Seven years ago the United States experienced a monumental event. In the fall of 2008, then Senator Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected to the Oval Office.
In wake of his election, many called this moment the beginning of the end of racial dividing lines in the U.S. and that this was a crowning moment in the fight to end racism.
However, as we near the end of President Obama’s second term, it is apparent that racial tensions remain extremely high and hostile.
If one simply looks over the course of President Obama’s time in the White House, numerous events come to mind. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, have all become martyrs in the fight for civil rights in the United States and an end to racial discrimination.
People in this country often stress that we live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but in reality, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
As recently as two weeks ago, one can see racial profiling continues to be a significant issue in the United States. On April 4, Walter Scott, a 50 year-old black man was stopped for a broken taillight in North Charleston, South Carolina. Though this stop continues to be contested as racial profiling, Scott eventually attempted to flee the scene and was subsequently fatally shot by officer Michael Slager.
In addition, when footage of the shooting arose on the internet, Officer Slager can be seen planting a taser on Scott as he bled out on the ground, proof that Slager’s original report, that Scott had stolen his taser, was false. Unfortunately, this is just one of many cases in which it seems that blacks have been targeted by law enforcement.
Another instance of this supposed targeting can be seen in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Brown, an 18 year-old black man, was shot by officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department (FPD). While questions surround what actually occurred that fateful day, Ferguson erupted into a full-fledged riot as the black community of the town contested Brown’s killing as racially motivated.
In addition, issues arose within the FPD and how they carried out their duty of “protecting” the citizens of Ferguson. In his findings for the U.S Justice Department reported by the Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder found that in 88% of the instances in which FPD used force, the victim was Africa-American.
Likewise, African-Americans in Ferguson are 2.07 times more likely to have their vehicle searched, yet they are 26% less likely to have contraband items.
In light of these instances, one can see that racial tensions in this country remain high. However, shootings are not the only circumstances of racism in recent events.
A few weeks ago, video surfaced of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity at the University of Oklahoma performing a racist chant on their bus as they traveled to their fraternity formal.
The startling video showed that not only are there significant racial tensions amongst our parents generations, but ours as well. Many of the students pictured in the video, including Levi Pettit and Parker Rice, were only freshmen at Oklahoma, and are thus not much older than the senior class at New Trier.
There is clearly an underlying issue in that racial intolerance and hatred did not stop with the enacting of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, nor with the election of President Obama.
Race continues to divide this country, and although we have outlawed the action of racism, we have not transcended the ideas of racism that continue to haunt our nation.