President Barack Obama

Barack Obama, who was the nation's first Black president, as a sign that the nation had entered a new, post-racial era.[172][173] The election of President Donald Trump in 2016, who was a chief proponent of the birther movement which is considered by many to be racist and has a history of speech and actions that have been widely viewed as racist or racially charged, has been viewed by some commentators as a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama.[174] During the mid-2010s, American society has seen a resurgence of high levels of racism and discrimination. One new phenomenon has been the rise of the "alt-right" movement: a white nationalist coalition which seeks the expulsion of sexual and racial minorities from the United States.[175] Since the mid-2010s, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have identified white supremacist violence as the leading threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.[176][177]

Sociologist Russ Long stated in 2013 that there is now a more subtle racism that associates a specific race with a specific characteristic.[178] In a 1993 study conducted by Katz and Braly, it was presented that "blacks and whites hold a variety of stereotypes towards each other, often negative".[179] The Katz and Braley study also found that African-Americans and whites view the traits that they identify each other with as threatening, interracial communication between the two is likely to be "hesitant, reserved, and concealing".[179]

The Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013 after the acquittal of a man who had killed the African-American teen Trayvon Martin in 2012.[180]

In August 2017, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued a rare warning to the population of the US and its leadership and it also urged them to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and crime, following violence in Charlottesville during a rally which was organized by white nationalists, white supremacists, Klansmen, neo-Nazis and various right-wing militias in August.[181][182]

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered by a white Minneapolis Police Department officer, who forced his knee on Floyd's neck for a total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds.[183][184][c] Floyd's murder sparked a wave of protests across the United States and worldwide[190] as well as reigniting the BLM protests.

Native Americans[edit]

Main article: Racism against Native Americans in the United States

Members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma around 1877.

Native Americans have inhabited the North American continent for at least 10,000 years, and millions of Native Americans lived in the region composing the modern-day United States prior to European colonization.[191] Both during and after the colonial period of American history, white settlers waged a long series of wars against Native Americans with the aim of displacing them and colonizing their lands. Many Native Americans were enslaved as a result of these wars, while others were forcibly assimilated into the culture of the white settlers.[192]

During the 19th century, the desire to forcibly remove certain Native American nations gained momentum. However, some Native Americans either chose to or were allowed to remain on their land and as a result, they avoided removal but thereafter, the federal government treated them in a racist manner. The Choctaws in Mississippi described their situation in 1849, "we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died."[193] According to Charles Hudson, Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described the Choctaws as having "no nobility or virtue at all, and in some respects he found blacks, especially native Africans, to be more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt; that is, even worse than black slaves."[194]

The Rescue sculpture stood outside the U.S. Capitol building between 1853 and 1958. A work commissioned by the U.S. government, its sculptor Horatio Greenough wrote that it was "to convey the idea of the triumph of the whites over the savage tribes".[195]

In the 1800s, ideologies such as manifest destiny, which held the view that the United States was destined to expand from coast to coast on the North American continent, fueled U.S. attacks against, and maltreatment of, Native Americans. In the years leading up to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 there were many armed conflicts between white settlers and Native Americans.[196] A justification for the conquest and subjugation of indigenous people emanated from the stereotyped perception that Native Americans were "merciless Indian savages" (as described in the United States Declaration of Independence).[197] Sam Wolfson in The Guardian writes, "The declaration's passage has often been cited as an encapsulation of the dehumanizing attitude toward indigenous Americans that the US was founded on."[198] Simon Moya-Smith, culture editor at Indian Country Today, states, "Any holiday that would refer to my people in such a repugnant, racist manner is certainly not worth celebrating. [July Fourth] is a day when we celebrate our resiliency, our culture, our languages, our children and we mourn the millions – literally millions – of indigenous people who have died as a consequence of American imperialism."[199]

In Martin Luther King Jr.'s book Why We Can't Wait, he wrote, "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race."[200] In 1861, residents of Mankato, Minnesota, formed the Knights of the Forest, with the goal of 'eliminating all Indians from Minnesota.' An egregious attempt occurred with the California gold rush, the first two years of which saw the death of thousands of Native Americans. Under Mexican rule in California, Indians were subjected to de facto enslavement under a system of peonage by the white elite. While in 1850, California formally entered the Union as a free state, with respect to the issue of slavery, the practice of Indian indentured servitude was not outlawed by the California Legislature until 1863.[201] The 1864 deportation of the Navajos by the U.S. government occurred when 9,000 Navajos were forcibly relocated to an internment camp in Bosque Redondo,[202] where, under armed guards, up to 3,500 Navajo and Mescalero Apache men, women, and children died from starvation and disease over the next 4 years.[202]

Mass grave for the dead Lakota following the Wounded Knee massacre. Eyewitness American Horse, chief of the Oglala Lakota, stated, "A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream ... the nation's hope is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."[203]

Native American nations on the plains in the west continued armed conflicts with the U.S. throughout the 19th century, through what were called generally Indian Wars.[204] Notable conflicts in this period include the Dakota War, Great Sioux War, Snake War and Colorado War. In the years leading up to the Wounded Knee massacre the U.S. government had continued to seize Lakota lands. A Ghost Dance ritual on the Northern Lakota reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, led to the U.S. Army's attempt to subdue the Lakota. The dance was part of a religion founded by Wovoka that told of the return of the Messiah to relieve the suffering of Native Americans and promised that if they would live righteous lives and perform the Ghost Dance properly, the European American invaders would vanish, the bison would return, and the living and the dead would be reunited in an Edenic world.[205] On December 29, 1890, at Wounded Knee, gunfire erupted, and U.S. soldiers killed up to 300 Indians, mostly old men, women and children.[206]

