History

h i s t o r y o f t h e r a c e c o n s t r u c t

Those of us who live in the United States have inherited the legacy of how race and racism have been constructed in this country historically, systematically, and pervasively.
Knowing our history is a good way to understand this legacy.
On this page, you will find a small sampling of U.S. laws, court decisions, and
other acts which lay some of the groundwork for constructing race as a hierarchy with white at the top.
This page also includes other resources related to understanding the construction of race and racism.

This map is one of many researched, created, and designed by Aaron Carapella at Tribal Nations Maps.

These maps show the devastating impact of western settlement and land grab on Indigenous nations
over a 100 year period
from the late 1700s to the late 1800s.
For more about the impact
of the U.S. policy
of manifest destiny, go to
Whose Manifest Destiny?
The Federal Government and
American Indians.

Before Columbus set foot on this continent, before what is known as “First Contact,” North America had hundreds of different Indigenous cultures and almost two thousand different languages. Communities had perfected the art of agriculture, were using irrigation canals, built dams, and engaged in many of the same activities and agricultural advancements as peoples in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Families were matrilineal. Estimates of the numbers of people living on the continent range from 5 to 10 million; after first contact, these populations were reduced to fewer than a million.

FIRST CONTACT

1492
Columbus comes to the Americas in the name of Spain. People do not come here by race; we come here (those of us who come from Europe) by nationality. Columbus makes four voyages, none to what is now known as the U.S. He carefully documents the voyages, including descriptions of the residents as ripe for subjugation. His purpose is not exploration or trade, but conquest and exploitation. James Loewen’s book Lies My Teacher Told Me speaks to how the race construct begins with this story. He notes how the 12 textbooks most used in the U.S. offer a discovery narrative of an enlightened colonialism that brings the gift of civilization to the “savage.” This narrative ignores the ways in which Columbus transformed the modern world through the “taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous people in the Western hemisphere, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass.”

1787
The Constitution is signed, defining African- American males as 3/5 of a man. During this period, the English, Dutch, Spanish, and French have all established settlements, then colonies, pushed out Indigenous peoples, made and broken countless treaties, introduced slavery and begun creating the category of white as an organizing tool.

1640
Three servants working for a farmer named Hugh Gwyn run away to Maryland. Two are white; one is Black, although neither descriptors are used at that time. They are captured in Maryland and returned to Jamestown, where the court sentences all three to thirty lashes -- a severe punishment even by the standards of 17th- century Virginia. The two white men are sentenced to an additional four years of servitude. But, in addition to the whipping, the Black man, named John Punch, is ordered to “serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.”

1790
The Naturalization Act specifies that only free white immigrants are eligible for citizenship. The Act expressly denies civil rights, the right to vote or own land to first generation immigrants from Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America and Africa. Indigenous peoples become citizens through individual treaties or intermarriage. Without citizenship, people of color cannot vote, own property , bring lawsuits, or testify in court -- all protections and privileges that white people take for granted. This Act continues to have influence in various forms until 1952.

Late 1700s
It is during this period that the scientific community in Europe is creating the “oids” – a race theory relying heavily upon craniometry (measurement of the brain and skull) to develop four distinct races. The science claims that the larger the brain, the higher the intelligence. Those with the largest brains, and thus the smartest, are the Caucasoids (where our racial designation of Caucasian comes from), next is the Mongoloid (referencing “yellow” people and those of Asian descent), Australoid (signifying “red or brown” people), and Negroid, the lowest and the only category without a geographic location.

1800S

1825
An early treaty with the Osage people introduces the idea of “blood degree.” Traditionally, tribal member- ship is based on acceptance of language, customs, and authority. People escaping slavery, white people, and other Indigenous people can and do join tribes or nations as full members of Indigenous communities. As a result of this idea of “blood degree,” most Indigenous nations adopt some form of blood requirement for membership over the next century, participating in the government's construction of race in an effort to survive.

1857
In its 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court defines enslaved people as property, essentially saying Congress cannot abolish slavery because to do so would interfere with private property rights. They rule that descendants of slaves are “so far inferior that they had not rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

1862
The Homestead Act makes 50 million acres available, at low cost, to white working class homesteaders who flood Indian lands in the Midwest, forcing nomadic Plains Indian people to relocate to government reservations. The Act allots 160 acres of land to “anyone,” meaning any white citizen, who can pay $1.25 an acre and cultivate it for 5 years; within 10 years, white homesteaders had stolen 85,000,000 acres of Indigenous lands.

