The Black Experience
Black people have had to overcome many obstacles ever since we were brought to America as slaves. We have been struggling to gain equality and even though some situations have improved, we have a long way to go. It’s safe to say we’ve been fighting our whole life, rather our whole existence. In WP1 and WP2 I talked about encounters with the police from my own experiences as well as my friends. We all experienced some form of racism or harassment and it just made me think about how it all started. This treatment didn’t just happen overnight, it started hundreds of years ago and it has been passed down from generation to generation. They say police are here to protect and serve, you will even see that phrase emblazoned on the side of police cruisers. However, when it comes to black people, it seems as though the police are doing exactly the opposite of protecting or serving. For black people a possible encounter with police is only one part of the problem. Not only do we have police to worry about, we also have to deal with systematic racism and discrimination within the justice system, social institutions, education, the workplace, and healthcare.
Black Codes, vagrancy and Jim Crow laws were put into place to keep Black people from being successful land and business owners and it started in the Reconstruction era. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. With the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, the economy in the South suffered drastically and they had to figure out a new way to capitalize off the labor of Blacks. With the help of profiteering industrialists, they found yet a new way to build wealth on the bound labor of Black Americans: the convict lease system. The only way the system would work is by having able bodies ready to work. This is where the Black codes came into play. Black men and sometimes women and children were arrested and convicted for crimes enumerated in the Black Codes, state laws criminalizing petty offenses and aimed at keeping freed people tied to their former owners’ plantations and farms. The most sinister crime was vagrancy the “crime” of being unemployed which brought a large fine that few blacks could afford to pay. For both the state and private corporations, the opportunities for profit were enormous. For the state, convict lease generated revenue and provided a powerful tool to subjugate African-Americans and intimidate them into behaving in accordance with the new social order. It also greatly reduced state expenses in housing and caring for convicts. For the corporations, convict lease provided droves of cheap, disposable laborers who could be worked to the extremes of human cruelty. (USnews.com)
Rules like those set the foundation for the systematic racism we see today. For every law that was passed for Blacks, counter laws were made to keep us below the Whites. I have to talk about how Blacks started with nothing. No land, no property, no way to acquire wealth. The American system wasn’t made for Blacks and that’s why we still have a hard time getting out of poverty. Poverty is the norm for us and here is another reason why:
The article in the link above talks about the Homestead Act and how it was flawed with racism. “Between 1868 and 1934, it granted 246 million acres of western land — an area close to the land mass of both California and Texas — to individual Americans, virtually for free. To receive 160 acres of government land, claimants had to complete a three-part process: first, file an application. Second, improve the land for five years. Third, file for the deed of ownership. By the end of the SHA 10 years later, nearly 28,000 individuals had been awarded land. Combined with the claimants of the original Homestead Act, then, more than 1.6 million White families — both native-born and immigrant — succeeded in becoming landowners during the next several decades. Conversely, only 4,000 to 5,500 African-American claimants ever received final land patents from the SHA. With the advent of emancipation, therefore, Blacks became the only race in the US ever to start out, as an entire people, with close to zero capital. Having nothing else upon which to build or generate wealth, the majority of freedmen had little real chance of breaking the cycles of poverty created by slavery, and perpetuated by federal policy. The stain of slavery, it seems, is much more widespread and lasting than many Americans have admitted. Yet it is the legacy of the Reconstruction — particularly the failure of land redistribution — that so closely coupled poverty and race in the US.
The illustration below is a perfect example of obstacles standing in front of Black persons life vs. that of a white person:
Jim Crow Laws enforced segregation and that helped build the wealth gap between Black and White people.The financial gap between blacks and whites show a huge disparity, just look at the chart below:
The financial gap can also be attributed to the color line. The color line has held us back because once slavery was abolished, whites were able to acquire land and build generational wealth and we were not. In two of Du Bois’ readings, “The Philadelphia Negro” and “Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States” he talked about how the often subtle discrimination of whites who hire and promote other whites and the long standing inequalities in education and training. I witnessed the color line in my own household. I grew up watching my father trying to get a promotion at his job. My father worked for LAUSD in the maintenance department. He spent years being a loyal employee. He worked tirelessly day in and day out. I can remember times where new guys were hired to work alongside my father. They’d only be on the job maybe a year and get promoted to supervisor. To add insult to injury my father would have to train them once they were promoted because of all the knowledge he had. This happened very often and the only reason we could think of was that he was the only Black person there.
As I began to talk about the police, I have to point out the fact that it has been argued that the slave patrols transformed into the police.
“Policing itself started out as slave patrols. We know that,” Rep. James Clyburn declared in an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier.
A story in Yahoo News makes a similar claim. Discussing police abuses, reporter Marquise Francis writes, “The injustice harkens back to the very origins of policing in the U.S., in volunteer patrols charged with keeping African-Americans in their place and hunting runaway slaves.”
A USA Today article headlined, “Law enforcement’s history of racism; First police departments date back to slave patrols”
Wenei Philimon, the author, continues, “These organized groups of white men known as slave patrols lay at the roots of the nation’s law enforcement excesses, historians say, helping launch centuries of violent and racist behavior toward black Americans, as well as a tradition of protests and uprisings against police brutality.
