Being a White Girl in Vermont
Growing up as a white girl in Vermont you never realize how much inequality there is until it is taught to you. Every time I learned about what it’s like to be a person of color in America, it was always my white teachers showing us videos all throughout elementary school. From pre-k to 8th grade I had a best friend who was a Person of color. I never thought of anything of it. But once we were older in 7th grade we started talking to each other about her experiences. Having her guide me was extremely helpful in learning about inequality on a personal level.
I’m now a junior in high school. I’ve always known about the Black Lives Matter protests since 2014 because my parents were willing to explain it to me. But it wasn’t until recently when George Floyd was killed, I started to research more. I started buying from black-owned businesses, I signed plenty of petitions, and I listened to people of color. Sadly I couldn’t go to any protests in my area because of covid.
Listening to people of color is probably one of the most important things you can do. Once you listen, you start to feel it on an emotional level. What their experiences are still like today, what needs to change, and how we should change it. Listening to people of color helped me understand a lot more about the inequality in our country than having my white teachers explain it to me.
What is Systemic Racism?
I see or hear a lot of people say that systemic racism doesn’t exist in the United States. These people either don’t believe it’s real, or they choose to ignore it. Since the majority of the people who deny systemic racism are white, they obviously haven’t been exposed to discrimination.
Most of the people who say this are surrounded by white people. They don’t have any people of color to explain to them what systemic racism is. Anyone can easily google what systemic racism is, but a lot of people need it to be shown or taught slowly to them.
Systemic racism is “a form of racism that is embedded as a normal practice within society or an organization. It can lead to such issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power, and education, among other issues.”
A really good example of systemic racism is the housing issues. You’ll see that there are neighborhoods that are divided by poor areas and wealthier areas. Many of the poorer areas are where people of color live. Why? This is because for many years people of color have faced oppression and discrimination. Since these acts were put in place it made it harder for them to get housing.
Since it was harder for people of color to get housing, they had to move to the poorer areas, which still affects them to this day. Where you live is where you get your food, where you can find a job, where you go to school, and where you go to the doctors. Since the system was built to be prejudice towards people of color, they still face discrimination.
But How Did This Start?
Discrimination and systemic racism towards people of color are because of slavery. Everyone knows that slavery is one of the biggest events in America’s history. People of color were enslaved because of the color of their skin. I understand that slavery is a heavy topic and needs to be discussed, but I have to keep it simple.
People of color were enslaved for hundreds of years. Because of this, they were never taught basic skills like reading or writing. Many of them couldn’t even communicate proper English because they were never taught it. Along with that, they were also treated horribly. All if not most were abused by the people who “owned them.”
But there comes a time when things must come to an end. This is when the civil war broke out. It was the Union states vs. the Confederate states, also known as the North vs. the South. The North was fighting to end slavery, and the South was fighting to keep it. Sometimes you’ll hear people argue that the South was fighting for state rights. There is no debate here that the state rights were to actually keep slavery.
I could talk about the civil war for ages, but again I’m going to keep it short. Now that slavery is abolished, that means all the enslaved people can roam free. They can get jobs, houses, and participate in everything white people can do! Wrong.
Why Can’t People of Color?
Now just because slavery was abolished, doesn’t mean racism wasn’t still happening. People in the South didn’t just accept the loss and learn to live with people of color. In fact hate groups towards people of color started rising. The Ku Klux Klan is a very well known group that targets black people.
These groups started uprising because they believed that people of color should be enslaved. That they were not equal to white people. They created these groups to terrorize, kill, and burn down buildings, all because they believed people of color didn’t deserve rights.
But these racist hate groups weren’t just the problem, it was also the police force. Back then if you were a person of color standing on the street without anything to do, you would be arrested. But this wasn’t a crime for white people. Police would find any reason to arrest people of color, because of their skin color.
With hate groups, the police force, and pretty much every white person out to get them, this prevented people of color to do anything. They couldn’t get jobs, housing, go to school, pretty much anything.
Jim Crow Laws
I’m sure everyone is well aware of what Jim Crow laws are. These laws legalized racial segregation. So for a common example, black kids were not allowed to go to school with white kids. These laws would also prevent people of color from, voting, getting good housing, and pretty much everything. Keep in mind that these laws lasted for about 100 years.
These laws were in place for about 100 years. They pretty much started at the end of the civil war and continued to expand. Since these laws were primarily in the south, many black Americans moved to the cities. Then that’s when we see an increase of Jim Crow laws in major cities.
These laws went for such a long time, but then there was the Civil Rights Movement. This movement was led by black Americans to end the institutionalized racial discrimination. The movement was led by incredible leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. They helped bring awareness to racial discrimination and how black Americans were being treated. The movement went on to end racial discrimination and helped laws get passed to end many Jim Crow laws.
Since the Jim Crow laws went up until 1968, we still see how it affects people of color today, considering it wasn’t that long ago. People of color were pushed into separate neighborhoods, couldn’t sit in the “white people section” on the bus, couldn’t go to the same schools. As we all know where you live determines where you go to school, where you get your food, where you go to the doctors, what water you drink, and the air you breathe.
The Connection
I hope you are making a connection as to what systemic racism is and how it is a very real issue in America. Since people of color have been discriminated against their whole lives, it really affects how they live now.
We are born into situations. Some people get lucky and are born into families with wealth, or that live in a good area. But since people of color have been discriminated against for so long, they are more likely to be born into poorer situations. Do you see where I’m coming from? This is systemic racism.
Recommendations
At the beginning of this piece I wrote I talked about how listening to people of color is the best way to learn, and buying from their businesses is also a great way to support! I wanted to create a list of people I listen to and places I bought things from/places that look really cool.
Watch/listen/read
The 13th on Netflix
So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo
Resources that Helped me Write This
Photo by: @jtaggfoto on Instagram
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