During the period surrounding the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, author L. Frank Baum wrote two editorials about Native Americans. Five days after the killing of the Lakota Sioux holy man, Sitting Bull, Baum wrote, "The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by the law of conquest, by a justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are."[207] Following the December 29, 1890, massacre, Baum wrote, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."[207][208]

Reservation marginalization[edit]

American Indian boarding schools[edit]

Richard Henry Pratt founded the first Native American boarding school in 1879. The goal of these schools was to teach Native American students White ways of being through education which emphasized European cultural values and the superiority of White American ways of life.[215]

American Indian boarding schools, were established in the United States during the 19th and lasted through the mid-20th centuries with the primary objective of assimilating Native Americans into the dominant White American culture. The effect of these schools has been described as forced assimilation against Native peoples.[53][216] In these schools, Native children were prohibited from participating in any of their cultures' traditions, including speaking their own languages. Instead, they were required to speak English at all times and learn geography, science, and history (among other disciplines) as white Americans saw fit.[53][216] This meant learning a version of history that upheld whites' superiority and rightful "inheritance" of the lands of the United States, while Natives were relegated to a position of having to assimilate to white culture without ever truly being considered equals.[53]

Current issues[edit]

While formal equality has been legally recognized, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the country, and according to national mental health studies, American Indians as a group tend to suffer from high levels of alcoholism, depression and suicide.[217] Native Americans are killed in police encounters at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. Native Americans are killed by police at 3 times the rate of White Americans and 2.6 times the rate of Black Americans, yet rarely do these deaths gain the national spotlight. The initial lack of media coverage and accountability has resulted in Indigenous-led movements such as Native Lives Matter and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and People.[218][219][220]

Native Americans are disproportionately represented in state and federal criminal justice systems. Native Americans are incarcerated at a rate 38% higher than the national average and were overrepresented in the prison population in 19 states compared to any other race and ethnicity. The National Prisoner Statistics series of 2016 reported 22,744 Native Americans were incarcerated in state and federal facilities and represented 2.1 to 3.7% of the federal offender population during 2019 despite only accounting for 1.7% of the United States population. In states with higher Native American populations such as North Dakota, incarceration rates are up to 7 times that of their White counterparts. A study analyzing federal sentencing data found that Native Americans are sentenced more harshly than White, African American, and Hispanic offenders. In fact, further analysis showed that young Native American males receive the most punitive sentences, surpassing punishment imposed upon young, African American or Hispanic males.[220]

The healthcare system also demonstrates disregard for Native American lives by creating additional barriers to accessing care in the state system, which places a higher burden on the Indian Health Service that is already chronically underfunded and understaffed. Native Americans experience a higher rate of violent hate crime victimizations than any other race or ethnicity.[221] Overall, Native Americans continue to experience racism, oppression, discrimination, microaggressions, mockery, and misunderstandings of current day Nativeness. The tandem exoticization and devaluation of Native American lives contributes to the epidemic of disappearances and murders of Native Americans, paired with delayed or poor investigations of these occurrences.[220]

Asian Americans[edit]

Main articles: History of Asian Americans and Racism against Asians § United States

Asian Americans, including those of East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian descent, have experienced racism since the first major groups of Chinese immigrants arrived in America. The Naturalization Act of 1790 made Asians ineligible for citizenship.[222] First-generation immigrants, the children of immigrants, and Asians who are adopted by non-Asian families are still impacted by discrimination.[223]

During the Industrial Revolution in the United States, labor shortages in the mining and rail industries were prevalent. Chinese immigrant labor was often used to fill this gap, most notably with the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, leading to large-scale Chinese immigration.[223] These Chinese immigrants were seen as taking the jobs of whites for lower wages, and the phrase Yellow Peril, which predicted the demise of Western civilization as the result of Chinese immigration, gained popularity.[224]

19th century[edit]

A political cartoon from 1882 ridiculing the Chinese Exclusion Act, showing a Chinese man, surrounded by benefits of Chinese immigration, being barred entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty", while other groups, including communists and hoodlums, are allowed to enter. The caption reads sarcastically, "We must draw the line somewhere, you know."

In 1871, one of the largest lynchings in American history was committed against Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California. It would go on to become known as the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871. The 1879 Constitution of the State of California prohibited the employment of Chinese people by state and local governments, as well as by businesses that were incorporated in California. Also, the 1879 constitution delegated power to local governments in California to enable them to remove Chinese people from the borders of their communities.[225][226] The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned the immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years. The Geary Act of 1892 extended the Chinese Exclusion Act by requiring all Chinese citizens to carry their resident permit at all times or risk either deportation or a year of hard labor, and was upheld by the 1893 Supreme Court case Fong Yue Ting v. United States. Several mob attacks against Chinese people took place, including the Rock Springs massacre of 1885 in Wyoming in which at least 28 Chinese miners were killed and 15 other Chinese miners were injured, and the Hells Canyon massacre of 1887 in Oregon in which 34 Chinese miners were killed.[227] In 1888, the Scott Act prevented 20,000-30,000 Chinese abroad from returning to the United States and was later upheld in the 1889 Supreme Court case Chae Chan Ping v. United States.

Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871

Denver's anti-Chinese riot in 1880

Local discriminatory laws were also enacted to stifle Chinese business and job opportunities; for example, in the 1886 Supreme Court case of Yick Wo v. Hopkins, a San Francisco city ordinance requiring permits for laundries (which were mostly Chinese-owned) was struck down, as it was evident the law solely targeted Chinese Americans. When the law was in effect, the city issued permits to virtually all non-Chinese permit applicants, while only granting one permit out of two hundred applications from Chinese laundry owners. When the Chinese laundries continued to operate, the city tried to fine the owners. In 1913, California, home to many Chinese immigrants, enacted an Alien Land Law, which significantly restricted land ownership by Asian immigrants, and extended it in 1920, ultimately banning virtually all land ownership by Asians.[228]

Japanese immigrants, who were unaffected by the Chinese Exclusion Act, began to enter the United States in large numbers in 1907, filling jobs that were once filled by Chinese workers. This influx also led to discrimination and President Theodore Roosevelt restricted Japanese immigration. Theodore Roosevelt's Executive Order 589 specifically prevented Japanese and Korean laborers, who possessed valid passports to go to Mexico, Canada, or Hawaii, from entering the continental United States. Later, Japanese immigration was closed when Japan entered into the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 to stop issuing passports to Japanese workers intending to move to the U.S.[229]

The immigration of people from all Asian countries was banned by the sweeping Immigration Act of 1917, also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, which also banned homosexuals, people with intellectual disability, and people with an anarchist worldview.[226]

Anti-Japanese sentiment and legislation[edit]

Main articles: Anti-Japanese sentiment § United States, and Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States

Anti-Filipino sentiment and legislation[edit]

In 1927, the four-day Yakima Valley riots in Washington state resulted in hundreds of Filipinos being forced to leave the valley under threat of death. In 1930, the Watsonville riots in California involved a mob of 500 white men and youths causing five days of violent attacks on Filipino farm workers, and the death of one worker who was shot through the heart. In 1934, the Tydings–McDuffie Act allowed the Philippines, then an American colony, to become an independent country after ten years. The act established a quota of 50 Filipino immigrants to the United States per year. The Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935 provided voluntary one-way passage for Filipinos in the United States to return to the Philippines. However, if they wanted to return to the United States, they would then be subject to the quota of 50 Filipino immigrants per year.

World War II and postwar[edit]

During World War II, the Republic of China was an ally of the United States, and the federal government praised the resistance of the Chinese against Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War, in an attempt to reduce anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1943, the Magnuson Act was passed by Congress, repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act and reopening Chinese immigration; at the time, the United States was actively fighting against the Empire of Japan, which was a member of the Axis powers. Anti-Japanese racism, which spiked after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was tacitly encouraged by the government, which used slurs such as "Jap" in propaganda posters. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, citing possible security threats. American soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater frequently dehumanized their enemies, leading them to mutilate Japanese war dead.[230] The racist nature of this dehumanization is revealed by the different ways in which corpses were treated in the Pacific and European theaters. Apparently, some soldiers mailed Japanese skulls home as souvenirs, but none of them mailed German or Italian skulls home.[231] This prejudice continued to exist for some time after the end of the war, and anti-Asian racism also affected U.S. policy during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, even though Asians fought on both sides during both of those wars as well as during World War II. Some historians have alleged that a climate of racism, with unofficial rules like the "mere gook rule",[232][233] allowed a pattern to exist in which South Vietnamese civilians were treated as if they were less than human and war crimes were also common.[234] Despite poor treatment by the United States, thousands of Japanese Americans joined the US military during World War II, in the segregated 442nd Infantry Regiment and 100th Infantry Battalion. The 442nd suffered heavy losses during its fight against Nazi Germany while it was rescuing the Lost Battalion, and in recognition of these combat casualties, it was nicknamed "The Purple Heart Battalion."

On October 18, 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 10009 to revoke in part Executive Orders 589 from March 14, 1907, and Executive Order 1712 from February 24, 1913.[235]

Bhagat Singh Thind was twice denied citizenship as he was not deemed white.[236]

Prior to 1965, Indian immigration to the U.S. was small and isolated, with fewer than 50,000 Indian immigrants in the country. The Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington, on September 5, 1907, epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and Hindus. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized, with U.S. officials casting them as "Hindu menaces" and pushing for Western imperial expansion abroad.[237] In the 1923 case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled that high caste Hindus were not "white persons" and were therefore racially ineligible for naturalized citizenship.[238] The Court also argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians.[238] It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens.[239]

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 facilitated entry to the U.S. for immigrants other than the traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and as a result, it would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix in the U.S.[240] On the U.S. immigration laws prior to 1965, sociologist Stephen Klineberg stated the law "declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race."[240] In 1990, Asian immigration was encouraged when nonimmigrant temporary working visas were given to help with the shortage of skilled labor within the United States.[223]

21st century[edit]

European Americans[edit]

Various European American immigrant groups have been subjected to discrimination on the basis of their religion (see Religious discrimination in the United States and Anti-Catholicism in the United States), immigrant status (which is known as "Nativism") or ethnicity (country of origin).

Philadelphia nativist riots.

New York Times, 1854 ad, reading "No Irish need apply."

