Despite the passage of civil rights laws, special programs targeting young Blacks in the urban ghettos, the so-called War on Poverty, stepped up tokenism when hiring Blacks, white racism persisted and has become more and more rabid. When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009 there was no record of improved Black economic growth, development and progress for the past 25 years.
Today, in 2014, median Black incomes are fluctuating between 47 and 63 percent of median white incomes. The public school system across the nation where 90 percent of Black children attend is failing and is a lesson in segregation at the neighborhood level. The rate of unemployment among Blacks is generally twice as high as among whites. Layoffs and recessions hit blacks with twice the impact they hit whites, since Blacks are the "last hired, first fired." The ratio of average Black to white incomes follows the business cycle closely, buffering white workers from some of the impact of the recession.
Blacks pay higher rents for inferior housing, higher prices in ghetto stores, higher insurance premiums, higher interest rates in banks and lending companies, travel longer distances at greater expense to their jobs, suffer from inferior garbage collection and less access to public recreational facilities, and are assessed at higher property tax rates when they own housing. Beyond this, Blacks are further harassed by police, the courts, and the prisons. [The Economics of Racism by Michael Reich].
Today, the first Black president of the United States can be called a "liar" during a State of the Union Address by a white male member of Congress and face little or no sanctions. President Obama is still seen as an "uppity Negro" by closet racists in Congress who refuse to work with him because of an ingrained morbid hatred of Black people. He's been caricatured as a monkey, Adolf Hitler and the Joker in Batman. His wife has been photo-shopped to look as a monkey from Planet of the Apes.
Political cowards on Twitter and others hiding behind white supremacist websites call Black people "mud monkeys, bastard coons, half-beasts" and every ugly name imaginable as their insecure "little boy" syndrome seeps out over and over again. They are the ones running to gun shops to buy hunting rifles and stock up on ammunition for when the time comes to "shoot the monkeys."
This is racism, unadulterated white racism, in the Age of Obama. Its real, its ugly and just as vitriolic as it was in 1877.
[Next week Part II: White Racism: Stereotyping and Demonizing of Black People]
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