A lot of people who go and visit the U.S. think it's so strange how
segregated we are and how much racial tension there is, and yeah, there's a
precedent for that. It didn't come out of nowhere. Hey guys welcome back to my
channel and today we're going to be talking about anti-Black racism in the
United States. And before we start this video, I just want you all to know that
this is just one of the videos I have planned that talks about anti-Blackness.
The next video will be about anti- Blackness in the Asian-American
community, and the next video after that will be about Gone with the Wind. If
you're interested in hearing about those topics, please subscribe and stick around.
The murder of George Boyd has sparked a revolution across the world. People are
marching to abolish the police and to overturn the racist and capitalist
system that white men have created on stolen land in order to keep Black and
brown folk down. It's honestly amazing to see so many people in the streets
looting, rioting, fighting. The people on the front lines facing the literal US
military will go down in history as heroes. But I'm not here to talk about the
protests. Instead I want to delve into the history that led us here.
I think a lot of people outside of the U.S. as well as in the U.S. have no idea how
racism and anti-Blackness came to be or how white supremacy works here, so I
thought I'd make this video to talk about the covert and overt ways white
supremacy operates in the U.S. to help educate people both in and outside of
the U.S. And know that this is only one short video, you should do your own
research on the topics I'm going to be talking about and not depend on Black
people to do all the heavy lifting for you. So let's begin. Part One: Overt white
supremacy. Racism in the U.S. can take many forms, but they can be mainly
separated into two categories - overt and covert. And it's important to note that
overt white supremacy isn't just overt, it's also deemed as "socially
unacceptable". For example, lynching, using the n-word, the KKK, using
other racial slurs, etc. It's also important to note that these are still
highly debated as "not that bad", but broadly speaking these things are
socially unacceptable. Overt white supremacy only makes up 5% of the pyr-
pyramid and that's because white supremacy mostly works covertly, and is
socially acceptable. The most important of these right now being Black people
being murdered by the police. That is socially acceptable and that's what the
protests are trying to change. So Part Two:
Covert white supremacy. So now let's get into more covert government sanctioned
racism and discrimination against Black people. There's a lot of ways this
happens, but I'm only going to be talking about six. And again I highly encourage
that you do your own in-depth research after this video in order to educate
yourself. So number one: school districts. In the U.S. you can't go to any public
school you want, you have to go to the school in your district. And because
schools are funded by property taxes the whiter and wealthier towns have better
schools and funding and vice versa. Because of highway, housing, and sundown
laws, as well as individual white people creating petitions to not have Black people
live in their town, and the racist courts supporting them, the government and white
individuals have made sure that Black people stay far away in towns with very
little property value so Black children aren't able to get a good education, so
they don't go to college, don't get jobs, and instead go through the school to prison
pipeline. So number two: Gerrymandering . In the U.S. voting districts are extremely
important. If you win the majority of districts, your party wins. And you're
probably thinking, "How do we create these districts in order to make voting fair?"
We don't. Politicians draw district lines in order to manipulate the outcome in
favor of themselves - that is gerrymandering. And this usually
means drawing lines racially in order to suppress Black voters so they have very
little or no say in their local and national elections. So number three:
Government Sanctioned Deaths. The U.S. doesn't just allow the police to murder
Black people, but also doctors. In 1932 there was the syphilis study at Tuskegee
University where Black men without their knowledge or consent were given syphilis
just to see what would happen, and this project didn't end until 1972 - only forty
eight years ago. Black women are two to six times more likely to die during
childbirth compared to white women. White and non Black POC doctors don't take their Black
patients health seriously. A lot of them aren't even educated in how illnesses
show up and affect Black people differently than white people, and this
leads to even more death. And this is really terrible because Black people
tend to have a lot of health issues just due to living in the world while Black.
This stress manifests itself in heart disease, diabetes, asthma, mental illnesses
such as depression and anxiety, etc. And knowing that the medical industrial
complex doesn't care about Black people means that Black people are more likely
to die younger. It's also important to note that Black trans and Black disabled
people are more likely to die at the hands of police and also at the hands of
doctors. Number four: How the U.S. stopped racial mixing to prolong white supremacy.
"Separate-but-equal" or Jim Crow laws were enacted in the U.S. after the
Civil War, which happened from 1861 to 1865. This meant that Black people had to
live in separate towns away from white people. They went to separate schools, couldn't
enter white only spacious, etc. These laws were enacted in order to keep Black people
from rising up in society post slavery. However, Black communities were thriving
in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but white people did not like that.
