Is America a Racist Country?

You’re in a conversation and someone asks: “Is America a Racist Country?” What would you say? When considering whether America is a racist country, an important question to consider is: “Is there any country without racism?” It’s like asking, is your best friend a lying person? Everyone lies, but is lying the sin that predominantly defines us? We should always expose injustice and eliminate it as best as we can, but is America, as some activists claim, more racist now than ever? Is racism systemic in our country? When something evil is “systemic,” it exists within an entire system and infects every facet of that society. When activists claim racism is more systemic today than during the 1960s, it begs the question: “Wasn’t codified racism like separate and unequal, poll taxes, literacy tests, and riding in the back of the bus far more systemic?” Has nothing changed? The next time someone says America is a racist country, here are 4 things to remember. Number 1: America is consistently ranked as one of the world’s most tolerant countries According to several studies, America is among the most tolerant nations on earth in regards to race, religion, immigration status, and ethnicity. Orlando Patterson, an African-American Professor of Sociology at Harvard, declared in 1991: “The sociological truths are that America…is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa.” Number 2: America’s attitudes toward “race” have dramatically improved In 1958, according to a Gallup study, only 38% of the American population would vote for a black president. In 2020, 96% of the American population would vote for a black president. Clearly, the remaining and confused 4% of the country do not define the entire nation. In 1958, only 4% of Americans approved of black-white marriages. In 2013, 87% approved of black-white marriages. Interestingly, from the mid 1970s through 2014 (except for a spike during the Rodney King riots of the early 90s), 2-4% of Americans cited racism as the most important problem facing our country. After President Obama’s second term, that number jumped to 13% and 18%. After declining again since 2017, it spiked again in 2020 to 19%. The number seems to reflect headlines around specific events rather than longer trendlines of society. Number 3: America’s racism industry profits from perpetual victimhood I want to share with you a quote from a famous historical figure: “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” This quote was from African-American, Booker T. Washington in his 1911 book My Larger Education. Bob Woodson, former civil rights activist and head of the National Urban League’s Department of Criminal Justice, said: “race is being used to deflect attention away from the failures of people running those institutions.” He and Harvard professor Orlando Patterson have the same conclusion: the bigger problem is poverty, not racism. Exploitation comes in every color. We can and must stand against actual racism without being manipulated by those abusing it for personal or political gain. Number 4: America shines when we act as one human race The human construct of race has never served as a benefit throughout human history. We cannot live in the traumas of the past and hope to love one another in the triumphs of the present. When Morgan Freeman was asked by 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace about how to stop racism, he famously said: “Stop talking about it.” He continued: “I’m going to stop calling you a white man. And I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.” Christians especially should embrace this. In Galatians 3:28, Paul wrote that “we are all one in Christ Jesus” and we’re commanded by our Savior in John 13:34 to “love one another.” So, the next time you’re talking about systemic racism and someone says America is a Racist Country, remember these 4 things: Number 1: America is consistently ranked as one of the most tolerant countries Number 2: America’s attitude toward “race” has improved dramatically Number 3: America’s racism industry profits from perpetual victimhood Number 4: America shines when we act as one human race For What Would You Say, I’m Ryan Bomberger.

For more on America being among the most tolerant nations, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/?hpid=z1 and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00012/full

For the Orlando Patterson quote, see: https://web.archive.org/web/20101130090012/https:/www.nytimes.com/1991/10/20/opinion/op-ed-race-gender-and-liberal-fallacies.html

For the Gallup study on Americans’ willingness to vote for a black president, see: https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx

For the Gallup study on Americans’ approval of black-white marriages, see: https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx

For the Gallup studies on the percentage of Americans citing racism as the nation’s most important problem, see: https://news.gallup.com/poll/180257/major-problem-race-relations-sharply-rises.aspx and https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/312875/race-relations-nation-important-problem.aspx

For My Larger Education by Booker T. Washington, see: https://archive.org/details/largereducation00washrich/page/8/mode/2up

For the Bob Woodson quote, see: https://www.foxnews.com/media/bob-woodson-rejects-systemic-racism-class-race

For the Morgan Freeman quote, see: https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/flashback-morgan-freeman-ending-racism-stop-talking-about-it-black-history