Racism, prejudice, bigotry, discrimination, along with sexism, chauvinism and xenophobia remain part of the American scene 52 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed and 153 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. In a nation of 320 million, it should come as no surprise that a small minority harbor such feelings. Nevertheless, we have come a long way since the days of Jim Crow laws that effectively mandated segregation for almost 100 years following the Civil War, and from groups like the Ku Klux Clan that murdered and terrorized African-Americans and their communities.
In the 1950s things began to change. In 1954, the last black U.S. army unit was deactivated. That same year the Supreme Court decided, in Brown versus Board of Education, that the concept of “separate but equal” schools was unconstitutional. The following year Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Two years later the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established in Atlanta, Georgia. That gave birth to the Civil Rights movement and the many bloody marches that ensued. Success finally came in 1964 with the signing of the Civil Rights Act. However, cultural habits are hard to change and, as a society, we will never be fully rid of latent biases. My grandmother, who was born in 1875, once said to me, in the late 1950s, that racial prejudices would likely persist until we were all of one color.
And, in fact, we are becoming (gradually) a mixed-race society. According to a Pew Survey last year, 7% of Americans view themselves as multiracial. I suspect the real number is much higher. In my own family, a two-greats grandfather fathered an African-American child around 1830. That child’s descendants, who are cousins of mine, have multiplied and added to the melting pot. I suspect most African-Americans are of mixed heritage, something on which we should all reflect. Most of us are related, perhaps distantly, but related. Real assimilation demands mutual respect, irrespective of one’s race, color or sex, and an understanding that civil society can only function when its laws are obeyed.