2000-2019: A Color-blind Nation

“Wealth building”

Due to its long-segregated neighborhoods, “Baltimore became a hotbed for subprime mortgage abuse” (Pietila, 2010, p. 257). Banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America saw an opportunity to expand into a market desperate to own a home after decades of segregation and systemic racism had forced them into renting. These lenders offered low-income African Americans what looked like a dream come true: low closing costs, low mortgage rates, and low monthly payments. What was kept hidden from many people of color were the terms of these sub-prime mortgages. As Coates (2014) noted

When subprime lenders went looking for prey, they found black people waiting like ducks in a pen…in 2005, Wells Fargo promoted a series of Wealth Building Strategies seminars…but the “wealth building” seminars were a front for wealth theft. In 2010, the Justice Department filed a discriminatory suit against Wells Fargo alleging that the bank had shunted blacks into predatory loans regardless of their creditworthiness.

Rothstein noted that in Baltimore, Wells Fargo established “a unit staffed exclusively by African Americans whom supervisors instructed to visit [B]lack churches to market subprime loans. The bank had no similar practice of marketing such loans through white institutions” (Rothstein, 2017, 113).

When interest rates rose on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), which were the loans given to low-income people of color, their monthly payments increased. As banks bundled these loans and sold them to investors, rating agencies considered them a good risk, and so no one saw the crash coming. As interest rates rose in the mid-2000’s, more and more families missed their ever-increasing mortgage payments. And as more and more mortgage payments were missed, more and more banks, like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, foreclosed on properties that were, in most respects, dream homes for families who had been targeted for predatory loans.

Black Lives Matter

Mindy Thompson Fullilove (2016), a psychiatrist who works in urban policy and health, noted that the long history of slavery and systemic racism in the United States has caused a condition she called “root shock” in African Americans. Root shock, she argued, is akin to someone experiencing a life-threatening physical trauma, which leaves communities devoid of basic resources required to survive (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 11-12). When one studies the injustices against African Americans over the past four hundred years, this theory begins to make sense: slavery, Jim Crow, Plessy vs Ferguson, legal segregation, eugenics-based social policies, redlining, the GI Bill, urban renewal, blockbusting, contract housing, denial of civil rights, white flight, assassinations, racist drug laws and police brutality, racist zoning and development laws, displacement, mass incarceration, flipping, and the subprime mortgage crisis. This brutal history of slavery and systemic racism formed the framework for the events that came to dominate the media throughout the second decade of the twentieth century – the mass incarceration of Black men, police profiling, and the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

In the summer of 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed African American teen, Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman strenuously defended his actions as self-defense and despite being charged with murder, was acquitted. In solidarity against what was perceived as a racially motivated acquittal, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began to circulate on social media. The movement gained steam with the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner in 2014. Protesting discriminatory policing tactics and racist prejudice among law enforcement, the movement spread across the internet and across cities demanding fair treatment and re-evaluation of the criminal justice’s approach to race (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 36; Cobb, 2016).

Freddie Gray

On the morning of April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested for fleeing from police in the Sandtown-Winchester community of Baltimore and possessing what police called an illegal, switch-blade knife. In the aftermath of these events, legal experts have disagreed with the city’s definition of this type of weapon and the city’s implementation of this law (Fenton, 2016). Nevertheless, Gray was arrested without incident and placed into a police van (Baltimore Sun Timeline, 2016). An asthmatic, Gray requested an inhaler while in the police van for shortness of breath but was denied this medical support. In what is known as a “rough ride,” where unrestrained detainees are tossed around in the back of a police van due to erratic and high-speed driving, Gray was taken to the Western District police station. During this rough ride, his spine was “80 percent severed” (Baltimore Sun Timeline, 2016).

Baltimore police denied charges of brutality, but Police Commissioner Anthony Batts later admitted that “We know he was not buckled in the transportation wagon as he should have been. No excuses from me…we know our police employees failed to get him medical attention in a timely manner multiple times” (Baltimore Sun Timeline, 2016). After arriving at the Western District police station, officers called for emergency medical treatment and an ambulance. Gray was then taken to University of Maryland Shock Trauma where he underwent two surgeries for his spinal injury. After these surgeries, Gray remained in a coma for several days. On April 19, seven days after his questionable arrest, Freddie Gray died as a result of his injuries sustained in the back of the police wagon (Baltimore Sun Timeline, 2016).

