Ending Racism and Discrimination in the United States

Abstract

This article addresses the prospect of ending racism and discrimination in the United States. It begins by defining racism and discrimination and differentiating individual prejudice from institutional racism. It then reviews the extent of social change that has led to a decline, to an extent, in racism and discrimination since the middle of the twentieth century, as well as the continuing significance of racism and discrimination in the lives of people of color. People have proposed various ways of reducing or ending racism and discrimination. This article reviews three such proposals—increased multicultural education, reforms to the legal system, and radical social change. It also considers the argument that eradicating racism and discrimination in the United States is impossible as well as the argument that eradicating racism and discrimination is unnecessary.

Overview

When most people think about the term racism, they think of the various attitudes and beliefs individuals may hold about different racial groups, particularly negative stereotypes about one or more racial groups as well as the opinion that one's own racial group is superior. To sociologists, this common understanding of racism is more accurately termed prejudice. It is difficult to accurately assess the percentage of Americans who hold prejudiced views about other racial groups. When surveyed about their opinions of other races, few Americans give answers that suggest that they hold prejudiced views, and these figures have declined substantially since the mid-to-late twentieth century. However, there is evidence that surveys designed to elicit individuals' racist views suffer from something called interviewer effect—when surveyors ask certain questions, survey respondents will give what they believe are the socially desirable responses rather than their actual beliefs or opinions.

Despite both the uncertainty about how many Americans hold racist views and because the percentage of Americans holding such views has declined over time, racism continues to have significance in American life. In addition to individual racism, institutional racism occurs in the government, corporations, schools, and law enforcement. While individual prejudice may result in a person experiencing a racial slur or a hate crime, institutional racism is responsible for inequalities between racial groups such as poverty and segregation. Institutional racism can continue even when there is no individual racist person within an institution. Instead, institutional racism is manifested in the policies and practices built into an institution that led to racist outcomes. For example, if a mortgage company redlined a neighborhood forty years ago because the neighborhood was heavily Black, and if Black Americans living in that neighborhood could not get mortgages and could not sell their homes, that neighborhood today will likely be run down and have low property values—even if the people working for the mortgage company are committed to racial equality.

Both individual prejudice and institutional racism can lead to discrimination. Discrimination is what the group experiencing the prejudice or institutional racism encounters. For instance, if an individual who is prejudiced against Black Americans refuses to hire a Black employee, that individual has discriminated. For the most part, racial discrimination is illegal in the contemporary United States. Individuals are permitted to think racist thoughts and write racist texts, but they are not permitted to make hiring decisions, sell real estate, or engage in other sorts of differentiation based on race. This legal prohibition does not, however, mean that discrimination has ended. To penalize an individual or a company for discrimination, the person who has been discriminated against must prove not only that discrimination occurred, but also that the individual or company accused of discrimination intended to discriminate (Crenshaw, 1995). This makes it very difficult for individuals to win racial discrimination lawsuits.

Racial discrimination exists in many aspects of life in the contemporary United States. For instance, in fiscal year 2007, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received over 30,000 charges of racial discrimination in employment. This figure increased to over 33,000 in 2012 but dropped in 2020 to 22,064. However, in 2022, the agency reported receiving 73,485 charges of racial discrimination—an increase of 20 percent over the previous year ("EEOC Releases Annual," 2023). Other areas of life in which racial discrimination continues to play a particularly significant role include housing, the criminal justice system, and health care. Disparities in health care quality and access, as well as income and housing, were especially prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic declared in early 2020, when experts and the media noted that people of color were disproportionately negatively impacted by the pandemic. Despite the continuing significance of racial discrimination, discrimination had declined to an extent since the middle of the twentieth century.

In 1950, it was still completely legal for school districts and schools to segregate education from kindergarten through graduate school—if graduate schools were even available for students of color. It was legal for real estate agents to refuse to show homes or apartments to members of certain races, and individuals could even write language into the deed of their home prohibiting its sale to buyers of color. Classified ads for employment could say "Whites only," and several states still prohibited interracial marriage. Things have come a long way.

These changes did not come easily. They required concerted efforts by social movements, lobbyists, religious leaders, educators, and others. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s played a key part in effecting the social changes that led to the end of legal discrimination. For instance, the leaders of the movement coordinated sit-ins and other acts of civil disobedience that led to the desegregation of lunch counters and public transportation throughout the South. They also led voter registration drives that helped elect Black candidates to public office. These Black politicians then became instrumental in passing laws that reduced discrimination. Among the crucial legal gains of the civil rights movement were:

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race,
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made it easier for southern Black Americans to vote,
• Executive Order 11246, which established affirmative action for government contractors,
• The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which specifically prohibits housing discrimination.

