YouTube personality Laci Green made a very provocative video about systematic racism in America.
The video was very well done and her “Flo”-like persona from the Progressive Insurance commercials really brought humor to such a contentious topic.
Systematic or institutionalized racism exists within financial, educational and government systems.
Many people forget that there was a time when it was fashionable to be a racist. Many politicians campaigned using fearmongering against black people, especially black males, to get white votes.
Here’s is one example of systematic racism:
After the U.S. Civil War, the South passed Black Codes, laws that tried to control freed black slaves. Vagrancy laws were included in these codes. Homeless unemployed black Americans were arrested and fined as vagrants. Usually, the person could not afford the fine, and so was sent to county labor or hired out to a private employer.
In the U.S. of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were found to be too broad and vague, and in violation of the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as citizens were not informed of which behaviors were illegal. Police had too much power in deciding whether or not to arrest someone. Vagrancy laws could no longer violate?Freedom of Speech, such as when police use them against political demonstrators and unpopular groups. U.S. vagrancy laws became clearer, narrower, and more defined. Since then, the status of being a vagrant is punished by the vagrancy laws, while other actions are punished under other laws.
In Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Florida vagrancy law was unconstitutional because it was too vague to be understood.
The vagrancy laws also helped create the industrialized prison industry in the United States, using low or unpaid prison labor to make commercial goods. Gee, why does that sound so familiar?
Despite the evidence of systematic racism, many conservatives still chose to believe that the failings within the black community lie solely on the blacks. If you ask most conservatives they will tell you that their grandparents did not benefit at all from racism. They all say that they came from *insert European nationality* immigrants who came to America with nothing and had to work hard as white slaves or poor discriminated foreigners to build a better life for their kids. Of course, conservative ancestors never took handouts; they dug up and ate rotten potatoes and worms for substance — in the snow no less!
Anyway, here is the video:
