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Racism in America - Page 1  Racism prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

Learn more about racism in America, the events, the laws, the violence and how racism helped shape America.
Racism in the United States has been widespread since the colonial era. Legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights were given to white Americans but denied to all other races. The KKK, white mobs and other white supremacist groups have killed more Americans than terrorist have. The KKK may have given up their sheets for suites and changed their name to the alt-right or other names to hide who they are, but at their core, they are white people who hate black people, people whose skin is not white and Jews. White Racist Have Been Killing and Terrorizing Black People for Over 150 Years; if black lives mattered in America, the KKK and other white supremacist groups would be branded as the domestic terrorist groups they are and government resources would be devoted to combating them. #WhiteSupremacist, #WhiteNationalist, #RightWingExtremists, #KKK,#Racism, #Hate
Story by Sean O'Driscoll

Donald Trump has continued to target two Black election workers even after they were the subject of "vile and racist" threats from his supporters, a prosecutor has filed in court. Trump listed one of them as being among the "monsters" who had stolen the 2020 election and "doubled down" on his attacks after the pair testified before the January 6 committee, the court filings show.

Mother and daughter, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss were falsely accused of using suitcases of ballots to add votes for President Joe Biden at an Atlanta voting center during the 2020 presidential election. The prosecutor's filing shows for the first time that prosecutors intend to introduce evidence about Freeman and Moss into the Trump election fraud trial. Allegations that Trump's comments prompted racist abuse could be bad news for the former president. His trial will be before a jury in Washington, D.C.
Story by Kathleen Culliton

The political party who put forward speaker nominations including a man who believes critical race theory should be "defunded" and another who described himself as Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke, but "without the baggage," is racist, a former White House reporter contends.

Salon columnist Brian Karem Thursday compared the Grand Old Party's "clown show" effort to elect a speaker of the House with the antics of a former U.S. President, who currently faces criminal charges in two states and the District of Columbia.

"The party is racist, misogynistic, anti-poor, elitist, delusional and greedy for power at all costs," Karem wrote. "That also perfectly describes Trump. This is his spirit writ large, trying and failing on another grand scale."

Karem only fleetingly references the role Trump played in choosing the House's next speaker — his anti-Emmer screed torpedoed the moderate Republican's chances of claiming the position — by describing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as a "a full-on Donald Trump sycophant."

Johnson has already been dubbed "MAGA Mike" for his efforts in trying to overturn the 2020 election, which included echoing false fraud claims and leading an amicus brief filed in Texas to overturn the results.
Eric Levenson Sara Smart
By Eric Levenson, Sara Smart, Nouran Salahieh, Isabel Rosales and Andy Rose, CNN

CNN — The White gunman who killed three Black people in a racially motivated attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday legally purchased the two firearms he used in the shooting earlier this year, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said in a news conference Sunday.

The gunman, identified as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, bought a handgun in April and an AR-15-style rifle in June, the sheriff said. He lived with his parents in nearby Orange Park and had no criminal arrest history, although he had been temporarily involuntarily held under the Baker Act in 2017, the sheriff said. “In this situation, there was nothing illegal about him owning the firearms,” he said.

The news conference came a day after Palmeter fatally shot three Black people at the Dollar General store in what authorities say was an anti-Black hate crime. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism.
Story by Calvin Schermerhorn

Key Point: Despite opposition from abolitionists, as president, George Washington signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 that authorized federal police power to recapture runaway human property. If there was anyone who knew the rewards of slavery, it was George Washington. Over a period of about 50 years, the nation’s first president enslaved about 577 Black Americans, starting when he was 11 years old.

One of them was a Black man named Morris who was skilled in carpentry and became an overseer of other enslaved men and women working on a farm at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia. Though Morris’ skills afforded him a few extra benefits, he was still unable to buy what he coveted most – freedom.

Despite the existence of voluminous public records that reveal Washington’s treatment of Morris and other human property he owned, Florida officials want public school educators to instead emphasize Washington’s efforts to abolish slavery. As a scholar of slavery in the U.S., my research has shown that Washington’s efforts to free Black people pale in comparison to how he fought to keep Black people enslaved.

