Beyond the South

As an international student, having little knowledge about the history of the United States, I had always wondered about the situation of Black and African Americans beyond the south and would always be curious to hear about the stories from the Northern and Southwestern parts of the country. This essay by Theoharris was eye opening to me and I felt like I found what I had always been curious about. Theoharris challenges the myth that racism and racial segregation was confined to the South, by presenting multiple evidences as to how racism was and has been entrenched in the system itself all across the nation but is just in different structures. 

One of the most powerful claims that Theoharris makes is by comparing de-facto and de-jure segregation. While codified Jim Crow laws definitely made this segregation visible, housing policies, employment discrimination, policing, etc. all were different tools used to segregate the Black community. And these forms of racism, because it was not visible as the codified ones, and struggles of the Black community are to this day overlooked or have been downplayed in the dominant narratives of the civil rights struggle. Like the article also mentions, the country then and now, fixated on this problem in the South as “regional” and not as a national malady. And this idea allowed the white liberals in the North and Southwest to distance themselves from this issue and label themselves as “progressive” while racism was persistent in their areas too. But as Theoharris mentions, Black activists in the North were as courageous and strategic as in the South, but the country only sympathizes with the protests or activism in Montgomery and Birmingham while the violence and segregation in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. are often overlooked and barely remembered. 

This is not only an issue of the past, this is still something that is prevalent today. While many people believe that racism is no longer an issue, systemic inequalities still persist. The idea of a “post racial” society is only a myth. Not only that, the focus on racism against the Black community still tends to be confined towards the South. Events like the Charleston Church shooting of 2015 or confederate monuments debates receive more attention than police brutality in New York, California or other non-southern states. Police brutality against the black community only received heightened attention after the George Flyod killing in 2020 – but this incident did not happen in the South; it was in the northern part of the country in Minneapolis, MN. Though nobody has forgotten George Flyod, most seem to have forgotten that this happened in MN and we still see racist policies and legislations of the South receiving more attention than anywhere else in the country. To that note, I have a question for my readers: Does the media coverage of racial issues reinforce the notion that racism is primarily a Southern problem and does it play a heavy role overlooking the problems in the North or Southwest?