1830s
Slavery advocates turn to scientific and biblical arguments to “prove” that Negroes are distinct and inferior. Samuel Morton, the first famous American scientist, possesses the largest skull collection in the world; using the OIDs theories developed in Europe, he claims the larger skulls of Caucasians gives them “decided and unquestioned superiority over all the nations of the earth.”

Late 1870s
Army veteran Charles Pratt opens the first federally sanctioned boarding school -- the Carlisle Industrial Training School in Pennsylvania. His philosophy is to “Kill the Indian, Save the Child” and "elevate" American Indians to white standards. Students are brought to the school by train and upon arrival are given a haircut and an English name. Students are taught that their way of life is savage and inferior. The schools initiate a pattern of sexual and physical abuse continuing throughout the school’s history into the 1930s.

1882
The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, barring most Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S.; this is the first time a nationality is barred expressly by name.

Mid-1800s
As the Black slave trade moves to England and then to America, the story of the curse of Ham moves with it. Presbyterian leader Benjamin Palmer, the emotional and intellectual leader of Southern American Christians, whose sermons and writings are widely published and read, preaches that the story of Ham (Genesis 9) is one of a series of Biblical justifications for slavery. Because Ham sees his father Noah drunk and naked, Ham is cursed by Noah to be “a servant of servants;” Ham’s descendants, Palmer explains, are turned dark by the curse. Conservative Christians and segregationists argue that this and other Biblical passages prove that slavery is part of God’s established order.

1887
As the white power structure in the South organizes against Reconstruction, they institute Jim Crow segregation, introducing a system of laws and practices designed to unite poor and wealthy whites, reinforcing racial solidarity and privilege while systematically targeting African Americans. Jim Crow laws and culture, reinforced through violence and intimidation, affect schooling, public transportation, jobs, housing, private life, and voting rights.

And click here for A Brief History of Jim Crow Laws. This link was brought to you by Xavier in Ms. Sutton's 5th grade class; the class has been doing their own research for Black History Month. Thanks Xavier, Ms. Sutton, and the whole class!!

1846-48
The U .S. invades Mexico for its land and resources (the Mexican-American War); the War ends with the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, transferring over 55% of Mexican land to the U.S. (present-day Arizona, California, NM, Texas, and parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah). The treaty promises to protect the lands, language and culture of the Mexicans living in the ceded territory, but Congress substitutes a “Protocol,” which requires Mexicans to prove in court that they have ‘legitimate’ title to their lands. Unable to provide proof in a culture that does not record land transactions, the “Protocol” becomes the legal basis for the massive theft of land from Mexicans in these territories.

1887
The Dawes Act breaks up collectively held indigenous lands, redistributing “surplus” land to be sold to whites. Congressman Henry Dawes, author of the act, expresses his faith in the civilizing power of private property saying of Indigenous peoples “They have gone as far as they can go, because they own their land in common. . . There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will ... divide [their lands] among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress.” White land sharks swindle many people out of their land.

1890s
Immigration from southern and eastern Europe swells dramatically. Many new arrivals are “ethnics” employed in low-wage jobs and living in the urban ghetto. They are initially deemed inferior, seen as not fully white. Denied their full humanity, they are nonetheless granted citizenship and merge into whiteness after WWII.

1900S

1922
Early in the century, many immigrants petition the courts to be legally designated white to gain citizenship under the 1790 Naturalization Act. The Supreme Court rules that Japanese are not legally white because science classifies them as Mongoloid rather than Caucasian. A year later, in the Thind case, the court contradicts itself, ruling that Asian Indians are not legally white, even though science classifies them as Caucasian, because whiteness should be based on “the common understanding of the white man.”

1954
The Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that separate means unequal and mandates desegregation of public schools. In southern schools, thousands of Black teachers and principals are fired and thousands of white men and women, less qualified and credentialed, get jobs in the newly integrated schools.

1924
Virginia passes Racial Integrity Laws designed to protect "whiteness" against what many Virginians perceive to be the effects of immigration and race-mixing. These laws define how people should be classified—for example, as white, Black, or Indian. These laws are not overturned until the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which declares Virginia's ban on interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. Most of Virginia's Indigenous peoples, are classified by the RIA as racially Black, a designation that serves as an obstacle for federal tribal recognition.

Late 1950s
By the end of the 1950s, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia use literacy tests to keep Blacks from voting while Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia use poll taxes to prevent Blacks from registering.

1942
President Roosevelt signs an executive order requiring Japanese Americans living within 20 miles of the pacific coast, most U.S. citizens, to relocate to 10 internment camps; over 112,000 Japanese Americans are forcibly placed in military internment camps during WWII, their homes and property seized and sold to white Americans at reduced costs.