In the 19th century, this was particularly true because of anti-Irish prejudice, which was based on anti-Catholic sentiment, and prejudice against the Irish as an ethnicity. This was especially true for Irish Catholics who immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century; the large number of Irish (both Catholics and Protestants) who settled in America in the 18th century had largely (but not entirely) escaped such discrimination and eventually blended into the white American population. During the 1830s in the U.S., riots over control of job sites broke out in rural areas among rival labor teams whose members were from different parts of Ireland, and riots also broke out between Irish and local American work teams which were competing for construction jobs.[251]

The Native American Party, commonly called the Know Nothing movement was a political party, whose membership was limited to Protestant men, that operated on a national basis during the mid-1850s and sought to limit the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants, thus reflecting nativism and anti-Catholic sentiment. There was widespread anti-Irish job discrimination in the United States and "No Irish need apply" signs were common.[252][253][254]

Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928. The second era Klan was a large nationwide movement with between four million and six million members.

The second era Ku Klux Klan was a very large nationwide organization in the 1920s, consisting of between four million and six million members (15% of the nation's eligible population) that especially opposed Catholics.[255] The revival of the Klan was spurred by the release of the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.[256] The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to America's "Anglo-Saxon blood".[257] Anti-Catholic sentiment, which appeared in North America with the first Pilgrim and Puritan settlers in New England in the early 17th century, remained evident in the United States up to the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, who went on to become the first Catholic U.S. president in 1961.[258]

Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti were wrongfully executed in 1927; most historians agree that they were given an unfair trial heavily influenced by anti-Italianism and anti-immigrant bias.

The 20th century saw discrimination against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (notably Italian Americans and Polish Americans), partially as a result of anti-Catholic sentiment (as well as discrimination against Irish Americans), partially as a result of Nordicism. The primary spokesman for Nordicism was the eugenicist Madison Grant. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinkers and government policy makers in the U.S.[259]

Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.

— Future U.S. president Calvin Coolidge, 1921.[260]

Discrimination was also directed at physical appearances. Immigrants from Southern Europe often times had heavy tans and spoke foreign languages. This caused many whites in America to treat them as if the darker immigrants were not white. This was especially noticeable in immigrants that spoke Romance languages which the majority of white Americans could not distinguish from Spanish; thus the immigrants from countries such as Italy or Iberia were treated similar to Hispanics from places like Puerto Rico, who were then, and still now treated as people of color. Over time, as the immigrants children and their descendants learned English with no accent, and did not tan as dark without the Mediterranean climate, these Europeans were more likely to be accepted as white. The largest mass lynching in American history happened to Italians in New Orleans.[261][262][263]

An advocate of the U.S. immigration laws that favored Northern Europeans, the Klansman Lothrop Stoddard primarily wrote about the alleged dangers which "colored" peoples posed to white civilization, with his most famous book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy in 1920. Nordicism led to the reduction in Southern European, along with Slavic Eastern European and Russian immigrants in the National Origins Formula of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, whose goal was to maintain the status quo distribution of ethnicity by limiting immigration of non-Northern Europeans. According to the U.S. Department of State the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity".[264] The racial term Untermensch originates from the title of Stoddard's 1922 book The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-man.[265] It was later adopted by the Nazis (and its chief racial theorist Alfred Rosenberg) from that book's German version Der Kulturumsturz: Die Drohung des Untermenschen (1925).[266]

Hispanic and Latino Americans[edit]

A rally is held for victims of Hurricane Maria in protest against the U.S. government's response to it and the Political status of Puerto Rico.

Americans of Latin American ancestry (often categorized as "Hispanic" or Hispanic and Latino Americans) come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. As a result, not all Latinos are distinguishable as members of a single racial minority.

After the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), the United States annexed much of the current Southwestern region from Mexico. Mexicans who resided in that territory were subjected to discrimination. According to conservative estimates, 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928, corresponding to a per capita lynching rate second only to that suffered by the African American community.[267][268]

Racist sign from the deep south (National Civil Rights Museum)

Many public institutions, businesses, and homeowners associations officially excluded Mexican Americans as a matter of policy. School children of Mexican American descent were subjected to racial segregation in the public school system. In many counties, Mexican Americans were excluded from serving as jurors in court cases, especially in those that involved Mexican American defendants. In many areas across the Southwest, they lived in separate residential areas, due to laws and real estate company policies.[269][270][271][272]

Hispanic protest against California immigration policy. Todos somos ilegales – We are all Illegals.

During the Great Depression, the U.S. government sponsored a Mexican Repatriation program which was intended to encourage Mexican immigrants to voluntarily return to Mexico, however, many were forcibly removed against their will. At least 355,000 persons of Mexican ancestry went to Mexico during the 1930s, 40 to 60 percent of those individuals were U.S. citizens – overwhelmingly children. Voluntary repatriation was more common than formal deportation. The government formally deported at least 82,000 people to Mexico between 1929 and 1935.[273]

The Zoot Suit Riots were incidents of racial violence against Latinos in Los Angeles in 1943 which lasted several days.[274][275]

During the 1960s, young Mexican Americans formed the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. U.S. president Richard Nixon is recorded exhibiting prejudice toward Mexican Americans and African Americans:

I have the greatest affection for [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. ... The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

— U.S. president Richard Nixon, 1971.[276]

Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans[edit]

An Assyrian church after it was vandalized in Detroit (2007). Although they are not Arabs and are mostly Christians, Assyrians often face a racist backlash in the US because of their Middle Eastern background.[277]

