Redesigned Racism

      As time has progressed, numerous people have argued that racism in America has died because of black success stories and new opportunities that have become available to black people. But is racism really dead or are we just blind to the new racism in modern day society ? Racism is not dead, it has simply been born into a new form.

     When most people think of racism, they think about the Ku Klux Klan, slavery, and segregation because they are blind to how racism has developed and adapted to the new era. In an article from CNN, John Blake states "The more we assume that the problem of racism is limited to the Ku Klux Klan, the birthers, the tea party or to the Republican party, the less we understand that racial domination is a collective process and we are all in this game." Racism has evolved and it is felt but it fails to be noticed. Racism is exposed and justified through different means that keep it hidden so as Americans, we don't necessarily understand that we are living in a racist society. For instance, the alarming amount of incarcerated Americans is not seen as racism because it is justified through laws and the criminal justice system. Out of the 2.3 million incarcerated in America, African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the population. However, according to NAACP about 14 million whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug. If these are the facts, then why are there more incarcerated African Americans than incarcerated whites ? This evidence clearly shows that there are more white criminals that blacks.

     Although there are successful black figures, we still live an era of colorblindness. The America we live in chooses to believe that everyone is truly equal because of people like Obama and Oprah. Not every black person in this country is an Obama or Oprah Winfrey. No caste system in the United States has ever governed all black people and there have always been black people who have been oppressed, discriminated against, and deprived of civil rights. Therefore, it is safe to say that America is still racist, just different from the ways in the past. Take Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin for example. The officers in these cases were both white males who killed unarmed black men. The killing of these black men were justified through laws and the officers supposedly "fearing for their lives". The reasoning behind the officers' actions was not because they were doing their job, it was because they immediately assumed that since Eric and Trayvon were black, they were criminals. This is a silent racism that is hidden under a blanket of justifications. Racism is legal because black people are seen as criminals so it's acceptable for them to be treated as such and feared when walking around in a neighborhood with a hoodie on.

     Racism still exists in America but the society we live in makes it seem as it has become obsolete. We simply have racism without racists. By this I mean that there is still racial discrimination but no one believes that they are racist because they only believe what they want to believe. For instance, in the incidents involving police brutality against African Americans, most people have said that the crime has nothing to do with color. Yet, it has everything to do with color. If Trayvon Martin was white, we all know the situation would not have ended the same and if the roles were reversed, justice would have been served for the little white boy who was shot and killed by a black police officer. We see white privilege and we say oppression of blacks but we chose to ignore it. So again I say, racism is not dead; the new racism is denying that racism exists.