Racial equality

alt=Martin Luther King Jr. shakes hands with Ned Breathitt.|thumb|Civil rights leader [[Martin Luther King Jr. (left) shakes hands with Ned Breathitt, governor of Kentucky]]

Racial equality is when people of all races and ethnicities are treated in an egalitarian/equal manner. Racial equality occurs when institutions give individuals legal, moral, and political rights. In present-day Western society, equality among races continues to become normative. Prior to the early 1960s, attaining equality was difficult for African, Asian, and Indigenous people. However, in more recent years, legislation is being passed ensuring that all individuals receive equal opportunities in treatment, education, employment, and other areas of life.

Background

American Civil War

In 1860, a third of all people in the Southern United States were slaves. Among other things, the American Civil War was fought to end this, and in September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which abolished the practice of slavery in the United States and granted protection and legal rights to recently freed Blacks.

Struggle of black society

Post–Civil War equality

Three million slaves were freed as a result of the American Civil War. Despite their having been freed, blacks still faced much discrimination and were forced into dependence on white landowners. Segregation was common in everyday life, such as in segregation of schools, healthcare and housing, especially so in the South. In addition, Black Americans were a common target of racial violence, and they would not receive equal treatment by the justice system. This effectively made them second-class citizens. Moreover, he played many roles in society and won an award for the movement he conducted. Martin Luther King Jr. not only took part in the Montgomery bus boycott, became a key speaker at the March on Washington, and was one of the youngest individuals to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he also peacefully handled his opinion. Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed." This group was against the violence that was directed toward blacks. Their objective was to eliminate racial inequality, and guarantee political, educational, social, and economic equality for citizens. Their office was located in New York.

CORE was established in 1942 in Chicago. It was a branch of a "Peace-Lover" organization, which was called the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). CORE used nonviolent actions that involved sit-ins, which were done on lunch counters in Chicago. By 1947, CORE contributed with an interracial bus ride across the upper part of the South. They were testing state buses that the US Supreme Court ordered to be desegregated, which was the Morgan v. Virginia decision in 1946. This led to some success for the facilities that were testing out the orders they were given, but it didn't grab much attention, especially at the national level, which was their main goal. By 1960, there was a new wave of nonviolent direct action protests initiated through the student sit-in movement. CORE's national director James Farmer repeated the Journey of Reconciliation. Another Supreme Court ruling, Boynton v. Virginia (1960), ordered a stop to segregation in the interstate bus terminals. That came to be the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders traveled deep into the south and were attacked by segregationists along with Alabama.

CORE began in the North and was mainly concentrated in public areas. About two decades ago, the North had segregated spots where blacks were not allowed. Those places, for example, were restaurants, bowling alleys, skating rinks, and barber shops. More successful efforts were the work settings where there were some experiments with interracial workers and in housing co-operatives. CORE's main focus was to increase public recognition in the north. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, CORE moved to the border states of Missouri, Maryland, and Oklahoma.

Accomplishments of CORE and NAACP

In the first few weeks of April, the two groups CORE and NAACP combined forces to make a change in racial equality. Both groups of protesters constructed a plan to shut down construction of the city's Municipal Services Building, by marching in front of Mayor James Tate's North Philadelphia row house. Furthermore, many protesters had engaged in various fights involving police and white unionists.