While Gray was in the hospital and as more information about his arrest and injury became public, peaceful protests began. Residents of Baltimore gathered without conflict or violence for five days. These protests, what we are calling Baltimore’s Third Race Uprising, were as much a reaction to Freddie Gray’s arrest and injury as they were a reaction to four hundred years of slavery and systemic racism perpetrated against people of color in Baltimore and Maryland.

On April 23, Governor Larry Hogan ordered state troopers to Baltimore City, and two days later, the protests erupted into open conflict (Baltimore Sun Timeline, 2016). Despite calls for de-escalation from Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, government officials, clergy, community activists, and Gray’s family, the violence and destruction of property continued. On April 28, this violence led Governor Hogan to deploy the Maryland National Guard to Baltimore. City officials declared a 10 PM curfew. Some demonstrators protested the curfew, but these protests were mostly peaceful and few arrests were made. By May 2, the city had calmed and local community activists organized a large, peaceful demonstration at city hall.

From April 25 to May 3, police arrested hundreds of Baltimore residents, mostly African Americans, though few of them were convicted of any crime. Some protesters caused major property damage, and the conflict caused numerous injuries, though no deaths. Like other racially-charged protests across America at the time, the 2015 unrest in Baltimore fractured local communities, strained and sometimes split relationships between Black and white communities. Moreover, the unrest damaged the trust between residents and the police charged with protecting them. The ensuing legal battle between city prosecutors and the police officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death further stoked animosity between city and suburban/rural Marylanders and between Blacks and white residents. When the police officers involved in Gray’s arrest and subsequent death were not prosecuted, protesters again vented their displeasure through demonstrations, this time with fewer arrests and less property damage.

The long-term impact of Baltimore’s Third Race Uprising has been mixed. The uprising drew attention to the systemic racism African Americans in Maryland and Baltimore have suffered since the 1600’s. Many people who had not been involved with civic engagement have joined long-time community activists to rebuild relationships, repair property damage, and address drivers of systemic racism. However, the already strained relationship between law enforcement and city residents has gotten worse, with police now solving fewer homicides (Lowery, Rich, & Georges, 2018). Also, many people who watched the Freddie Gray uprisings on cable news, which inflamed the situation by looping footage of smoldering city property for days, developed negative impressions of Baltimore without knowing the history of the slavery and systemic racism that divided it. The impact of these negative impressions and historical ignorance continues to influence public opinion and, unfortunately, even the opinions of elected leaders.

The Criminal Justice System

The events of 2015 reinforced the degree to which structural racism tainted all aspects of American life; this racism is especially clear within the criminal justice system. Bonilla-Silva (2018) noted, “a record number of [B]lack people were killed by law enforcement in 2015, more than the deadliest year of lynching in the United States” (p. 34). The anti-Black practices enshrined in American criminology through eugenics, the Hoffman report, and underlying attitudes and ideologies of distrust toward Black people have produced disproportionate arrests, killings, and use of excessive force.

The higher number of African American arrests and convictions do not indicate higher crime rates among that population, they instead speak to “how supposedly race-neutral laws can be applied at the discretion of officers and departments to control the [B]lack population” (p. 36) Especially when looking at drug-related crimes, white antiracist activist Tim Wise (2018) has noted that statistically

White high school students are seven times more likely than [B]lacks to have used cocaine; eight times more likely to have smoked crack; ten times more likely to have used LSD and seven times more likely to have used heroin … What’s more, white youth ages 12-17 are more likely to sell drugs: 34 percent more likely, in fact, than their [B]lack counterparts. And it is white youth who are twice as likely to binge drink, and nearly twice as likely as [B]lacks to drive drunk. And white males are twice as likely to bring a weapon to school as are [B]lack males. (p. 36, as cited in Bonilla-Silva)

