Since November, when a racist, xenophobic, misogynistic conman liar felon was elected to a second term in the White House, groups of mostly white people have argued that “this is not who we are.”
Sadly, I believe they are wrong.
Not only is this “who we are,” it’s who we’ve always been. From Christopher Columbus to Black Lives Matter to Project 2025, America has a record of racism that was prominent at various times in our history, was sometimes lurking in the shadows and is now out in the open, free to inflict its vile prejudices and bigotry upon its black, brown, Asian, Jewish, Native American and Muslim victims.
History is filled with countless examples, many of which we were never taught in schools, as I recall. I’ve compiled the following list, mainly off the top of my head and with help from History.com and other internet sites. I’m sure there are many more examples that could be included, but if I listed everything you’d be reading all afternoon.
Christopher Columbus
We can start in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It’s as good a place as any. To many of us, Columbus is a hero who discovered America, which in fact he did not. He is lesser known for his treatment of the indigenous people he encountered throughout his voyages, his use of violence and slavery, the forced conversion of native peoples to Christianity and the introduction of a host of new diseases that killed off native people in the Americas.
On his first day in the New World, Columbus ordered six of the natives to be seized, writing in his journal that he believed they would be good servants. Columbus sent thousands of peaceful “Indians” from the island of Hispaniola to Spain to be sold, but many died en route. His reward for this behavior: A national U.S. holiday and his name on a Canadian province, a country in South America, cities all across America, a river and the home district of our capital city.
Slave Trade
Over the period called the “Atlantic Slave Trade,” from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women and children were put on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. The vast majority went to the West Indies and Brazil, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, some medical care and lighter work loads than prevailed in the sugar fields.
Long story short, slavery continued in the colonies until 1863, when President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This executive order changed the legal status of three million enslaved people in designated areas of the country from "slave" to "free."
However, there was more to racial discrimination than slavery. The roots can be found in the U.S. Constitution, which declared that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person when determining a state's population for representation in Congress, and the fact that many of our founding fathers were white slave owners themselves.
In 1865, the 13th Amendment officially outlawed slavery in the United States, but racism was alive and well. Slave-holding states responded by enacting Jim Crow laws under which voting rights, employment opportunities and education were denied to African Americans. And, of course, Jim Crow brought us segregation, which lasted until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears
Racism and bigotry have not been limited to black African slaves. Native Americans, who occupied North America for thousands of years before white settlers, have also been victims of brutality and discrimination.
Dating to 1845, Manifest Destiny is the idea that the United States "is destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent." The philosophy drove 19th-century territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes. Some of them were killed.
The Trail of Tears was a forced relocation of 100,000 Native Americans from their homelands in the eastern United States to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) between 1830 and 1850. The Trail of Tears was part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which aimed to create a buffer zone between the U.S. and European holdings, and to allow for westward expansion. Thousands of the natives died along the way.
Jews, Muslims and the Japanese
Anti-semitism is hostility to, prejudice toward or discrimination against Jews. This form of racism isn’t new, and it isn’t any less prevalent today than at any time in history. The best-known example is the murder of six million Jews in Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945. Known as the “Holocaust,” the state-sponsored persecution and mass murder came to its “Final Solution” during World War II, with concentration camps used as mass killing centers.
At the start of World War II, in 1939, the United States refused to allow more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany to disembark from a German ship. The refugees – denied entry first in Cuba and then again in the United States – were forced to return to Europe, where some countries accepted the refugees. However, 254 of the 908 passengers who returned to Europe are known to have died in the Holocaust.
Also during World War II, in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States forcibly incarcerated 120,000 Japanese-American citizens in 10 "relocation centers" or "internment camps.” The stated reason was to curb potential espionage by citizens who might be loyal to Japan. Internees lived in army-style barracks with little privacy, sharing restrooms and eating facilities. Most internees remained in the camps for three years or more.
Finally, one of Donald Trump’s first official acts as president was the execution of a Muslim ban, which blocked immigration from certain Muslim countries believed to harbor terrorists. In recent years, anti-Muslim sentiment has spiked. Existing and proposed mosque sites across the country have been targeted for vandalism and other criminal acts, and there have been efforts to block or deny necessary zoning permits for the construction and expansion of other facilities.
I could go on, but I suspect you get the point. And if you don’t, I’m afraid I can’t help you.
This is a factual account of racism and bigotry in the United States, starting, in fact, before there even was a United States and continuing to present day. Maybe you should google some of it. Then take a look at Project 2025, the roadmap for Trump’s second term as president, and you’ll see that the prejudice has been broadened to include gay people, same-sex couples, mixed-race marriages, gender identity, immigrants – even women.
Racism and bigotry have always existed in this country and they still exist today. You cannot say, truthfully, that "it's not who we are." I have personally witnessed racism against black and Jewish friends in the recent past, so I know what I say is true.
Sadly, your children will not be learning in school about systemic racism because the party in power will block that information from their curriculum. They believe – against evidence to the contrary – that white people are the true targets of discrimination and need to be protected from feelings of guilt and shame. But while they don’t want you to know about their ancestry, today’s practitioners are easy to spot. Just look for the red hats, the gold sneakers and the confederate and Nazi flags.
And trucks. They like really big trucks.