Protesters marched against Florida’s Black history education standards that require lessons that include “how slaves developed skill which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” CNN’s Carlos Suarez reports on the backlash.
Story by Noah Alcala Bach

As the sun sets over Riverside Drive in Southeast Austin, a cluster of state troopers hits the streets — at one point, five Department of Public Safety SUVs sit at an intersection. They make one traffic stop after another, the gold Texas-shaped emblems on their doors reflecting their red and blue emergency lights.

Paul Ramos, 56, volunteers at Tacos La Sabroza, a food truck next to a Shell station at the corner of East Riverside Drive and Montopolis Drive, in exchange for food. Night after night, Ramos says he sees state troopers pulling people over. “What I see is they pull over Hispanics but they don’t just pull them over, they tell them to get out, they take pictures of their tattoos or they start from bottom to top searching their cars,” Ramos said. “It pisses me off.”
Opinion by Jeet Heer

Even as his bid to become Republican presidential nominee circles the drain, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis can take pride in the fact that he is almost keeping pace with his chief rival in having embarrassing Nazi scandals. Earlier this week, in response to continuing lackluster polling, DeSantis fired 38 staffers. Axios noted that one of those staffers was Nate Hochman, a speechwriter who “secretly created and shared a pro-DeSantis video that featured the candidate at the center of a Sonnenrad, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis and still used by some white supremacists.” Earlier, Hochman and other staffers stirred controversy by sharing a bizarre homophobic and transphobic pro-DeSantis ad (presented as a fan creation even though evidence points to it being another in-house production). This follows hot on the heels of a June scandal when it turned out that Pedro Gonzalez, a pro-DeSantis influencer whose social media voice was being promoted by the Florida governor’s staff, had record of antisemitic, racist and fascist private direct messages.
Story by Milla

A majority of the members of the Florida work group that worked on Florida’s new standards for Black history, including three Black members, did not agree with the sections that drew criticism, claiming they were “purposefully kept in the dark.”

A majority of the members of the Florida work group that worked on Florida’s new standards for Black history, including three Black members, did not agree with the sections that drew criticism, claiming they were “purposefully kept in the dark.”

Dr. Austin continued, “I thought that that was very disrespectful, extremely demeaning, and it supports what people want others to believe about African and African American people.” She added, “It’s the same divide techniques that they used on the plantation. It’s the same, identical thing. They always use methods of dividing the African and African American people. That’s what they do.”
Opinion by Glenn C. Altschuler and David Wippman, opinion contributors

Florida’s Board of Education recently released new Black history standards. They require that middle school students learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied to their personal benefit.” The board also mandated that the high school curriculum for the 1920 Ocoee, Florida Election Day Massacre include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” The new standards, the director of communications for the Board declared, incorporated “all components of African American history: the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

Apparently, Board members don’t know anything about — or want to erase — the actual history of slavery and racism in their state. Here are some facts that should be included in the Florida ­public school curriculum: Between the 16th and 19th centuries, about 12.5 million Africans were transported against their will to the Americas. About 1.8 million of them did not survive the journey, or have an opportunity to become “unpaid interns” and develop skills that could be applied to their personal benefit.
Story by By Nicole Chavez and Justin Gamble, CNN

The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with any notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans – a statement coming after some people compared the contents of its Advanced Placement course on African American Studies with Florida’s recently approved Black history curriculum.

“We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans,” the College Board told CNN on Thursday. “Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.”

The board’s comments come after Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, tweeted on Wednesday what appears to be a screenshot of a portion of the College Board’s AP African American Studies course framework that refers to slavery. The document in part says students should know enslaved people learned trades that they used, once free, to provide for themselves and others.
Story by Cheyanne M. Daniels

Black Americans are under attack, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said Thursday, arguing that a slew of efforts from Republicans across the country are an assault on their rights. “Black people are under attack in America, but we are not victims and we are not powerless,” CBC Chairman and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said at a Thursday press event from the Capitol.