Inspired by the civil rights movement, social movements representing American Indians, Asian Americans, and Latinos emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, and these movements also pushed for an end to discrimination. Among other things, these groups pushed immigration reform, changes in college and university admissions policies, the honoring of treaties with American Indian tribes, and the establishment of ethnic studies departments that would expand knowledge and teaching about people of color. Many—though far from all—of these goals were attained. For example, the US Supreme Court has ruled in favor of affirmative action policies in higher education in three cases: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), Gratz v. Bollinger et al. (2003), and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) (Pitt & Packard, 2012). It is important to not understate the gains these movements made in reducing racism and discrimination in the United States, but the problem has not disappeared. In fact, the Supreme Court invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act (1965) when they voted in June 2013 to allow nine states to change their election laws without getting federal approval in advance (Liptak, 2013). In 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was challenging changes in voting laws in North Carolina, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, that the ACLU says threaten the rights of voters including minority voters (ACLU, 2013). In 2021, the ACLU identified ballot access, voter suppression, voter restoration, the Voting Rights Act, and gerrymandering as issues affecting equal voting rights in the United States. Following the contentious 2020 presidential election, even as some congressional lawmakers introduced bills designed to restore such protective provisions as the one nullified by the Supreme Court in 2013, by 2021, several state lawmakers were considering and introducing laws that could potentially further suppress voting rights.

Applications

How to End Racism & Discrimination. If racism and discrimination continue to make a significant impact on the lives of people of color in the contemporary United States, what can be done about it? Scholars and activists have made several proposals. Some focus on the importance of education and diversity or multiculturalism for changing the culture of racism. Others point to legal reforms as a way to make it easier to challenge acts of discrimination or institutional racism. A third group argues for more substantial social change aimed at repairing the effects of past discrimination. Finally, some people believe that racism has become such an integral part of the fabric of American society that it cannot be removed.

For the first group, racism and discrimination can be eliminated through education. In particular, advocates of this perspective include educators who are committed to multiculturalism and diversity in their classrooms. Such educators believe that the American society will eventually accept people of color as it did White immigrant groups, and all that is needed is to educate about differences and celebrate the diverse cultural backgrounds that make up the United States. Advocates of this perspective believe that multicultural education will change American culture to make it more inclusive. Affirmative action is one of the specific policy proposals that multiculturalists propose. They believe that affirmative action will lead to schools and workplaces that value diversity and individuals in such diverse environments will be able to overcome any prejudiced views they may hold. In fact, there is evidence that exposure to diverse educational circumstances may change the views of White students (Bowen & Bok, 2019) and have a positive impact on all students (Pitt & Packard, 2012). For the multiculturalists, education and exposure alone will create the changes necessary to rid American society of racism and discrimination. This view, then, is focused on the role of individual prejudice. Many scholars and activists note that focusing only on individual prejudice ignores the continuing presence of institutional racism. As a result, their proposals aim to change the institutional structures that enable discrimination to continue.

Some believe that these changes can occur within the legal system. As noted above, discrimination law requires that allegations of discrimination prove discriminatory intent to prevail in a court of law. In addition, allegations of discrimination must prove that the discrimination occurred due to race itself, rather than some other factor related to race (such as economic status or linguistic style). One scholar, Kenji Yoshino, proposed a different standard in his book, Covering (2006). He argued that discrimination law should focus on discriminatory outcomes rather than discriminatory intent. More importantly, he argued that discrimination law should be focused on providing equality to all people, not just those who act, talk, or look like majority groups.

Other scholars take this logic a step further. For them, changing the legal system would be insufficient for eradicating racism and discrimination. Instead, they advocate more substantial social and political changes. The particular policy proposals such scholars advance vary. For instance, in Whitewashing Race (2003), Michael Brown and his coauthors advocated remedying the legacy of past discrimination and establishing new government agencies to respond to racism and discrimination. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva advocated for the creation of a new civil rights movement that would militantly challenge racism both "from within" Whiteness and from outside of it (2004). Discussions of reparations and the role that they could play in reducing racial disparities also fall into this category (Darity & Meyers, 1998). Many social movement activists fit into this category as well since they advocate substantial social change to respond to continuing racism and discrimination. This view was put into practice in 2020, when social movement activists with the Black Lives Matter movement began a series of protests around the country in response to the murder of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by a White police officer. Their protests against racial discrimination and call for police reform helped lead to the officers involved in the man's death being arrested and charged. In April 2021, the officer who had knelt on Floyd's neck, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty on state murder charges before being additionally brought up on federal charges and ultimately sentenced to twenty-two and a half years in prison. While activists saw this judicial consequence as a step in the right direction, they also emphasized that there was much more work that needed to be done to combat and rectify the roots of racism in the country.

