Almost every black person in America has experienced the sting of disrespect on the basis of being black. A large but undetermined number of black people feel acutely disrespected in their everyday lives, discrimination they see as both subtle and explicit. Black folk know everyday racism that becomes powerfully underscored by highly publicized racial incidents like the incident at Starbucks, the recent spate of police killings of black men, or the calling of police on a black female student while napping in a common area of a Yale dormitory.
In the face of these realities, black people everywhere take note and manage themselves in a largely white-dominated society, learning and sharing the peculiar rules of a white-dominated society in which expressions of white racism are becoming increasingly explicit. While American society purports to be open and egalitarian, or “equal opportunity”, such everyday outcomes leave black people deeply doubtful. Moreover, black people are generally convinced that they must work twice as hard to get half as far in life.
Among their own, black people affirm and reaffirm these central lessons and, out of a sense of duty, try to pass them along to others they care about, and especially to their children. For black people, experience holds a dear school, and the knowledge they acquire is based largely on the experience of living while black in a society that is dominated by white people.
Therefore, this cultural knowledge is most often inaccessible to white people, and when confronted with it, most white people are incredulous.When US supreme court chief justice Roger Taney declared in 1857 that black people had no rights that white people were bound to respect, he was observing the social reality of his day. Slavery effectively established black people at the bottom of the American racial order, a position that allowed every white person to feel superior to any black person.
After Emancipation, as black people migrated to cities in the north and south, their stigma both followed and preceded them. When black people settled in their new communities, their reception was decidedly mixed, but as their numbers grew, local white people worked to contain them. Over time, the lowly position of black people became institutionalized, and passed from racist generation to racist generation.
Thus, black people usually were relegated to the least desirable sections of a city, often “across the tracks” from the white communities, or in the “black sections” of town, the precursor to the iconic black ghetto. As black people operate in these segregated spaces, they can “be themselves”, away from the direct control of white people. Yet, there is still a general sense that white people and their agents ultimately control the ghetto’s racial reality, notably the financial, legal and criminal-justice systems.
While American society is often ideologically characterized as privileging equal opportunity, the everyday reality of the masses of black people is that of being peculiarly subordinate in almost every way, but this is especially true when they venture into essentially white spaces. Abuse of Africans who have travelled Abroad Is Unacceptable. Continental Africans have not done a good job of revealing the realities of life overseas. These are some disturbing experience of what some Africans who have lived abroad have experienced
1. Israelis attack Africans, calling them cancer in their country and saying they will do anything in their power to deport them. Black African-owned businesses were destroyed and looted, women with their children humiliated
There was also the report about Ethiopian women being sterilized in Israel.
2. An African chemical engineering Student was beaten into a coma in India last April 21 and left for dead he ended up being on life support machine and police took no action for two months towards arresting assailants who came from powerful families.
3. Ethiopian Women are abused in the Middle East (UAE); one was beaten for years, burned and forced to perform a sex act with another maid by her boss who videotaped it.
4. A couple from Rwanda both trained doctors are stranded in rural Russia and became peasant farmers when their country collapsed in civil war. They tell their stories of depression, racism, disappointments and strong will and recovery.
5. African students share their experience of racism in Russia and how the government ignores their cry.
6. Racism against African football –soccer– players in Europe is ongoing with some spectators even throwing bananas at Black players. Read “Zoro suffers more racist abuse” and watch how racism is still a reality in European soccer.
7. Nigerian women are duped into prostitution lured by promises of a better life in Europe. Immigrants form Nigerian mafia and sometimes battle Italian mafia they murder innocent people, sponsor drug dealers and prostitution rings.
8. African immigrants in China tell of their experiences.
9. Somalis encouraged to abandon their African culture and are then blamed for crimes in Maine.
10. An outstanding one-of-its-kind program on Al Jazeera is called “Surprising Europe” . It tells the stories of some Africans who dream of leaving the continent and how some of them take risks in order to make it to Europe.
Once they get there they often are stranded with no job, put in detention camps, and live in abject poverty; but they are afraid of going back home to Africa because of pressure from their family members that are dependent on them.
11. Racism against people of African descent in Ecuador; 92% of them are ignored by the government and don’t have access to basic services.
12. Sundown Town White populated towns Black people are not allowed after 6:00 PM. If they stay, they get killed by racist Whites; this practice still goes on in America.
(Work by James W. Loewen can also be ordered. You can also listen to Dr. Loewen’s talk on C-Span about the book).
13. 1,000 Nigerian Muslim women in Saudi Arabia maltreated on hajj/pilgrimage.
14. In Brazil racism against people of African descent is deeply rooted in the History of the country, making it difficult for Blacks to accomplish their goals.