“Our fundamental rights are under assault and our very history is being denied. But we will not stand by quietly as it happens. We will never give up when so many people are counting on us to fight for them.” In the last month, the GOP-led state Legislature in Alabama defied a Supreme Court order to create a second majority-Black district, as did the Legislature in Louisiana. In Florida, new education guidelines have been approved by the state Board of Education that require students be told of the benefits people earned because of skills learned as slaves.

As House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke on the House floor, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) accused Republican lawmakers of passing bills that are “racist.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues to defend curriculum changes to how Black history is taught in Florida schools, saying that enslaved Black people “parlayed” skills used in forced labor “into doing things later in life.” President and CEO of the National Urban League Marc Morial and John Kasich join Andrea Mitchell to react. “The idea that you got skills that you could use later in life — there was no later in life but being enslaved, except for maybe the last generations that were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment,” Morial says. “The very notion that you're going to engage in sort of a lost cause, revisionist history and try to indoctrinate the young people of Florida with this garbage is going to be resisted.
Story by Travis Gettys

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' "war on woke" has cost the state another event that would have generated millions of dollars for the local economy. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the oldest Black fraternity in the country, is moving its 2025 conference from Orlando due to the 2024 Republican presidential hopeful's "harmful, racist, and insensitive policies against the Black community," reported the Tallahassee Democrat.

"Although we are moving our convention from Florida, Alpha Phi Alpha will continue to support the strong advocacy of Alpha Brothers and other advocates fighting against the continued assault on our communities in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis," said general president Dr. Willis L. Lonzer III in a press release. The event was expected to generate $4.6 million, according to the intercollegiate fraternity whose membership historical figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Adam Clayton Powell.
Las Vegas Sun

Under the leadership of its governor, Ron DeSantis, and supported by its Republican legislature, Florida is feverishly working to reestablish the numbing segregationist horror of Jim Crow America. Most Americans believe we left this forever. But DeSantis — governor today, presidential aspirant tomorrow — is the determined force behind Jim Crow 2.0.

Beneath the headlines about DeSantis’ effort to block an advanced placement high school course in African American history, his central motive has been largely lost. What Florida’s governor is trying to do is bring back approaches that constitute the foundation from which all manner of freshly bigoted government policies shall spring.
Opinion by Travis Patterson

Fierce criticism has erupted over the music video for country singer Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” Liberals have decried the song’s vigilante themes, especially in light of where the video was shot. The lyrics describe a variety of crimes and unpatriotic or disrespectful behavior and promise: “Well, try that in a small town, see how far ya make it down the road. Around here, we take care of our own, you cross that line, it won’t take long.” The video was filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee — the site of the lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man accused of assaulting a White woman in 1927.

This combination smacks of celebrating vigilantism, extralegal “justice” and a deeply sinister and racist chapter of the past in which White communities committed and condoned violence against people of color as a form of political, social and economic control.
Story by Molly Bohannon, Forbes Staff

The largest historically Black fraternity in the U.S. announced Wednesday it would be moving its planned 2025 annual conference out of Orlando after the Florida Department of Education approved controversial new guidelines on African-American history, joining a number of other organizations protesting what the fraternity called Florida’s “harmful and discriminatory policies.”
Story by Robin Zlotnick

They noticed that their next door neighbor was peeking through the window at them.
They waved and smiled at the neighbor, but the guy aggressively ignored them and shut his blinds. Then, as they were about to leave, the neighbor came running out and started yelling at them to stop. "I asked him if there was a problem," OP writes. "He said, 'Yes. I don't know why y'all in our neighborhood but we don't take kindly to thieves and criminals. The police are on the way."

The neighbor ended up calling the police for no reason at all.
The outright racism is potent. But OP kept his cool in the face of wild prejudice and explained to the neighbor that they just bought the house and that they were looking around...their own house.