Recognizing the need to address the issue of institutional racism from the national level, President Biden laid out several ways in which his administration would address the issue. On his first day as president, Biden signed Executive Order (EO) 13985, which aimed to advance racial equality in the federal government. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an increase in racism toward Asians compelled the White House to issue a memorandum to condemn acts of intolerance and Xenophobia toward these groups. Secretary of State Blinken ordered a new position be created in the State Department—Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) to help incorporate racial justice into the country's foreign policy. On a global level, the US was also one of 140 nations to sign the call to action to end racism and encourage the elimination of racial barriers in politics ("The United States," 2021).

Despite the often-radical proposals for social change that this diverse group of scholars and activists has made, some people believe that there is nothing that can be done to fully eradicate racism and discrimination from US society, politics, and culture. For instance, Howard Winant has argued that the United States was formed as a racist country on the backs of enslaved African Americans (2002). While he affirmed that antiracist mobilization can and has continued to have an effect, he also argued that pervasive racial inequality and the racial consciousness behind individual prejudice and discriminatory acts will not disappear. While this position may appear to be fatalistic, most scholars who believe in the persistence of racism do still advocate for social movements and progressive social change aimed at eradicating racism and discrimination.

Viewpoints

Ignoring Racism & Discrimination. Not everyone agrees that racism and discrimination are a continuing problem that requires a societal response. There are three main groups of people who do not believe any response to racism is necessary. First, there are the ideological racists. Second, there are libertarians. And finally, there are those who believe the problems of racism and discrimination have already been resolved and who thus attribute continuing racial disparities to other causes.

Both ideological racists and libertarians agree that racism and discrimination are continuing realities in the lives of people of color in the United States. Ideological racists, however, openly defend racism and discriminatory practices. They believe that racial groups are inherently unequal, and people should be allowed to discriminate against groups they believe are inferior. Libertarians, in contrast, are more likely to say that they ethically or morally disapprove of racism and discrimination. However, libertarians also have an ideological commitment to small government and a lack of government interference. Therefore, they argue that even if racism and discrimination are reprehensible, it is not a governmental responsibility to eradicate them.

The third group who believe that racism and discrimination do not require a social or political response are those who believe that the problems of racism and discrimination have already been resolved. These people point to the gains of the civil rights movement, the growing numbers of Black professionals and members of the Black middle class, the declining numbers of White people who are willing to publicly state racist views or opinions, and such notable events as Barack Obama's presidential election as proof that racism has been overcome. Most people who believe that racism is a thing of the past do admit that sometimes discrimination occurs. However, they attribute such discrimination to individuals from older generations or who have been improperly educated by parents who never gave up their own racial beliefs. Give it another generation or two, their argument goes, and discrimination will be a relic of the past as well.

Some individuals who fall into this category may be unaware of the continuing inequality between racial groups in the United States. For instance, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom (2014) have argued that reports of racial inequality are exaggerated by Black activists to increase public sympathy, and that, in reality, disparities are small and primarily due to the actions of illogical, prejudiced individuals. Many others, however, are aware that Black Americans, Latinos, and American Indians earn less money, have less accumulated wealth, receive less education, have worse health care, are more likely to be involved with the criminal justice system, and face many other aspects of inequality. Instead of attributing these disparities to the workings of institutional racism, though, this group attributes them to a variety of other factors, such as genetics or culture. For instance, when the Thernstroms do admit that racial disparities exist, they argue that culture is responsible for their continuation. They believe that Black Americans, particularly poor Black Americans, have unique cultural values focused on dependency and instant gratification that prevent them from resolving their own economic problems. There is little evidence to support such claims, but a few scholars and many conservative pundits and politicians continued to make them into the 2020s. There is one more defining factor relevant to this argument. Those who argue that racism and discrimination are no longer problems in contemporary American society also tend to argue that it is public discussions of race and racism that lead to what little persistent racism there is. Thus, they say that people should avoid collecting data on race, measuring racism, or talking about these issues, and instead focus their attention on issues such as economic inequality and educational problems.

Brown and his coauthors (2023) call such individuals "color-blind racists." Color-blind racists are individuals who believe that racism is no longer a problem in society and believe that they themselves do not see or act on race. Yet they continue to live in a society that is racially stratified and to benefit from this stratification. At a time when few people will openly admit to racist opinions or beliefs, color-blind racists argue that people should avoid talking further about race to effect its complete disappearance. The evidence suggests, however, that racism and discrimination are unlikely to disappear without considerable effort on the part of antiracist activists—if it is possible for them to disappear at all.

Terms & Concepts

Civil Rights Movement: The civil rights movement was a social movement with the goal of gaining legal, social, and political equality for Black Americans in the United States. The civil rights movement lasted roughly from 1955 to 1968. Many marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience were part of this push towards desegregation and political rights.

