue has been present for centuries in our society, and “generational wealth of African American families still significantly lag behind those claimed by white households, as do other metrics of financial stability.” As time is going by, that margin of difference is not changing by any substantial margin. We are currently living through the aftermath of the racial injustice African Americans were subjected to during the first few centuries of our country’s existence.
Despite segregation being outlawed decades ago, it still lingers in the form of many black families living in more economically poor environments. Many of these families are stuck in the endless loop of poverty, and the children are often dragged into the crime that plagues these neighborhoods before they can escape this life. African Americans are routinely kept from the same opportunities presented to many, with “various forms of racial inequality” being “systematically applied to minority communities in the United States.”
Due to this desolate environment, many black Americans never develop into their full potential and end up repeating the steps of their parents and the generations that preceded them. If a child is raised in poverty and without the opportunities, many of us take for granted, they are far more likely to end up in poverty. Often when a black family does escape this lifestyle and move to an economically superior neighborhood, they have to endure racism and racial bias due to them being perceived as the “black sheep” of the community.
With the election of Barack Obama, many believed the racially charged discrimination against African Americans was finally being torn down. But Obama’s presidency instead proved the unrest that symbolized the days of the civil rights movements was not behind us and highlighted the division that still exists nationwide. With the rise of Obama came the emergence of anti-racism and its advocates, who “aligned with other activist groups during the Obama administration.” The anti-racist advocates primarily fought against the existence of racism in our country through three strategies: “self-sacrifice, uplift suasion, and educational persuasion.”
However, the perceived failure of these strategies highlights the belief of many Americans that the racism built into our foundational systems is not an issue that needs to be corrected. Those who fought for change in our country soon found their efforts to be ineffective, with the election of Donald Trump symbolizing our country’s fear of change, and unwillingness to create true equal opportunity for minorities. In light of our country’s stubbornness to fix these foundational issues, minorities nationwide have taken to the streets in recent years to protest the inequality. Many have come to the viewpoint that if the world refuses to budge, then the matter must be taken into the hands of society. This mirrors the actions of many revolutionaries in the late 1900s, and further shows the division that cuts our country down the middle.
We are in a period of time where we are trying to heal from the paradoxical viewpoints of different political giants and multiple ethical movements such as BLM that have impacted our society immensely. We are in the process of reconstructing our country by trying to fix some fundamental issues present in our society. I believe in order to combat the potential for more destruction in the coming years, we must look inwards at the problems that have grown in the very heart of our country.
The society we now find ourselves living in is more divided than ever and is in the middle of a racial crisis that has persisted for centuries. Only once we have addressed this political unrest can we be able to build towards a better future. In the words of Malcolm X shortly before he was assassinated, “if someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” I view this quote not as a call to arms, but as a call for peace. If we hope to destroy the racism that still casts a shadow over modern America, we must each take the time to raise awareness and fight for the equality that is cruelly denied to so many.
