16.    Anti-Black Racism and Its Impact

17.    "There is no hierarchy of oppressions where race is concerned, but anti-black racism is the fulcrum of white supremacy." Scott Nakagawa

18.    A fulcrum is "the spot about which a lever turns" or "one that supplies capability for action." Enslaved Africans and their descendants laid the economic foundation for American prosperity.  At the same time, African Americans became the common enemy to unite "white -skinned" people. Fear and loathing of black people is the driving force of modern-day racial politics. Anti-black biases are so widespread that 70% of non-blacks and 40% of blacks reportedly have a pro-white, anti-black bias. 

19.    Anti-black racism is killing the descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. By looking at the health of DAEUSs, one can get a full understanding of the impact of systemic racism.

20.    In the United States, an estimated 80,000 to 200,000 excess black deaths occur each year. "Excess deaths" are those that would not occur if black Americans had the same death rate as white Americans. These figures are the equivalent of one jumbo jet of African-American passengers and crew crashing and killing everyone each day.

21.    The figure on life expectancy can also show the impact of systemic racism on African-Americans. According to the World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency, life expectancy at birth is a measure of quality of life in a country.

22.    Based on international comparisons of life expectancy, the quality of life for black American males and females is worse than in several countries, including Chile,  Barbados, Cuba and Jamaica. That is if black American men life expectancy were ranked as a country at 69 years,  black  males ranked 75th behind Jamaica; black women ranked 55th behind Bosnia and similar to Jamaica. This ranking is 45 points lower than white males and 20 points lower than white females. The burden that is being carried by descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States (DAEUS) is unknown because the United States does not collect data specific to our status.



23.    This difference in health is a result of institutional and systemic racism and the impact of slavery, legal apartheid, and the new American apartheid.



24.    Distinguishing racism from classism is critical to understanding the state of DAEUS.  According to one study, race and class are independent factors. Low-income whites live three years longer than low-income blacks, and middle-income whites lived ten years longer than middle-income blacks. In another study, black women with a college education had more low birth weight babies than white women with less than a high school education. This means that while middle-income blacks are  doing better than low-income blacks, institutional and systemic racism prevents middle-income and poor blacks from doing as well as middle-income and poor whites.

25.    This is because the United States has a system of oppression that is every bit as onerous as legal apartheid. Racially neutral laws and policies form the basis of the new American apartheid. However, these laws and practices are implemented in a way that has an unintended discriminatory effect. US anti-discrimination law addresses only intentional racism. Congressional Republicans and Democrats have both refused to allow African Americans and other’s access to the courts for implicit and institutional discrimination.

26.    The old system of racism on which much of America law is based requires an explicit belief in white superiority, active promotion of segregation, a belief in a biological-based intellectual inferiority and blatant discrimination. This sort of discrimination is perpetrated by individuals and institutions. In the new American apartheid, the racial discourse and practices that have a discriminatory impact are increasingly covert based on implicit biases. The new American apartheid avoids racial terminology, claims that whites are also victims of discrimination, avoids direct racial references in politics, and has rendered the mechanisms of racial inequality invisible. The new American apartheid has reestablished many of the elements of legal apartheid. Among those elements are stated-sanctioned violence, residential and educational segregation, a system of economics that depends on keeping blacks from fully participating in the system, and restrictions on their political and civil rights.

27.    This new American apartheid is promoted by both liberals and conservatives. Conservative defenders of the new American apartheid believe that the racial hierarchy is legally irrelevant to the constitutional principle of legal protection unless it is state-sponsored, conscious discrimination and unless that behavior is the proximate cause. The conservative response to racial inequality is to do nothing. Moreover, conservatives are convinced that racial re-marginalized groups should merely choose the proper cultural values so that they can take advantage of the new race-blind landscape.

28.    Liberal supporters of the new American apartheid think that race does matter but not much. They are sometimes capable of being race-sensitive, but rarely. They view frontal attacks on racial conditions as divisive and prefer not to take direct action against racial inequality. They, like conservatives supporters of the new American apartheid are convinced that racially marginalized groups should just change their cultural values.

29.    What both liberal and conservative supporters of the new American apartheid ignore is that systemic and cultural racism is having a devastating impact on the descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States.

30.    The entire history of African slaves and their descendants has been one of deprivation and oppression. Our ancestors were stolen from the continent of Africa and dragged to the Americas. Slavery in the United States denied African slaves and their descendants any legal status, and severed their connections to their traditional culture, language, religion and history.  African Americans or DAEUS  origins are only here in the United States and cannot be compared to African immigrants or to any other racial or ethnic group.

31.    Class, gender, religion and sexual orientation can complicate the situation of DAEUS.  African Americans continue to suffer embedded social and racial inequalities that deprive them of opportunities and undermine the welfare of each member of the community regardless of his or her class .

32.    Supporters of the new American apartheid fail to recognize that the choices that DAEUS make are based on the choices that are available to them. In the sea of racial oppression and deprivation, DAEUS do not have the same choices or receive the same treatment of that similarly situated whites do.