Color-Blind Racism: According to Bonilla-Silva, a form of racism more subtle than the overt racism of the past that allows White people to maintain White racial privilege by denying the continuing significance of race and racism in the lives of people of color. Color-blind racism relies on the notions that racial problems have been solved, that racial disparities are due to culture or are inevitable, and that talking about race is responsible for creating racial problems.

Civil Disobedience: Deliberate, public, nonviolent acts that violate a law, such as sit-ins, usually undertaken because of a belief that the law in question is unjust.

Discrimination: Differentiating between individuals or groups on the basis of prejudicial attitudes and beliefs rather than on the basis of individual merit. Discrimination generally carries the connotation that one group is disadvantaged by such treatment in comparison to another.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): The EEOC is a federal regulatory agency which was created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to monitor and investigate claims of employment discrimination. The EEOC is concerned with other types of discrimination besides race, including gender and religion.

Ethnic Studies: Ethnic studies refers to a group of academic disciplines that are concerned with the experiences and history of particular racial and ethnic groups. They include Black or African American studies, Asian American studies, Latino/Chicano studies, and American Indian studies. Ethnic studies disciplines have developed their own methodologies and literatures that foreground the groups they study, and they have often retained ties to communities and activists of color.

Institutional Racism: Structural factors like policies and procedures that are built into organizations and institutions and lead to racially disparate outcomes. Institutional racism can continue even in the absence of any individuals holding racist views or opinions.

Interviewer Effect: This term refers to any time when the results of a survey, interview, or other social research instrument are altered due to the presence of the researcher. Such situations can include interviewer bias or improper actions of the interviewer. They can also include social desirability effects, when research participants choose to answer questions in a way, they believe the interviewer will approve of rather than sharing their true feelings or opinions.

Prejudice: Technically, prejudice refers to any instance in which an individual makes a decision before they know all the facts and details relevant to that decision. However, the term is most frequently used in reference to people having preconceived ideas, generally negative and unrelated to fact, about a particular social group.

Privilege: Privilege refers to any special advantage or benefit that some, but not all, people get. In the context of race, White privilege refers to advantages or benefits that White people get in society by virtue of their skin color and that are not available to people of color.

Race: A system of stratification based on real or imagined physical differences between groups that are believed to be essential and permanent.

Racism: Racism refers to discrimination and other beliefs and practices that assume differences between racial groups and/or which lead to racially disparate outcomes for different racial groups. Racism includes both individual racial prejudice and institutional racism.

Redlining: An institutional policy and practice of not making mortgages or other loans in specific neighborhoods because these neighborhoods are seen as poor investments. While on the surface the decision to redline an area may appear to be based on the economic qualities or the property value of the area, it has often been the case that redlined neighborhoods are predominantly Black or multiracial or have growing Black American populations. The term "redlining" comes from the practice of outlining such neighborhoods on a map in red to alert lenders to the locations in which they should avoid making loans.

Reparations: Reparations generally refers to any payment of money in compensation for a past wrong. In the context of race in the United States, discussions of reparations are generally focused on whether Black Americans should be paid a sum of money to compensate them for the harms their ancestors suffered under slavery.

Segregation: The arrangement of groups into separate geographical areas, schools, or other facilities based on race or some other characteristic not related to individuals' own choices and skills. Segregation can be maintained by law and policy, or it can exist informally through the institutionalized actions of social groups.

Social Movement: An organized effort to create changes in social, cultural, or political life by a group who is excluded from the power structure of society.

Stereotype: An exaggerated belief about a group of people which holds that all members of a group share the same characteristic.

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Suggested Reading

Back, L. & Solomos, J. (2009). Theories of race and racism: A reader (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Blank, R. M., Dabady, M., & Citro, C. F. (2004). Measuring racial discrimination. National Academies Press.

Jones, E. (2018). Racism, fines and fees and the US carceral state. Race & Class, 59(3), 38–50. doi:10.1177/0306396817734785. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=127118231&site=ehost-live&scope=site

O'Brien, E., & Korgen, K. (2007, August). It's the message, not the messenger: The declining significance of Black-White contact in a "colorblind" society. Sociological Inquiry, 77, 356–382. Retrieved August 24, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=25641083&site=ehost-live

Lipsitz, G. (2018). The possessive investment in Whiteness (20th Anniversary ed.). Temple University Press.

McIntosh, P. (1988) White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. Wellesley Centers for Women. Working Paper Number 189.

Ponds, K. T. (2013). The trauma of racism: America's original sin. Reclaiming Children & Youth, 22, 22–24. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=89922670

Rainey-Brown, S. A., Johnson, G. S., Latrice Richardson, N. N., Stinson, T. G., & Ellis, N. P. (2012). New American racism: A microcosm study of a small town (Clarksville, Tennessee). Race, Gender & Class, 19(3/4), 266–291. Retrieved November 19, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=84011955