The statistical divergence continues across sectors. Research indicates that a Black individuals charged with murder of a white individual have a much higher chance of receiving the death sentence than any other race (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 38). Statistics are similar in cases of rape. African Americans charged with raping a white woman are more likely to be sentenced to death than white on white rape (p. 38). Even beyond sentencing disparities, Black persons face higher arrest rates than whites:

[F]or virtually every type of crime, African-American criminals are arrested at rates above their commission of the acts. For example, victimization reports indicated that 33 percent of women who were raped said that their attacker was [B]lack; however, [B]lack rape suspects made up fully 43 percent of those arrested. The disproportionate arrest rate adds to the public perception that rape is a “[B]lack crime.” (p. 39).

Across the criminal justice system and in the court of public opinion, Black men in particular are routinely seen as “suspicious” and deemed more likely to commit a crime. Distrust, from the street cop to court judge to the general public, reinforce a racist system that keeps the United States locked in a debilitating cycle of incarceration for people of color. As a result, America boasts the largest prison system on the planet, which is shocking considering the prison systems used in China and Russia used to punish political dissidents. Further, as Hinton (2016) noted, “the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population but holds 25 percent of its prisoners” (p. 5). African Americans and Latinos make up 59 percent of the United States’ prison inmates. Together they represent roughly 25 percent of its population (p. 5).

Color-blind America

With the election of the first African American president, Barrack Hussein Obama, many people believed that the United States had moved past its racist history. However, the “birther” argument during Obama’s election campaign and presidency revealed that racism had not died. Rather, new tools and new approaches emerged to spread its ideas.  A survey published by the Associated Press in 2012 revealed that “whites demonstrated more racism than in 2008 when Obama was elected” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 212).

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2018) has argued that we live in an age of color-blind racism and that the latest presidential election “proves the significance of color-blind racism” (p. 222). Bonilla-Silva defines color-blind racism as a new white supremacy that continues the racial hierarchy in America but using different, more subtle and sophisticated methods than the overt racism of the Jim Crow era. Qualities of this new racial structure are

[T]he increasingly covert nature of racial discourse and racial practices; the avoidance of racial terminology and the every-growing claim by whites that they experience ‘reverse racism’; the elaboration of a racial agenda over political matters that eschews direct racial references; the invisibility of most mechanisms to reproduce racial inequality; and finally, the rearticulation of some racial practices characteristic of the Jim Crow period of race relations. (p. 17-18)

In the 2016 presidential election, the resurgence of white supremacy was on full display. New administration policies, toxic political rhetoric, and the rise of the alt-right all demonstrate blatant racism. That a member of the presidential administration would say of Mexican immigrants – “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” – is an obvious example of racism.

Part of white nationalism’s appeal has come in the face of downward economic trend among struggling white families. The alt-right has tapped into what many whites expressed as feeling oppressed by “reverse racism.” Despite the articulation of a number of reasons outside of race that explain the economic downturn, white Americans experiencing poverty continue to support the current administration’s racist immigration policies and mimic racist rhetoric used by elected officials and their political appointees. Supporters eagerly repeat racist taunts such as “Send them back,” at political rallies in response to three women of color in the United States congress who have criticized the president’s policies. Analyzing this phenomenon, researcher Frantz Fanon

[C]onclude[d] that feelings had a unique ability to trump facts. … That is, people who experienced phobic emotional responses to Black people were likely to disregard conspicuously available “reasonable evidence” that people of color posed no threat them in actuality…. The widespread social panics over the perceived threats of criminality, terrorism, welfare dependence, and undocumented immigration in the post-civil rights era are similarly dismissive of facts and evidence. (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 223)

While the new administration may be stirring up color-blind racism, as well as giving new life to old-fashioned racial animosity, the systemic nature of this reality keeps America pro-white and anti-Black. Recent studies conducted by sociologists comparing the views of fringe white supremacist groups with mainstream attitudes found that “their [white supremacist] ideologies on race are remarkably similar to mainstream discourses” (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 225). Even after four hundred years – 1619 – 2019 – racism remains with us.