Expansion

CORE grew in the early 1940s, but continued to be composed of small groups. They persisted in being small because of the students who were part of the organization. The students would graduate and move away. Also, others were fighting for a specific cause and once the issue has been dealt with, they disappeared. CORE was only a voluntary organization; there was no paid staff. Many educational systems in the south and non-southern areas were in favor of segregated educational institutions among blacks. They also didn't want blacks near their neighborhood or interracial marriages to happen. Discussing the decreasing White American population and the proportional increase in negative racial attitudes, Maureen Craig, Julian Rucker, and Jennifer Richeson explain, "For example, Whites who reside in areas with larger racial minority populations tend to express greater perceived threat, more racial bias, and less support for racial integration than Whites living in areas with smaller minority populations." In other words, increasing racial diversity can lead to increased racial bias and discrimination. Evidence suggests, however, that positive contact between two racial groups can promote racial equality. Interacting with minority groups can reduce feelings of threat and increase trust between racial groups. In general, racial diversity within a neighborhood creates a more inclusive feeling and promotes trust. However, racial diversity on large, city-wide scales has been shown to produce greater levels of prejudice. The same study found that throughout Obama's presidency, there was a continually increasing negative relationship between racial prejudice and support for racial equality policies such as equal opportunity employment, school desegregation, etc. White supremacist groups notably cite racial differences between whites and nonwhites to justify white superiority. In fact, some researchers argue that the increased media attention granted to white supremacy groups could positively correlate with biologically racist beliefs. Discrimination on the basis of race leads racial minorities to receive less job opportunities than their white peers, While writing on the failures of Brown v. Board of Education, Jody Heymann, Aleta Sprague, and Amy Raub noted that "From 1988 to 2014, the percentage of 'hyper-segregated schools,' in which 90% or more of the students are minorities, grew from 5.7% to 18.4%." Risk assessment tests are algorithmic attempts to measure the likelihood of recidivism in previously incarcerated persons. Despite being created to remove the threat of racial bias from risk assessment tests, these algorithms have been found to overestimate the recidivism rate in blacks and underestimate the recidivism rate in White Americans. These tests, similar to Jim Crow era literacy tests, are not outwardly discriminatory towards blacks, they appear to be race-neutral, however the danger lies in the fact that the designers of said risk assessment tools conflate risk with a distrust of authority, and the oppressive social and political conditions that can lead one to committing crimes. In elaboration, the thirteenth amendment was only set to abolish slavery legally, however, with further knowledge of what happened, it was seen that many people took advantage of the second statement of this amendment and set into place convict lease programs, which allowed for a subtle form of slavery, and was not legally abolished until the late 1900s.

Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 and allowed citizenship for anyone born on US soil regardless of race. Just like the other reconstruction amendments, the fourteenth amendment was not popular amongst the southern states and faced a lot of backlash, since it gave previously enslaved people individual rights.

Fifteenth Amendment

The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) made it illegal for any state to deny people the right to vote regardless of their race, ethnicity, or any previous servitude. This amendment was surprisingly supported by both the North and the South of the United States. This was mainly because the Northern states had a great amount of black Male suffrage movements, and the Southern States figured the black population can add more votes for Southern view points.

Supreme Court cases

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was a landmark decision issued by the supreme court that ruled the act of segregation to be constitutional as long as it was separate but equal. To further explain, "The decision also recognized and justified the power of individual states to enforce their state segregation laws. As a result, the decision has had implications for such issues as the definition of blackness, the acknowledgment of gradients of whiteness, the significance of citizenship, and the interpretation of the state’s regulatory role in the separation of races in public space."

Brown v. Board of Education (1952) was a Supreme Court decision following Plessy V. Ferguson that decided that separation cannot be equal in schools, therefore, segregation was unconstitutional. Many people believe that this supreme court case was responsible for desegregation in schools, however, the court decision had no direct impact, and schools remained largely segregated. Schools were allowed to take as much time needed to desegregate, delaying any reconstruction towards racial equality amongst blacks and White Americans.

Loving v. Virginia (1967) was a Supreme Court decision that allowed for interracial marriage in the United States. It made any laws banning this right unconstitutional.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was set in place as consequence to the civil rights movement and protests, primarily led by people such as Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. "In 1964 the federal government issued the Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or national identity. This act snatched crucial power from many southern states because in effect it reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling by declaring racial segregation unacceptable and unconstitutional."

Jim Crow laws

Jim Crow laws, which were placed in the late 19th century, were enforced in the South in order to separate blacks and White Americans. These laws primarily focused on the separation in the workplace and mindset. During these times, it was difficult for blacks to find jobs and sustain a family, which resulted in poverty. It was also easier for blacks to be punished for any harmless activity, and lead to racial injustice, despite the amendments and supreme court cases. The Jim Crow laws were abolished in the 1960s.