White people staged hundreds of lynchings, riots, and
massacres in order to destroy Black communities and keep them from
prospering. And this mainly came in the form of weaponizing white womanhood. The
most common reason for a lynching was that a Black man was accused of looking
at a white woman. And we can see that this tactic is still used today. The most
infamous massacre being the one that occurred in Tulsa in 1921, for this very
same reason. Black Wall Street, as it was known, was burned and bombed to the
ground by white people. Black businesses were destroyed and all that wealth that
they accumulated was lost. Segregation laws, which were already enacted during
this time period, began taking even fuller effect as Black bodies were more
pleased than ever before. Black people were and still are treated
as second-class citizens even after they built this country with their blood,
sweat, and tears. And side note - Black bodies are still being used to build
this country, especially when it comes to pop culture and consumerism, not to
mention the prison industrial complex, which is basically slave labor. But to
get back to government enforced segregation, there were miscegenation
laws in the U.S. for the better part of three centuries. These laws meant that
people of different races couldn't get married or have a family and this law
was not overturned until 1967 - only 53 years ago. And let's talk about how Black
women can't even find a partner of their same race because if you didn't know,
there are more than 1.5 million Black men in prison. Can you even imagine that?
That's how much the U.S. white supremacist government wants to kill the
Black American population. "Separate-but-equal" continued post-world
war two as *white Americans reaped the benefits of the highway, housing, and college acts,
which conversely put Black people in an even worse socio-economic position. And
while on the subjective war, the US military preys on
Black men because they not only see them as disposable, but also their most
desperate recruits. And today post Jim Crow, post-world war two, Black people still
can't go to the "good" (AKA: white) school districts. Black single mothers are put on
*jailed for months, if not years, for trying to get their child into a better
school district, while white women get community service.
Black people are still getting killed by the police, by their doctors, and their
votes are still being suppressed, it's really no wonder why they're rioting and
looting, is it? When I talk about these laws and systemic racism in the U.S. to
people outside of the U.S. it's really mind-blowing. Many people, at least in
Brazil, have no idea that it was illegal in the U.S. for Black and white people to
get married. Many people think that segregation is only shown in movies to
cause drama. Like no that was real. So number five: Let's go even further back
in time and talk about slavery. And yes, this is a very socially acceptable way
white supremacy worked in the U.S. for a long time.
Slavery was an integral economic institution to the United States for a
long time, and I would argue that it is still integral to day, as prison labor is
mainly done by Black men and women. The police we know today is a product of the
very first type of police the United States had, which was the slave catching
police. Slavery employed white people. Slave breakers, slave catchers, overseers,
transporters, slave auctioneers, and more. Do you even know how many people it
takes to break someone's psyche, let alone their body? Slavery didn't just
employ white people, it also manufactured all of the tools you need to enforce and
maintain slavery - whips, chains, paddles, muzzles, and other torture devices were
made bought and sold. It wasn't just the products
enslaved people's labor that kept the U.S. economy going, but all of the jobs and
products it created that also in turn created wealth for white people, who
weren't plantation owners. And yet through all of the abuse and torture
*enslaved people still revolted and freed themselves, and the descendants of *enslaved people
walk among us today. So six and my last and final point is just about "How
individual white people hold up white supremacy." As an ESL teacher in Brazil I
used to get a lot of questions about the n-word, if they could use it ,what it
means, is it the same as "negro ou negra in Portuguese", and I always gave them the
same answer - just don't say it. A lot of young people in Brazil love trap music,
rap music, and hip-hop because of tik-tok. They watch their favorite white tik-toker
lip sync - Fetty Wap and think that it's really cool and they want to
say the n-word too, and it's like, you can't. And if you are truly an ally of BLM
that's the only explanation you need. As for my older generation of viewers, go to
your grandma's house or even your mom's house and look for racist relics of the
past - a mammy doll, Black marionette dolls, a Black caricature etched into a box or
vase, a horribly racist children's book about savages living in the "Dark
Continent", trust me I'm sure you'll find at least one. There are so many racist
toys, books, and figurines out there that white people have kept and collected and
that's their only interaction with Black people. It's honestly extremely
frightening. Anyway, we have reached the conclusion. I know that this video was
kind of jumbled, but I hope you now know some ways the US government enacts white
supremacy and racism against Black people overtly and covertly. A lot of people
who go and visit the U.S. think it's so strange how segregated we are and how
much racial tension there is, and yeah, there's
a precedent for that. It didn't come out of nowhere. So please, before you open
your mouth, educate yourself and don't expect Black people to do all the work
for you. In the description of this video I'm going to leave some links to Black
creators that I watch here on YouTube and also some resources you might find
interesting - specifically about the Jim Crow Museum, which houses racist
artifacts. And lastly, if you enjoyed this video or if you learned something, please
like share and comment about what you think about overt and covert racism in
the United States. Thanks again for watching. I post here every Friday. Next
week's video will be about anti-Black racism in the Asian-American community,
so if you're into that or want to see that video please subscribe and ring the
bell. Thank you again for watching, I'll see
you in the next one, bye :)