People of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent historically occupied an ambiguous racial status in the United States. Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants were among those who sued in the late 19th and early 20th century to determine whether they were "white" immigrants as required by naturalization law. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence", including the notion of a "Caucasian race" including Middle Easterners and many South Asians, was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.[278]

Arab Americans[edit]

Racism against Arab Americans [279] and racialized Islamophobia against American Muslims have risen concomitantly with tensions between the American government and the Islamic world.[280] Following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, discrimination and racialized violence has markedly increased against Arab Americans and many other religious and cultural groups.[281] Scholars, including Sunaina Maira and Evelyn Alsultany, argue that in the post-September 11 climate, the markers of the racialization of Muslim Americans are cultural, political, and religious rather than phenotypic.[282][283]

There have been attacks not only against Muslim Arabs, but also numerous Christian Arabs have been attacked based on their appearances.[284] Non-Arab and non-Muslim Middle Eastern people, as well as South Asians of different ethnic/religious backgrounds (Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs) have been stereotyped as "Arabs" and racialized in a similar manner. The case of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh who was murdered at a Mesa, Arizona gas station by a white supremacist for "looking like an Arab terrorist" (because of the turban, a requirement of Sikhism), as well as that of Hindus being attacked for "being Muslims" have achieved prominence and criticism following the September 11 attacks.[285][286]

Racial profiling is a growing problem for Arab Americans following the September 11 attacks. Particularly in airports, Arab Americans are often subject to heightened security screening, pre-boarding searches and interrogations, and are sometimes denied passage "based solely on the belief that ethnicity or national origin increases passengers' flight risk."[287]

On January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, titled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States", otherwise known as the "Muslim Ban". Entry was suspended for persons coming from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. More than 700 travelers were detained, and up to 60,000 visas were "provisionally revoked".

Iranian Americans[edit]

A man holding a sign that reads "deport all Iranians" and "get the hell out of my country" during a protest of the Iran hostage crisis in Washington, D.C. in 1979.

The November 1979 Iranian hostage crisis of the U.S. embassy in Tehran precipitated a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States, directed both against the new Islamic regime and Iranian nationals and immigrants. Even though such sentiments gradually declined after the release of the hostages at the start of 1981, they sometimes flare up. In response, some Iranian immigrants to the U.S. have distanced themselves from their nationality and instead identify primarily on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliations.[288]

Since the 1980s and especially since the 1990s, it has been argued, Hollywood's depiction of Iranians has gradually shown signs of vilifying Iranians.[289]

Indian Americans[edit]

In the United States, Indian Americans have sometimes been mistaken for Arabs or Muslims, and thus, many of the same prejudices which have been experienced by Arab Americans have also been experienced by Indian Americans, regardless of their actual religious or ethnic background.

In the 1980s, a gang known as the Dotbusters specifically targeted Indian Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey with violence and harassment.[290] Studies of racial discrimination, as well as stereotyping and scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years.[291] In particular, racial discrimination against Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with Indophobia due to the rise in outsourcing/offshoring, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring white-collar labor to India.[292][293] According to the offices of the Congressional Caucus on India, many Indian Americans are severely concerned of a backlash, though nothing serious has taken place yet.[293] Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community.[291]

Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented.[294]

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, there have been scattered incidents of Indian Americans becoming mistaken targets for hate crimes. In one example, a Sikh, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered at a Phoenix gas station in a hate crime.[295] This happened after September 11, and the murderer claimed that his turban made him think that the victim was a Middle Eastern American.

Jewish Americans[edit]

Main article: Antisemitism in the United States

Protesters at the Unite the Right rally carrying Confederate flags, Gadsden flags, and a Nazi flag

Antisemitism has also played a role in the history of the United States. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Jews escaped from the pogroms which were occurring in Europe.[296]

Beginning in the 1910s, Southern Jewish communities were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, which objected to Jewish immigration, and frequently used "The Jewish Banker" caricature in its propaganda. In 1915, Leo Frank was lynched in Georgia while he was serving a life sentence after being convicted of murder.[297] This event was a catalyst in the re-formation of the Ku Klux Klan.[298]

Universities, such as Harvard, introduced Jewish quotas which effectively placed a limit on the number of Jews admitted to the university. According to the historian David Oshinsky, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935 Yale accepted 76 applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and only five got in." He notes that Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, and take no blacks at all."[299]

Events in Nazi Germany attracted attention in the United States. Jewish lobbying for intervention in Europe drew opposition from the isolationists, amongst whom was Father Charles Coughlin, a well known radio priest, who believed that the Jews were leading the United States into the war.[300] He preached weekly, overtly anti-Semitic sermons and, from 1936, he began the publication of a newspaper, Social Justice, in which he printed anti-Semitic accusations such as those which are contained in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[301]

A number of Jewish organizations, Christian organizations, Muslim organizations, and academics consider the Nation of Islam anti-Semitic. Specifically, they claim that the Nation of Islam has engaged in revisionist and antisemitic interpretations of the Holocaust and exaggerates the role of Jews in the Atlantic slave trade.[302] The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) alleged that the NOI's Health Minister, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, accused Jewish doctors of injecting Blacks with the AIDS virus,[303] an allegation that Muhammad and The Washington Post have refuted.[304]

