International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Racism was an enduring part of American life before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This was especially true for the southern United States, where racism was rooted in all aspects of society. Southern blacks were severely exploited economically, where they were forced to toil at the bottom of the occupational structure. Blacks had no political power because they were excluded from the formal political process (→  Power and Discourse ). Because blacks were believed to be racially inferior, they were segregated physically and made to live in the confines of resource-starved communities ( Morris 1984 ). Southern racial oppression was designed to humiliate blacks daily so that both races understood their respective places in the racial hierarchy. This all-encompassing racism was backed by state power, terrorist violence, customs, and a plethora of Jim Crow laws. These laws restricted the scope of interactions between the races, requiring that blacks attend separate schools and parks, ride at the back of buses, drink from different water fountains, and the like ( Kluger 1976 ). Blacks who disobeyed Jim Crow laws faced the possibility of jail, beatings, and even death. Although racism was prevalent throughout America, the magnitude of its southern version was rarely known outside the south. This virulent racism usually operated beneath the radar of the larger ... log in or subscribe to read full text