According to OP, the neighbor was convinced that they couldn't afford to live there.
The neighbor responded that "people like us couldn't afford houses here and that we could save our lies for the police." Holy hell. It doesn't get much more racist than that, folks. We often talk about all the subtle, insidious ways this country remains entrenched in racism, the policies designed to hurt Black people, the structures in place that leave Black populations out of the possibility of achieving success.
Story by Elura Nanos

The white mayor of a tiny Alabama town less than an hour from Selma has argued he should be immune from a civil rights lawsuit, claiming that holding a secret meeting to keep the city’s first-ever Black mayor and five Black city council members out of office is not a sufficiently clear violation of constitutional rights.

Patrick Braxton, along with James Ballard, Barbara Patrick, Janice Quarles, and Wanda Scott, sued the city of Newbern, Alabama and alleged that despite being legally entitled to take office, they were prevented from doing so when white residents “refused to accept” the results of a 2020 election. They argue that Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, Newbern’s white former mayor, conspired with his council, other government officials, and a local bank, to illegally install himself as mayor even after Braxton fairly and legally won the election.
By Nicole Chavez, CNN

CNN — The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history. The curriculum was approved at the board’s meeting Wednesday in Orlando.

It is the latest development in the state’s ongoing debate over African American history, including the education department’s rejection of a preliminary pilot version of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course for high school students, which it claimed lacked educational value.
Story by Mike Lillis

Republican efforts to enhance their appeal with minority voters suffered a series of setbacks this week when a pair of GOP lawmakers made racially explosive comments, stirring immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and threatening to muddy the party’s message of big-tent inclusivity.

House Republican leaders have spent much of the year highlighting the party’s advances in recruiting women and minorities, linking a diverse slate of candidates to their success in flipping control of the lower chamber last year. And they retain high hopes of expanding on those gains in the 2024 elections.

But that image-shaping campaign was dealt a hard blow this week when Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) gave voice to bigoted sentiments, prompting rebukes from Republican leaders and sparking warnings from some rank-and-file members that the party’s efforts to attract more minorities just got more difficult.
Story by Pretty Honore

The internet is proof that Karens come a dime a dozen. Whether it’s at a park, sauna, or even your own home, there’s sure to be a middle-class white woman who wants it her way.

But today, we’re giving the Karens a break; Instead, we’d like to talk about the Kyles of the world — one of which went viral in a video posted by a social media user by the name of @tr0n_almighty.

In the clip, which has since made its rounds on TikTok and Instagram, Tron called out the Dallas bar after he was refused entry. According to the security guard at the door, Tron was in violation of the bar’s dress code policy, but the viral video tells a different story.
Story by Rhonna Morala

In a bold and controversial move, former President Donald Trump has announced his intention to dismantle all “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs across the federal government. This announcement comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions, citing violations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Trump’s remarks, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, reveal his determination to enforce the Court’s decision rigorously. Brace yourself as we delve into the details of Trump’s pledge to eliminate DEI initiatives and pursue civil rights claims against institutions engaging in what he deems as “unlawful racial discrimination.”
Story by Ethan Baron, Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif.

Jul. 2—Complaint after complaint alleging anti-Black racism at Tesla's factory in Fremont has not stopped such abuse and discrimination, with Black workers segregated into the hardest, most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs and subjected to a barrage of racist treatment, language and images, according to claims in recent court filings and employee interviews.

Black workers at the plant — Tesla's biggest California facility, which employs thousands to build its four electric car models — alleged such abuse often began soon after they started, excited at landing a job at the famed automotive pioneer. In declarations filed by more than 200 current and former workers at the factory in connection with an Alameda County lawsuit against Tesla that now seeks class-action status, workers said they quickly learned that working for Tesla meant facing rampant, extreme racism.
Story by Maya Boddie

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is proud to run his "War on Woke" 2024 presidential campaign that includes advocating for book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ laws, as well as anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion programs both in schools and the workplace. On Sunday, the 2024 GOP hopeful shared a clip of himself speaking and signing legislation via Twitter, writing, "As of July 1st, DEI is over in the state of Florida."