Although Jews are usually considered white by mainstream American society, the relationship between Jews and the concept of whiteness remains complex, so some Jews prefer not to identify as white.[305][306][307][308] Prominent activist and rabbi Michael Lerner argues, in a 1993 Village Voice article, that "in America, to be 'white' means to be the beneficiary of the past 500 years of European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world" and that "Jews can only be deemed white if there is massive amnesia on the part of non-Jews about the monumental history of anti-Semitism".[308]

On October 27, 2018, Robert D. Bowers opened fire in a synagogue in Pittsburgh with an AR-15-style rifle while he was shouting anti-Semitic racial slurs. This attack resulted in 11 dead and 6 wounded, leaving the assailant charged with 29 criminal counts, one of which was the obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs.[309]

Continuing antisemitism has remained an issue in the United States and the 2011 Survey of American Attitudes Toward Jews in America, which was released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has found that the recent world economic recession increased the expression of some antisemitic viewpoints among Americans. Most of the people who were surveyed expressed pro-Jewish sentiments, with 64% of them believing that Jewish people have contributed much to U.S. social culture. Yet the polling also found that 19% of Americans answered "probably true" to the antisemitic trope that "Jews have too much control/influence on Wall Street" (see Economic antisemitism) while 15% of Americans concurred with the related statement that Jews seem "more willing to use shady practices" in business than other people do. Reflecting on the lingering antisemitism of about one in five Americans, Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, has argued, "It is disturbing that with all of the strides we have made in becoming a more tolerant society, anti-Semitic beliefs continue to hold a vice-grip on a small but not insubstantial segment of the American public."[310]

The JNS reported in 2023 that America was experiencing the worst eruption of antisemitism in its 250 year history.[311] Jews were the religious group that faced the most hate crime in the United States in 2022 according to an FBI report.[312] FBI director said that 60% of religious based hate crimes were on Jews.[313]

Consequences[edit]

Developmental[edit]

Using The Schedule of Racist Events (SRE), an 18-item self-report inventory which assesses the frequency of racist discrimination, Hope Landrine and Elizabeth A. Klonoff found that racist discrimination is rampant in the lives of African Americans and as a result, it is strongly related to psychiatric symptoms.[314] A study on racist events in the lives of African American women found that lifetime experiences of racism were positively related to lifetime histories of both physical disease and the frequency of recent common colds. These relationships were largely unaccounted for by other variables. Demographic variables such as income and educational inequality were not related to experiences of racism. The results suggest that racism can be detrimental to African Americans' well-being.[315] The physiological stress caused by racism has been documented in studies by Claude Steele, Joshua Aronson, and Steven Spencer on what they term "stereotype threat."[316]

Much research has been done on the effects of racism on adults, but racism and discrimination also affect children and teens.[317] From infancy to adolescence, studies document a children's growth in understanding of race from being aware of race to later understanding how race and prejudice affects their life, the lives of others', and society as a whole.[318][319][320][321][317] The comprehensive literature review of 214 published articles with key words related to the topic, such as discrimination, racism, and prejudice for adolescents aged 10–20 years (Benner et al., 2008) highlighted a link between teens' experiences of racial and ethnic discrimination and "their socioemotional distress, academic success, and risky health behaviors". This study chose larger sample sized and peer reviewed studies, over smaller sampled and non-peer reviewed studies.[317]

In this review, researchers showed links between racial discrimination and lower socioemotional, academic, and behavioral outcomes. The socioemotional variable included depression, internalized symptoms, self-esteem, and positive well-being; academics included achievement, engagement, and motivation; and behavioral outcomes included externalized behaviors, substance abuse, deviant peer associations, and risky sexual behaviors.[317] Researchers examined the links between discrimination and other demographic variables such as race, age, and country of residence. When looking at the impact of race/ethnicity, results show that Asian and Latino youth show greater socioemotional distress and Latino youth show lower academic outcomes. Younger teens (10 to 13 years) experience more socioemotional distress than those in middle or late teens. Furthermore, when looking at county of residence, teens in the United States have a much stronger link to socioemotional distress than other countries included in the review.[317]

In 2023 a study was released that looked at the effect of structural inequities on the brains of Black children. Examining MRI scans of 7,350 White and 1,786 Black children ages 9 and 10 researchers reported that Black children living in poverty face increased instances of stress and trauma that can alter their brain development. The study defines the stressors as "prolonged exposure to adverse experiences" including neighborhood disadvantage, family conflict, and income. Researchers found Black children had greater exposure to adversity, lower volume of different brain regions, and more PTSD symptoms. Accounting for differences in exposure to adversity significantly attenuated race-related differences in volume in several brain regions.[322][323]

Societal[edit]

Schemas and stereotypes[edit]

This racist postcard from the 1900s shows the casual denigration of Black women. It states "I know you're not particular to a fault / Though I'm not sure you'll never be sued for assault / You're so fond of women that even a wench / Attracts your gross fancy despite her strong stench"

Media

Main article: Stereotypes of groups within the United States

Popular culture (songs, theater) for European American audiences in the 19th century created and perpetuated negative stereotypes of African Americans. One key symbol of racism against African Americans was the use of blackface. Directly related to this was the institution of minstrelsy. Other stereotypes of African Americans included the fat, dark-skinned "mammy" and the irrational, hypersexual male "buck".

Many of these stereotypes entered public media with an imprimatur from the highest levels of white society. In a 1943 speech on the floor of Congress quoted in both The Jewish News of Detroit [324] and the antisemitic magazine The Defender of Wichita[325] Mississippi Representative John E. Rankin stated that Jewish Communists were arranging for white women to be raped by Black American men.

