“How can racism still be alive? We have a black president!” I have heard it a million times. Maybe a million and one. When Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks were fighting for racial justice, do you think electing a black president was on their to-do list? Absolutely not.
Despite having an African-American president, racial in equality is still an ongoing, persisting problem in America. Everyday, we are faced with an opportunity and educational gap, a wage gap, unemployment and profiling by law enforcement officers. Opportunities for students of color are limited, due to public schools being divided between “vanilla suburbs” and “chocolate cities.” The public school systems in inner cities are much poorer than rich suburban schools. Inner city schools simply do not have the money for qualified teachers, a vigorous curriculum and even necessary school supplies.
There is a large achievement gap, however, we cannot forget racial profiling. Black men and women are shot weekly by police officers, when they are unarmed and not posing an evident threat. Walter Lamar Scott, a black man in South Carolina, was shot in April of 2015, with his hands up, eventually running away when the police officer raised his gun and shot him in the back. This is only one of the people out of the many that have lost their lives for no reason over the course of a couple years. Black teenagers are twenty one times more likely to be shot by a police officer than a white teen. Police brutality is only one piece of racial profiling; this is not including the countless frisk and stops that are done everyday and the accusations of stealing.
Even after college and in the workforce, a study found in 2013 that employers assumes black applicants were using illegal narcotics than white applicants. Also, the employment rate was twice as high for white college graduates, than black ones. One study found that employers were less likely to hire an applicant, because they have a “black sounding name.”
One black person’s success does not mean or “prove” that racism is over. Because, frankly, it is not. It is far from being over. Saying racism is over because we have a black president is equivalent to saying, “I can say the N word because I have a black friend.” Both are wrong. Yes, we can applaud America for electing a black president, we can. But let’s not forget the many people who protested when Barack Obama was elected, the homemade dummy that was made to look like President Barack Obama was lynched in front of a crowd of people. The eight years we had to go through of listening to people trying to say President Obama was not an American citizen, he was a Muslim (as if that is a bad thing, but according to uneducated, it is terrifying), and how he was a traitor. Even with a black person as president, he still faced racism his full two terms, despite being the leader of this country
