PREJUDICE AND

DISCRIMINATION

Race-based slavery (1660s to

1860s)
Whites use guns to steal land in North America and force blacks
to work on it as slaves
But no matter how hard they try to misread Scripture they
cannot hide the wrong they are doing from their eyes
So they come up with a big lie: racism, that blacks are not as
good as whites, that blacks are screwed up, that blacks are born
bad
The big lie receives the backing of law, religion and science
But it does not quite work: the country cracks apart into war
between the slave south and the free north

Jim Crow (1870s to

1960s)
American apartheid
The slaves are freed but with little in the way of civil rights,
property or money
Whites fear free blacks
They stereotype blacks as violent
They keep blacks separate and unequal at the bottom of
society
Many blacks move north but whites are racist there too: last
hired, first fired, sundown towns, black ghettos, etc.

Colour-blind racism (1970s to

present)
Most whites think racism is wrong
Meanwhile they imprison black men in record numbers, at 20 times
the world rate
They think it is blacks who are screwed up, not American society
After all, whites say, Racism is dead because I do not see
colour and My best friend is black.
Yet they still look down on blacks and fear them
Most whites live in white neighbourhoods, go to white schools and
worship a white Jesus in a white church and think it is all perfectly
natural.
History books, magazines, television, Hollywood and the news still
pump out racist messages night and day

JOB

"no blacks need apply, "Oh, we already filled that position" or

"We were actually looking for someone with more experience"
or "Maybe you'd be better suited to this lower-paying job.
African Americans unemployment rate is more than double that
of whites.
While Time magazine, The New York Times, and The Huffington
Post have all reported on this growing trend, they have not
provided critical information on what recourse is available to
victims of unemployment discrimination
They put African Americans at greater risk than whites.

WORKPLACE
Unequal pay for African Americans performing the same work as
Whites (with similar education and work experience)
Segregating African American employees to only work on African
American projects and contracts
Isolating and segregating African Americans by assigning them to
work only in specific locations
Reclassifying jobs at a lower level and assigning African
Americans to perform the work
Laying off African American employees, while White counterparts
maintain their jobs
Asking potential employees to identify their race on an
employment application, which might indicate that race may be a
factor in hiring decisions

CRIME

In 2010, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that

African Americans receive 10% longer sentences than whites
through the federal system for the same crimes.
In a 2009 report, 2/3 of the criminals receiving life sentences
were non-whites. In New York, it is 83%.
Studies show that police are more likely to pull over and frisk
blacks or Latinos than whites.
In New York City, 80% of the stops made were blacks and
Latinos, and 85% of those people were frisked, compared to a
mere 8% of white people stopped.