In recent years increasing numbers of African-American activists have asserted that rap music videos commonly use scantily clothed African-American performers posing as thugs or pimps. The NAACP and the National Congress of Black Women also have called for the reform of images on videos and on television. Julian Bond said that in a segregated society, people get their impressions of other groups from what they see in videos and what they hear in music.[326][327][328][329]

In 1899 Uncle Sam balances his new possessions which are depicted as "savage" children. The figures are Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, Philippines and "Ladrone Is." (the Mariana Islands).

It is understood that representations of minorities in the media have the ability to reinforce or change stereotypes. For example, in one study, a collection of white subjects were primed by a comedy skit either showing a stereotypical or neutral portrayal of African-American characters. Participants were then required to read a vignette describing an incident of sexual violence, with the alleged offender either white or black, and assign a rating for perceived guilt. For those shown the stereotypical African-American character, there was a significantly higher guilt rating for black alleged offender in the subsequent vignette, in comparison to the other conditions.[330]

While schemas have an overt societal consequence, the strong development of them have lasting effect on recipients. Overall, it is found that strong in-group attitudes are correlated with academic and economic success. In a study analyzing the interaction of assimilation and racial-ethnic schemas for Hispanic youth found that strong schematic identities for Hispanic youth undermined academic achievement.[331]

Additional stereotypes attributed to minorities continue to influence societal interactions. For example, a 1993 Harvard Law Review article states that Asian Americans are commonly viewed as submissive, as a combination of relative physical stature and Western comparisons of cultural attitudes. Furthermore, Asian Americans are depicted as the model minority, unfair competitors, foreigners, and indistinguishable. These stereotypes can serve to dehumanize Asian Americans and catalyze hostility and violence.[332]

Minority-minority racism[edit]

Main article: Interminority racism in the United States

Minority racism is sometimes considered controversial because of theories of power in society. Some theories of racism insist that racism can only exist in the context of social power so it can be imposed upon others.[333] Yet discrimination and racism has also been noted between racially marginalized groups. For example, there has been ongoing violence between African American and Mexican American gangs, particularly in Southern California.[334][335][336][337]

Conflict has also been noted between recent immigrant groups and their established ethnic counterparts within the United States. Rapidly-growing communities of African and Caribbean immigrants have come into conflict with African Americans. The amount of interaction and cooperation between Black immigrants and African Americans are considered to be disputable. One can argue that racial discrimination and cooperation are not ordinarily based on skin color, but are instead based on shared or common, cultural experiences and beliefs.[338][339]

Interpersonal discrimination[edit]

In a manner that defines interpersonal discrimination in the United States, Darryl Brown of the Virginia Law Review states that while "our society has established a consensus against blatant, intentional racism in the decades since Brown v Board of Education and it has also developed a sizeable set of legal remedies to address it", our legal system "ignores the possibility that 'race' is structural or interstitial, that it can be the root of injury even when it is not traceable to a specific intention or action".[340]

Unlike formal discrimination, interpersonal discrimination is often not an overt or deliberate act of racism. For example, in an incident regarding a racial remark which was made by a professor at Virginia Law, a rift was created by conflicting definitions of racism. For the students who defended the professor's innocence, "racism was defined as an act of intentional maliciousness". Yet for African Americans, racism was broadened to a detrimental influence on "the substantive dynamics of the classroom". As an effect, it is argued that the "daily repetition of subtle racism and subordination in the classroom can ultimately be, for African Americans, even more reductive of stress, anxiety and alienation than blatant racist acts can be." Moreover, the attention which is given to these acts of discrimination diverts energy from academics, becoming a distraction that white students do not generally face.[340]

Ethnic-racial socialization[edit]

Ethnic-racial socialization refers to the transfer of knowledge about various aspects of race or ethnicity through generations.[341] Parents of color use ethnic-racial socialization to transfer cultural knowledge to their children to protect them from potential biases which they may face as a result of their ethnicity and/or race.[341] However, how parents choose to socialize their children regarding issues of ethnicity and race may affect children differently.[341] For example, when parent's socialization efforts focus on positive aspects of their race or ethnicity, children of color tend to report higher self-esteem.[341] On the other hand, if the focus of socialization mainly revolves around mistrust about interracial or inter-ethnic relations, children's self-concept, or how children view themselves might suffer.[341] Promotion of socialization that centers on mistrust is especially harmful when parents present it without also teaching positive coping skills.[341]

Wang et al. (2020)[341] conducted a meta-analytic review of 334 articles examining the effects of ethnic-racial socialization on children of color's psychosocial adjustment. Researchers evaluated the stage of children's development in which the effects of ethnic-racial socialization would be most prominent. Their findings using their systematic review process showed a positive relationship between parental ethnic-racial socialization and psychosocial well-being measures, including self-perception, confidence, and interpersonal relationships.

The effects of age varied based on the psychosocial well-being measure a study used. Results showed that the link between positive self-perception and ethnic-racial socialization was most effective when it occurred in childhood and early adolescence.[341] On the other hand, children who reported positive relationships between their interpersonal relationships and ethnic-racial socialization showed this paper in middle to late adolescence.[341] The effects of ethnic-racial socialization also varied based on children's race/ethnicity. Self-perception and ethnic-racial socialization are related more positively among African Americans,[341] suggesting that parents used ethnic-racial socialization to buffer against the deep-rooted stigma and biases African Americans face in the United States.[341] Contrary to the experiences of African Americans, ethnic-racial socialization was related to low self-perception among Asian Americans.[341] Extensive research is required to better understand the connection of ethnic-racial socialization for Asian American children's psychosocial well-being.[341]

To better understand the effects of ethnic-racial socialization and psychological development, research should take into account known moderating factors similar to stereotype threat.[341] It is important to note that the research findings were correlational and as such does not imply causality.

