The rise of racism in the United States

It has been 60 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, and gender. From the brutality against black Americans to people with a platform on social media proudly advocating for a pre-1960s segregated climate, the public has not only normalized casual racism but pure hatred against people of color, black people in particular.

 In 2020, I was able to process the fact that racism is still very alive for the first time. While I was only 11 years old, and had experienced bigotry when I was much younger, it felt exceedingly different. When I was a toddler, it is safe to say I was socially accepted as black. I had much darker skin and always sported a large afro. During that time, I knew black history solely because my mom made sure I was aware of my roots, as I fell into the stereotype of my black father never being a part of my life. When the Black Lives Matter movement had a resurgence after the death of George Floyd, my online usage was greater than it should have been, and seeing on the news that a black man had been murdered while pleading for his life and having his final moments be recorded, to the stories of Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Ahmaud Arbery, and hundreds of other names that would take up pages to finish, I got to see for the first time how outwardly cruel society can be.

We all know by now that people are desperate for online clout, and sadly, many realize that clout can be attained through shock factor. No one online cares if you give back to people, but they will definitely react to a non-black person saying something racist. When some of these people get a microphone, they think they own the world, and can proudly laugh at racism and say anything offensive without consequences because they do not believe in “cancel culture” nor do they care about the consequences of their actions. When in reality, the n-word holds so much depth with centuries of history, and it is always going to be “that deep.” When a word is tied to centuries of suffering, death, and erasure of an entire culture, they should understand that even if you claim to have no ill intent, it will almost always be perceived in that connotation.

On Oct. 14, news publication Politico published a series of leaked derogatory messages sent in a group chat led by Young Republicans, which is a political organization created for 18-40 year olds to recruit, train, and elect future Republican leaders. The messages consisted of pretty much every offensive “joke” a person could think of, including “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball,” and “They love the watermelon people,” both referring to black people using the age-old racial stereotypes of loving watermelon and comparing them to monkeys. Republican Sen. Robert Ortt of New York stated that all members of the chat should resign, but numerous other Republican politicians, including Vice President J.D. Vance, said this incident is not a real issue, and virtually insinuating that idolizing Hitler and saying the n-word hundreds of times in a group chat, which in fact occurred in these chats, is what kids do. Vance said that these texts are just kids telling edgy and offensive jokes. While Vance would have a point if he were talking about literally anything else, these members were not kids; they were adults ranging from 27 to 35 years old, and they were laughing at the centuries of suffering that have occurred to numerous cultures based solely on them not fitting into society’s ideal of a superior race.

These people have fully developed brains and should know the consequences of being so abhorrent towards a marginalized group that will never see equal opportunity. This is just the tip of the iceberg when discussing the resurgence of alt-right white supremacy and racism in America. Diversity is the backbone of America; we are all here for a purpose, and the color of someone’s skin and the centuries of senseless abuse that have been endured because of said color are not the punchline in a corny sixth-grade joke. When people are treated wrong, there should be justice for all, because at the end of the day, it should in fact not be about the color of your skin but about the content of your character.