The slave patrols returned slaves that escaped, they would go into homes unannounced and seize their belongings, and stop and harass blacks when they saw them on the streets. The last two of those situations are still happening till this day. The people I’ve interviewed including myself, have all been subjected to this type of behavior from the police. There is no coincidence on why this is happening, it’s happening because the police officers still think they are superior to blacks and we are always a suspect. For instance, in my interview with Bernard, he talked about how he was pulled over in Beverly Hills while going to see a friend. As soon as he was pulled over, the officer asked him what was he doing there and where was he going? The police automatically assumed he didn’t belong there. After he ran his name and saw that he was clean, he gave him a ticket for having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
Driving while black is a very real thing and unfortunately these situations happen all too often. My freshman year the assistant basketball coach invited me over for dinner at his house in Manhattan Beach. I was already nervous about driving to his house because everyone knows the police like to mess with black people in that city. Once I got to Manhattan Beach Blvd I knew I was almost there. As soon as I passed Aviation a cop car turned behind me and started following me. My coaches house was only two blocks away but in my mind, turning on a side street would look like I was trying to evade him which would mean a strong possibility of being pulled over. As I turned on my coaches street I saw the police lights come on in my rearview mirror and my heart started pounding. He approached my car, gun drawn, interrogating me demanding to know why I was in that neighborhood. My coach heard the commotion and came running out of his house but he couldn’t even save me, the cop pointed his gun at him and told him to go back in the house. The cop had to show everyone who was in charge. For me this is an example of modern day slave patrol. The time I was pulled over for simply driving in my brand new Range Rover that the police didn’t think belonged to me. The time my wife was stopped by the police for jogging outside in which they demanded to know why she was in our own neighborhood. The countless times I was pulled over and made to get out of the car and asked to sit on the curb while officers made sure “my license checked out” as they put it. It seems as though black people trade police encounters like war stories. The structure that allows this should not be in place.
As I was writing this paper detailing my experiences, a friend of my mine happened to make a post on Facebook that I thought I would share:
For me this just solidifies something that all black men go through.
Black people cannot even go about the business of their everyday lives without have the police called on them. Two men sitting inside of a Starbucks, a graduate student napping in the common area of her dorm, women moving luggage outside of their home, four women golfing slowly, a group of women laughing loudly on a train, playing loud music inside of a vehicle, barbecuing at a public park and playing in a park are just some of the reasons black people have had police called on them. The list goes on. Each time an incident like this happens and the police are dispatched, black people are forced by armed officers to justify their presence. The person who called the police is assumed to be correct and the black person has the burden of proof. There have been number of times that these interactions with police have resulted in police brutality and even death at the hands of the officer.
Although I’ve been speaking heavily on the police and our unfair treatment, I have to talk about other obstacles that we have as black people like racism and discrimination. Racism remains a very real reality in America. The color of a person’s skin makes a significant difference in the way they are treated in this world as well as their experiences. The devaluing of people of color is all around us. For example, the way the opioid epidemic is being handled today is pure hypocrisy and an insult to people of color. During the war on drugs in the 80’s and 90’s, thousands of black people were dying from drug overdoses. Neighborhoods were destroyed and people were killed over turf wars. Black people were labeled as addicts, crackheads, and thrown in jail and prisons. Today the drugs are opioids and the addicts are mostly white. The people dying in this opioid epidemic today look like the children and grandchildren of those in power. They are being called victims and not addicts. Instead of prosecution and prison time they are receiving compassion.
Our criminal justice system is racial biased and deeply flawed as well. Black people are more likely than white people to be arrested; once arrested they are more likely to be convicted; once convicted they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences. Trumped-up felony convictions are handed down in court rooms across this nation daily. It’s hard enough being a person of color and receiving a fair shot in life, it’s even harder being a person of color with a felony conviction. You often are unable to vote, serve on a jury, receive certain homes loans or get certain jobs.
“Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living “free” in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow. Those released from prison on parole can be stopped and searched by the police for any reason — or no reason at all — and returned to prison for the most minor of infractions, such as failing to attend a meeting with a parole officer. Even when released from the system’s formal control, the stigma of criminality lingers. Police supervision, monitoring, and harassment are facts of life not only for all those labeled criminals, but for all those who “look like” criminals. Lynch mobs may be long gone, but the threat of police violence is ever present. A wrong move or sudden gesture could mean massive retaliation by the police.” (The New Jim Crow)
Being convicted of a felony has a lasting effect for the rest of your life. On every job application, they ask if you have ever been convicted of a felony. If the answer is yes, it’s likely that you won’t get the job. I feel like the aggressive policing and unwarranted arrests are part of the plan to keep blacks from being successful in this society. It’s simple math, arrest + convictions = no or low wage jobs.
When I look back in history and read about all the things we had to overcome, it shows how strong one race can be. It’s also sad that many of the things we dealt with hundreds of years ago are still relevant today. Racial discrimination, racism, and racial profiling are deeply rooted in our history and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done in order to move beyond it.
Works Cited:
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households/
Land and the roots of African American Poverty: https://aeon.co/ideas/land-and-the-roots-of-african-american-poverty
The New Jim Crow: Michelle Alexander
The Philadelphia Negro: W E B Du Bois
Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States: W E B Du Bois