Institutional racism[edit]

Institutional racism is the theory that aspects of the existing social structure, pervasive attitudes, and established institutions in society disadvantage some racial groups, but not with an overtly discriminatory mechanism.[342] There are several factors which play into institutional racism, including: accumulated wealth/benefits for racial groups which have benefited from past discrimination, educational and occupational disadvantages which are faced by non-native English speakers in the United States, ingrained stereotypical images which still exist in American society (e.g. black men are likely to be criminals).[343] Institutional racism impacts the lives of racial groups negatively as although legislations where passed in the mid 20th century to abolish any sort of segregation and discrimination it still does not change the fact that institutional racism is still able to occur to anyone. Peter Kaufman, a former sociology professor at the State University of New York[344] published an article in which Kaufman describes three instances in which institutional racism has contributed to current views of race.[345] These are:

The mis- and Missing Education of Race, in which he describes problems which the educational system has in discussing "slavery, race, racism, and topics such as white privilege." He goes on to say that schools are still segregated based on class and race, which also contributes to the poor state of race relations[227]
Residential Racial Segregation. According to Kaufman, schools are still segregated because towns and cities are still largely segregated.
Media Monsters. This describes the role which the media plays in the portrayal of race. The mass media tends to play on "depictions of racialized stereotypes in the mass media [which are] ubiquitous, and such caricaturized images shape our perceptions of various racial groups." An example of this is the stereotyping of Blacks as criminals.[227][346]

Nazi Germany's inspiration from American racism[edit]

The U.S. was a global leader in codified racism, and its race laws fascinated Adolf Hitler and other German Nazis,[347] who praised America's system of institutional racism, believing it to be a model to follow in their Reich. Hitler's book Mein Kampf praised America as the only contemporary example of a country with racist ("völkisch") citizenship statutes in the 1920s.[347] The National Socialist Handbook for Law and Legislation of 1934–35, edited by lawyer Hans Frank, contains a pivotal essay by Herbert Kier on the recommendations for race legislation which devoted a quarter of its pages to U.S. legislation—from segregation, race based citizenship, immigration regulations, and anti-miscegenation.[347] Nazi lawyers were inspired by American laws when they designed their own laws in Nazi Germany,[347] including racist citizenship laws, and anti-miscegenation laws which inspired the two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law.[347]

Hitler and other Nazis were also inspired by America's 19th century westward expansion, believing it to be a model for the expansion of German territory into the territories of other nations and elimination of their indigenous inhabitants.[348] In 1928, Hitler praised the United States for having "gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage".[349] On Nazi Germany's expansion eastward, in 1941 Hitler stated, "Our Mississippi [the line beyond which Thomas Jefferson wanted all Indians expelled] must be the Volga, and not the Niger."[350] In a later speech Hitler stated, "in the East a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America", and Nazi troops "had a duty to look upon natives as Redskins".[348][351]

Contemporary issues[edit]

Hate crimes and terrorism[edit]

In the United States, most crimes in which victims are targeted on the basis of their race or ethnicity are considered hate crimes. Leading forms of bias which are cited in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, based on law enforcement agency filings include: anti-Black, anti-Jewish, anti-homosexual, and anti-Hispanic bias in that order in both 2004 and 2005.[352] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, whites, Black people, and Hispanic people had similar rates of violent hate crime victimization between 2007 and 2011.[353][354] However, from 2011 to 2012, violent hate crimes against Hispanic people increased by 300%.[355] When considering all hate crimes, not just violent ones, African Americans are far more likely to be victims than other racial groups.[356][357]

More recently, studies suggest that people who held racist or xenophobic beliefs or displayed racist or xenophobic attitudes are more likely to have a positive view of former President Donald Trump and the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[358]

Hateful views[edit]

Social media[edit]

Main articles: Online hate speech and Racism on the Internet

In contemporary times, many racist views have found a means of expression through social media.[365]

Among the popular social networks, in particular, the American platform Reddit has been defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the "home of the most violently racist internet content."[366] The SPLC pointed at how racist views had gained more and more traction on Reddit, which was even replacing traditionally far-right websites such as Stormfront in both the quantity and frequency of its racist content.[366] Several prominent intellectuals and publications have agreed with this view, considering Reddit a platform which is filled with hateful, racist and harassing content. So far, however, little or nothing has been done to address this problem.[367]

Robotics[edit]

Main article: Human–robot interaction § Color

In robotics Human–robot interaction, people have been found to project a racial bias onto robots.[368][369]

Artificial intelligence[edit]

Main article: Artificial intelligence § Algorithmic bias and fairness

Machine learning algorithms trained on data affected by racism may lead to artificial intelligence models that project and perpetuate the bias.[370] On July 5, 2024, New York City became the first city to enact regulation requiring firms utilizing AI-driven hiring algorithms,Automated Employment Decision Tools(AEDT), to prove that to prove their selections were free from sexism and racism.[371]

Responses[edit]

Further information: Anti-racism

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