The Impact of White Racism on American History

Whenever discussing important historical and social events in American history, one must be prepared to confront the devastating impact of white supremacy, a term defined as the belief that white people are superior to non-white racial groups. As manifested, white supremacy has served as the catapult for white Americans to stand at the forefront of all major areas of society, and then to keep this power by restricting minority rights so that these minorities are sufficiently hampered in their ability to make the gains that would put them on an even footing with whites. Countless historians, theorists, sociologists, and others academics have written extensively of the detriment created by white supremacy, but too many textbooks still neglect white racism and teach erroneous beliefs that minorities are as culpable for their low socioeconomic position as white people are. This could not be further from the truth, but textbooks are apt to limit the effects of white supremacy and blame minorities for their conditions, leading minorities to think that, if they only worked harder, then they would not be where they are. White people adopt similar attitudes, too, and begin to see minorities as lazy and undesirous of improving themselves or their communities. Holding white people accountable for racism and historical injustice will help minority students grasp the reasons behind their socioeconomic conditions and help white students realize that, despite the injustice of white supremacy, this injustice does not need to continue indefinitely.

​White racism is not a topic that many textbooks are willing to take on, possibly because it is a topic that the majority of Americans, who happen to be white, are deeply uncomfortable with. “Textbooks have trouble acknowledging that anything might be wrong with white Americans, or with the United States as a whole” argues author James Loewen, continuing his analysis with the poignant comment that what Americans learned from slavery was the “idea that it is appropriate, even ‘natural,’ for whites to be on top, blacks on the bottom”. Not many people who understand how racism and history intersect would argue that slavery, as racism’s greatest representation, has led to racial injustice for African-Americans and other minority groups, but people who understand this intersection likely do not learn it from textbooks. This is because textbooks do not “connect history and racism”, leaving teachers to fill in the gaps; and when teachers demure and the connection is never made, students are left to make the connections themselves instead of analyzing connections that are clear, evident, and stated in all history textbooks. More than dealing with white racism, textbook authors feel it that their energies are better spent trying to avoid discomforting white people, thus preventing all students from “analyz[ing] racism intelligently” (Loewen 163) and bridging divides rather than letting old ones fester and possibly even creating new ones. If textbooks do not make the change so that students can analyze racism intelligently, racism can never really be addressed and old problems are bound to resurface.

​History bears down on the present and so historically contextualizing white racism is necessary to understanding how minority groups are affected by it today. In Kate Masur’s essay, “Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860-1877,” Masur writes about the carnage resulting from the Civil War and how, despite strong efforts, Reconstruction failed to uplift the black community from the servitude that they had been placed in. When President Johnson assumed office after Lincoln’s assassination, he helped ratify the 13th Amendment, but also allowed state governments to pass “black codes” which “were efforts by the southern elite to restore control over a plantation labor force formerly held in place by whips, chains, and slave patrols” (Globalyceum, Section 2). These black codes kept the strict racial hierarchy separating whites and blacks intact so that black people could only go as far as white people would let them – that is to say, not far at all. The repercussions of slavery, black codes, and failed Reconstructionist efforts all worked against black advancement and the repercussions of these historical events are still felt today. Loewen shows this when he writes how, “on average, African Americans have worse housing, lower scores on IQ tests, and higher percentages of young men in jail. The sneaking suspicion [is] that African Americans might be inferior”. This sneaking suspicion goes unchallenged partially because textbooks have failed to teach students about how white racism kept black people in an inferior position. Holding this sneaking suspicions is not just white students as black students have come to believe that their problems are only their fault, leading them to fill poorly about themselves and fulfill the cycle of low expectations.

​When African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other groups looked for equal rights, they were often turned away from white social movements such as those that took shape during the Progressive Era. According to Professor Charles Postel of San Francisco State University, “too often white reformers rebuffed the equal rights claims of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and other groups, who faced new waves of segregation, disenfranchisement, dispossession, and exclusion” (Globalyceum, Introduction). Since white people controlled the social institutions at the time – and still do to a large extent – it was impossible for minority groups to overcome this segregation, disenfranchisement, dispossession, and exclusion except in the rarest of cases. Thus, minority groups did not see the social advances that white people were advocating at the time, leading to another generation of downtrodden men and women. Postel makes the connection between white supremacy and the lower socioeconomic classes of many minorities, especially African Americans, when he writes how, by the end of the 20th-century, “Democrats had launched a violent ‘white supremacy campaign’ demanding and end to black voting…most Populists bent before Democratic legislation for poll taxes, literacy tests, and black disenfranchisement”. Without the political rights necessary for self-determination, and denied the monetary benefits that came with unionizing and fighting for fair wages, black Americans and others inevitably found themselves confined to a lower socioeconomic positon than whites. Textbooks do not make this connection and seldom do students who see the realities of the society they live in, but do not understand how these realities came to be. The United States is marked by socioeconomic inequality, but this inequality did not come from nowhere. Instead, it was the result of clear policy and white racism, both of which should be included in the textbook.

​For minorities during the early decades of the 20th-century, life was no easier as new laws were enacted that led to conditions that were no better than before. For African Americans, there was Jim Crow, a set of laws that led to job and housing discrimination and set up the “separate but equal” policy that was separate but hardly equal. Writing about Jim Crow is San Jose State University Professor, Glen Gendzel, who states that, after African Americans left the South during the Great Migration, they “could not escape racism. Even in the North they had to live in proscribed ghetto areas and put up with low-wage jobs, everyday hatred, and de facto segregation” (Globalyceum, Section 2). By leaving the South, African Americans had escaped Jim Crow, but not entirely, and so their lives were greatly compromised for the worse even as they settled in the North. White racism again reared its head, but textbooks do not seem concerned about writing about white racism, leading, as Loewen argues, to white students who “may conclude that all societies are racist, perhaps by nature, so racism is right” and to black students who believe that “all whites are racist, perhaps by nature, and so to be anti-white is all right”. Neither of these beliefs are acceptable, but both of them are too common to be ignored. Ignorance will only cause these beliefs to be passed on from one student to the next and then from one generation to the next so that white people continue to espouse racism and black people continue to be anti-white. Any chance for reconciliation is nullified and the United States continues as it has been for too long – as a racially-divided society that is never able to reach its full potential because its citizens are never able to overcome their inaccurate and racist views of each other. Textbooks have an obligation to help Americans work toward reconciliation, but for this to happen they must change so that white racism and its effects on African Americans and other minorities are not tucked away in some corner as if they were unimportant. As Loewen puts it, “when textbooks make racism invisible in American history, they obstruct our already poor ability to see it in the present”, leading to the continuation of old ways that have, so far, proved harmful to so many.

​Objectively studying American history will let even the amateur historian to realize how white racism and white supremacy has left no institution or historical event untouched. How textbooks have not made the connection between white racism and history clear is beyond conscionable, especially since not doing is one of the strongest ways to make sure that racism persists. As this paper demonstrates, when white racism is left out of history books, white students come to think of white supremacy as natural while black students begin to resent white students for the advantages that they have. Textbooks should treat students as the capable and thoughtful people that they are rather than trying to infantilize them and make it so that white racism was never as big an issue as so many have made it out to be. This infantilizing does nothing for students or for white people as a whole, but more than white students or white people, black students and those of other racial groups are the ones who really continue to suffer.