The governor's tweet comes less than two months after CBS reported he introduced House Bill 999 in May, which would "ban state colleges and universities from using funds to 'promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that espouse diversity, equity, or inclusion [DEI] or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.'
Opinion by Martha S. Jones

When my Google Alerts sounded this past week, I knew that birthright citizenship was again lighting up in the news. My interest in debates over birthright is professional and abiding: I’m a historian who in 2018 published a book, Birthright Citizens, that traced this approach to national belonging from its origins in debates among Black Americans at the start of the 19th century to 1868, when the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment established that, with a few exceptions, anyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.

On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, looking to advance his presidential campaign, promised to reverse more than a century and a half of law and policy and, as he put it in a statement, “end the idea that children of illegal aliens are entitled to birthright citizenship if they are born in the United States.” A few days later, a spokesperson for another GOP presidential candidate, Nikki Haley, said she “opposes birthright citizenship for those who enter the country illegally,” and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign said he would reform birthright by adding new citizenship requirements. Having lived through more than one such outburst in recent years—the first in 2018, when then-President Donald Trump proposed to do away with birthright—I know that any promise to transform our citizenship scheme is sure to set off a debate.
Story by Joshua Wilburn

The Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a "flabbergasted" straight man who says he never even asked to work with her, RadarOnline.com has learned.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently handed down a ruling in a case involving a Christian graphic artist who refused to design wedding websites for same-sex couples. The court ruled 6-to-3 in favor of the artist, Lorie Smith, who argued that her actions were protected under the First Amendment's right to freedom of speech. The case began in 2016 when Smith filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, claiming that the state's anti-discrimination law violated her rights.
Story by Jennifer Bowers Bahney
Colorado’s Attorney General Phillip Weiser took on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that a web designer couldn’t be compelled to create wedding websites for LGBTQ couples, calling the decision a “license to discriminate.” MSNBC’s Simone Boyce asked Weiser what Justice Gorsuch meant when he wrote, “Under Colorado’s logic, the government may compel anyone who speaks for pay on a particular topic to accept all commissions on that same topic.” “What he is trying to say is that here is someone that had a free speech interest that was being implicated in a negative way,” Weiser said. He continued:
Maggie Bell , Lead Organizer, C.L.E.A.R Campaign, New Georgia Project

I grew up in the South, raised by generations of strong, Black women who always told me I'd go to college. I am the first college grad in my family, but to pay for my education, I'm now in so much debt that I can barely imagine the life my degree was supposed to get me. And the Supreme Court just shattered whatever dreams my family and I had about the life I could lead if I graduated college.

Just days after Juneteenth—a holiday celebrating Black liberation from literal bondage—six people I've never met decided that my economic freedom, and the economic freedom of millions of Americans, especially Black folks, is not worth it. Those people had the power to secure Black futures by allowing President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan to stand, and they failed.
Story by Javon L. Harris, McClatchy Washington Bureau

While the deaths of white victims in recent years have spurred numerous changes in South Carolina law, the state’s refusal to pass a hate crimes law sends an “outrageous” message about the value placed on Black lives, some Black lawmakers say.

Since 2016, three bills in South Carolina have become law following the death of a white person, including the Tucker Hipps Transparency Act, the Samantha L. Josephson Rideshare Safety Act and Gavin’s Law. Meanwhile, repeated calls for a hate crimes law — particularly after nine Black people, including a state senator, were killed in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston — remain unanswered.
Story by Kalyn Womack

Just two days after being sworn in, a Marion police officer said bye-bye to his new job after a few of his racist social media posts were found, according to the IndyStar. The posts were published before he even got his uniform. The case of 48-hour Officer Chaz Foy is precisely why Black people believe police departments are riddled with racists. You can’t keep racist people from applying for the job but you can certainly screen them to see if they hold bigoted beliefs.

Foy was flagged for two posts he made. One from the top of this month was posted to Facebook with a caption reading, “With gas hitting 4.89 and climbing, let’s all take a moment to appreciate better times.” Those “better times” he referred to were referenced in the picture attached, of George Floyd under the knee of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. In another post from April 2021, Foy posted a caricature of a Black man titled “Martin Looter King.” Marion Police Department Chief Angela Haley wasn’t having it once these were brought to her attention.
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