Our nation’s long and sad engagement in the atrocious business of slavery has long been referred to as America’s original sin. The dehumanizing obscenity and transatlantic enterprise of the American slave business set it apart from any other form of enslavement known in human history, causing President John Adams to say “negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.”
The apt metaphor of sin raises the obvious question of repentance. Clearly, denying the magnitude of slavery and its lingering effects on this nation is not the road to true repentance and it does not help shed us of that demon that occupies a place within the soul of our nation, like a persistent cancer. Such a demon has no place in the soul of nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.
Even after the Civil War, half the nation instituted systems and laws aimed at preserving as much of the tenets of slavery as possible. The system of sharecropping tied former slaves to jobs working land and paying for that land with their crops, ensuring that they would never have enough money to leave. Even those who managed to escape this new form of slavery were subject to racist Jim Crow laws intended to not only prevent Black people from achieving any kind of equality but also to reinforce the notion that Black people were inferior to Whites.
Leaving the South, if that was an option, offered no relief from our nation’s original sin. In northern states, legislatures passed laws that made it difficult if not impossible for Black people to buy homes and build equity (and therefore establish generational wealth). Legislatures passed laws that allowed mortgage lenders, real estate agents, and others to prevent Black people from living in safe and stable neighborhoods (which were dominated by White families). As Richard Rothstein points out in The Color of Law, “until the last quarter of the twentieth century, racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live.”
The focus was not only on where Black people could live. Laws also allowed employers to refuse to hire Black workers. With few other options available, Black people frequently took jobs (such as domestic, service and agricultural positions) that paid less than the jobs similarly situated White people could get. Not only that, but policies created to protect workers, such as the 1935 Wagner Act and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, excluded industries dominated by Black workers. Even the practice of tipping—which seems benign but artificially lowers workers’ wages by allowing their employers to pay them less based on the assumption that they receive significant extra income through tips—has its roots in race-based wage discrimination.
While lawmakers passed laws that allowed for outright discrimination, they also refused to pass laws that would protect Black people in any way or make their lives better. Black neighborhoods were targeted for the trafficking of drugs and other crimes. Toxic waste dumps were located in Black communities. Highways and freeways cut through Black neighborhoods. It was never-ending.
Today, far too many people argue that America’s original sin of trafficking and enslaving human beings does not matter, that all this is in the past and we have an even playing field now. They argue that as a nation we have “done enough.” They say it is time to end programs aimed at redress and stop talking about racism once and for all.
I would ask those people to at least recognize the reality of America’s long history of slavery and how its effects came to be a part of the American fabric. I would ask them to stop denying the continuing effects of slavery and its detrimental impact on generations of Americans.
It is difficult for me to comprehend how anyone cannot see the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow in the ongoing inequity in education in the United States. Most students who attend public schools (which is what the vast majority of U.S. students do), go to the school in their neighborhood. In cases where—because of discriminatory housing policies and practices—Black families with lower incomes are concentrated in neighborhoods, the schools in those neighborhoods tend to be underfunded and underperforming. Worse yet, in some areas, individual schools are punished with lower funding when they fail to perform so that failing schools only get worse with no opportunity to improve and better serve students.
This kind of systemic discrimination is rampant in our nation and its impact has affected, and will continue to affect, generation after generation until we take action to stop it. But rather than take that affirmative action, we are now seeing a movement to water down and diminish the horrors of slavery and its lingering effect on the construct of our nation.
It leads me to ask, why do people want to distort the efforts of a nation trying to do better for its people by addressing historic inequities through honest conversations, discussion and education on the history of our nation, both good and bad? To see a situation that is patently unfair and to not take action to address it, or pretend it does not exist at all, is un-American. We are a nation that continually strives to do better by our citizenry. Indeed, there was never a time when this country did not struggle vehemently against the sinful presence of slavery.
It is our duty and responsibility to recognize and remove the barriers that hold people back from opportunity and success. That has been one of the goals of education and it is also the goal of an approach to policy and practice that uses a social determinants of education framework. This framework, which the Southern Education Foundation is highlighting in a new report (Economic Vitality and Education in the South), requires that we recognize and address in public policy the vestiges of slavery and racism that prevent students from achieving academic success.
The social determinants of education framework recognizes the ongoing impact of laws that were specifically designed to keep people of color—usually African American people—in low-paying jobs, in underfunded neighborhoods, in rented homes rather than in homes they owned, and in a perpetual state of being second class citizens. It recognizes that because of the impact of these laws, people of color in the U.S. often are not able to receive the same quality of education as their White peers. These disparities in education continue to perpetuate racial inequality in the U.S., since they result in Black children and other children of color often having lower educational outcomes, and therefore often reducing their opportunities and potential income later in life.
However, the good news is that just as this framework can identify the problems, it can also help us to envision potential solutions and where those solutions lie. As the social determinants of education framework illustrates, we cannot hold schools solely accountable to address the range of factors that influence whether students can succeed.
We must examine the range of disparities and challenges students and their families face, from poverty and food insecurity to inadequate health care to housing discrimination, and work together to address them head on.
In Economic Vitality and Education in the South, the Southern Education Foundation has laid out potential policy solutions to address these disparities. We hope that policymakers will open their eyes to the very real legacy of racism in the country and the impact it has today and adopt policies that we and likeminded organizations recommend for addressing these problems – problems which should have been resolved long ago. Perhaps then, our country can start to truly repent of its original sin, and we as a nation can heal and move forward towards a brighter, more equitable future where all can pursue life, liberty and happiness.
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What Is Gained By Denying America’s Original Sin? - Forbes
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