Is Racism Dead in America?

I grew during a period of history in which the issue of race and civil rights was front page news. I remember well when  President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, thus making it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The Civil Rights Act made segregation of the races in the United States illegal.

But unfortunately what this historic piece of legislature did not do was eliminate racism or racists attitudes in America. I realize that this is a hard pill for many white Americans to swallow but I ask you to consider the following.

With the passing of the Civil Rights Act something very subtle began to occur in American society. First the birth of America’s first post-segregation generation which had never personally experienced a segregated America. Gone were the “White Only” signs over public water fountains and public restrooms. Gone were the white only public schools. 

Gone were the “white only” lunch counters. It was as if the signs never existed. Segregation as a way to order society became a distant memory as future post-segregation generations were born.

This new generation of post-segregation America also came to believe that racism was a ghost from a far away time. Most of this generation even stopped using the “N” word. 

Subsequent white post-segregation generations could not imagine themselves being racists or harboring racist attitudes since their only experience was with an integrated America that had become the accepted norm for them. 

From the vantage point of a post-segregation generation racism was simply impossible to imagine. 

But then something happened that shook the world of white America almost as much as the Civil Rights Act did: The election of Barack Obama as America’s first African-American president. 

Now we are witnessing an emergence of old racist attitudes that seemed to have lain dormant for nearly half a century. They are raising their ugly heads even in presidential campaign speeches today. Never have I personally witnessed the venomous hatred of a sitting American president than what I see today. 

Never have I witnessed such blatant racism in the speeches of some presidential hopefuls either. At least not since the days of Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Of course many will deny that their hatred of Obama has anything to do with their own racist attitudes. Of course, they have been taught all their lives: “How can you be racists since you go to school with African-Americans, serve in a fully integrated military with them, and support your college football or basketball programs that are mostly filled with black athletes?”

For the first time many white Americans worked alongside African-Americans in the work place.

The idea of harboring racist attitudes became difficult given these circumstances.

Yet racism is not dead in America. The Civil Rights Act did not eliminate racist attitudes among white Americans. Perhaps in subsequent generations it drove them underground where they have lain dormant for all these many years. Besides, having racist attitudes is politically incorrect, right? But it did not kill the spirit of racism.

Look, I was raised in a segregated America. The America in which I was raised looked very different from the America in which my children were raised and their children are being raised. 

Racist attitudes die hard deaths. It took me a very long time to admit to my own prejudices against African-Americans or Mexican-Americans or  Asian- Americans or even Muslim-Americans. It was painful for me to step outside my own dominant white middle class American culture and realize that there were things deep within me that needed healing—things that needed God’s redemptive healing.

But here’s the thing: The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that there is a problem in the first place. 

Racism in America was not eliminated by a historic legislative act. It took however the election of a black president in 2007 to rattle old racist attitudes back out of the closet. The denial of such attitudes will do nothing but perpetuate an age-old problem for years to come.

I was born into the dominant and privileged culture of white America. I have no idea what it is like to be a person of color or to be a person living on the fringes of society because of race or skin color or from just being poor.

Being a member of the dominant white middle class culture in America blinded me to my own racism or racist attitudes. I still struggle with this even today in spite of recognizing that it would be very easy for me to be a racist or harbor racist attitudes from where I am situated in life.

Yes, being a member of the dominant class in America has its drawbacks—blindness being one of them.

Jesus once said that it is not what we put into our mouths that defile us but what comes from deep within our hearts that corrupts us.

The first step in addressing the problem of racism in America is for us white folks to admit that it is still a problem. I know, this is not easy. But we will never fix the issue of racism in America until we face that raging demon within us all. Until we allow Christ to exorcize the spirit of racism from within our hearts folks will continue to harbor racist attitudes.

This can’t be healthy for the land of the free! Can it?

We can’t fix what we won’t admit.