A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The United States

Originally published on Lefty Cartoons and cross-posted here with their permission.

For many people in the United States (especially white folks) the enslavement of Black people can feel like a far away thing. However, while the time of slavery was nearly 150 years ago, Jim Crow laws were enforced until the 1960’s, and the Civil Rights Movement was only 50 years ago.

That’s really not that long ago.

All of this history continues to influence and shape the current situation in the US for Black Americans and their relationship with white people.

Today, there are still plenty of laws, policies, and institutional practices currently in place that disproportionately negatively impact Black people while benefiting white people. This is particularly true in how wealth and material privilege is passed down from generation to generation.

And yet, this history and its impact on today’s situation is too often ignored or dismissed as being irrelevant when white privilege and racism is pointed out. Instead, people too often cry “reverse racism,” not realizing that reverse racism isn’t real and that equity – not equality – will lead to justice. 

Check out this comic for a reality check on what the history of this relationship looks like. For more great comics by Barry Deutsch, please visit Lefty Comics!

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

To learn more about why reverse racism isn’t real and why equity and justice are needed, check out:

• 8 Things White People Really Need to Understand About Race
• 7 Reasons Why ‘Colorblindness’ Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It

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Barry Deutsch is the Portland-based author and cartoonist of Ampersand, a political comic with a generally progressive sensibility. A new Ampersand comic appears in every issue of Dollars and Sense Magazine. Barry attended Oberlin College in Ohio in the late 1980s, the School of Visual Arts in New York City in the 1990s (where he took classes from comics legend Will Eisner), and graduated from Portland State University several years ago. While at PSU, his political cartoons won the Charles M. Schulz Award. His current comics project is my comic book Hereville, a fantasy adventure comic about an 11-year-old Jewish girl. Check out his blog and follow him on Twitter @barrydeutsch.