Many people boast that we live in a “post racial” America where black and white people can live in harmony and have the same opportunities. What people fail to realize that in a system where white people keep dehumanizing and emphasizing the criminality of African American people, we are perpetuating a system of racism. You can’t believe that we live in a world that doesn’t have race. Just because there isn’t laws that condone racism, doesn’t mean that there are people in this world that still hold racist thoughts and actions. I was recently told that there is no reason that black Americans should be mad or up in arms about social problems in the United States today. “Jim Crow Laws are gone, there aren’t any laws against them anymore. Why are they still so angry?” I was asked. Why are they still angry? Because Jim Crow was an ideology before it was a law. People still had the ideas before they became actual laws and it is still hurtful to have someone be racist towards you.

Just because there aren’t laws specifically directed towards African Americans, that doesn’t mean that there are laws that aren’t effecting them more. The War on Drugs. I saw an ad that pictured two white women doing yoga. The title went along the lines of “how smoking weed and doing yoga can make your life so much better.” I didn’t think anything of it until one of my friends brought it to my attention that people of color would go to prison for the exact same thing. This kind of hypocrisy is something that blows my mind when people state that we live in a world without racism.