1977
In response to civil rights legislation, the federal Office of Management and Budget creates standard government race and ethnic categories for the first time. The categories are arbitrary and inconsistent. For example, "Black" is defined as a "racial group" but "white" is not. "Hispanic" reflects Spanish colonization and excludes non-Spanish parts of Central and South America; while "American Indian or Alaskan Native" requires "cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition" - a condition of no other category. The categories are amended in 1996, and "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander" is added.

1947
The G.I. Bill subsidizes employment, suburban home loans, college education opportunities for veterans returning from WWII but refuses to challenge the discriminatory policies embedded in the practices and policies of employers, bank lenders, and college institutions; as a result, almost all of the benefits of the bill go to white veterans and their families.

1980s
The Reagan Administration expands Nixon's "War on Drugs," increasing the number of people imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997. As a result, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Over 2/3 of those imprisoned are Black or Latino, although these populations use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites. The fastest growing group of prisoners are Black women; Native Americans are the largest group per capita. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, states that in this way, “mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America; Black people, especially Black men, are criminals. This is what it means to be Black.”

2001
September 11 sets the stage for the Patriot Act, which becomes the first in a series of post-9/11 legislative and executive maneuvers that lead to an unprecedented assault on basic constitutional and civil rights. Much of the Patriot Act is a wish list of changes to surveillance law previously rejected by Congress because of concerns about violating civil liberties. After September 11th, those changes -- and others -- pass with only limited congressional debate. The federal government is given broad new powers to conduct searches, seizures, and surveillance with reduced standards of cause or levels of judicial review. The Act permits indefinite detention of immigrants and other non-citizens with no requirement that the government prove these detainees are, in fact, a threat, leading to the detention and deportation of thousands of Arabs and Muslims without due process.

2005
Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans. The neighborhoods with the highest proportion of African American people sustain the worst damage. The only way out of New Orleans is by car, and many people do not have a car, money to pay for gas, or anywhere to go. Thousands of African American residents who try to leave by crossing the Gretna Bridge to higher ground are forced back into the flood by gun-toting white vigilantes. The media describes white people as “flood victims looking for food” and Black people as “looters.” Thousands of
African-Americans have to wait 5 hours in the rain outside the Superdome, where they expect sanctuary, to be searched. Residents
have to go through criminal record checks before Red Cross Centers will admit them. Curfew is only enforced against Black people. Six months after the storm, the 9th Ward, an African-American community, is the only ward that remains unoccupied, where nearly all homes are still piles of rubble. Ten years later, the demographics of the city has changed and white communities have taken the place of many Black communities. While white sections of the city have been reconstructed, the 9th Ward languishes; the contrast with white sections of the city is stark.

2008
As a result of the subprime mortgage lending crisis, where banks and lending institutions target low income People and Communities of Color, the total loss of wealth for these communities is between $164 and $213 billion over 8 years. This is perhaps the greatest loss of wealth for People of Color in modern U.S. history.

2010
Four decades after the Civil Rights movement, Black people still earn only 57 cents and Latinos earn 59 cents for each dollar of white median family income. The contrast is even starker for net wealth - the total value of investments, savings, homes and other property minus any debt. Blacks hold only 10 cents of net wealth and Latinos hold 12 cents for every dollar that white people hold. Bush era and current tax breaks disproportionately flow into the hands of high- income and high- wealth whites.

For more information on the economics of racial inequity go to the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality website.

2010
Arizona passes draconian anti-immigration SB1070 law requiring all “aliens” over the age of 14 to register with the U.S. government after 30 days and to carry ID documents at all times. The law requires state police to determine immigration status whenever an officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person is an “illegal immigrant.” The law imposes penalties on those sheltering, hiring, and transporting unregistered “aliens.” In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds required immigration
checks while striking down the other provisions. In the intervening years, all but 7 states pass anti-immigration laws, including many “copycat” laws based on Arizona’s.

2012
In 2012, George Zimmerman shoots and kills 17-year-old Trayvon Martin as he returns home from a convenience store; Zimmerman is acquitted. Then police officer Daniel Pantaleo chokes Eric Garner to death on the sidewalk in New York and is not indicted; then officer Darren Wilson shoots and kills Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and is also not indicted. This is followed by the massacre of nine people in a church in Charleston by Dylann Roof, a self-identified white supremacist. Over and over again, police shootings of Black men spark protest and national dialogue around how Black Lives are valued in this country under the rallying cry #BlackLivesMatter.

2017
Newly elected President Trump issues an executive order barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for a period of 90 days and suspending the refugee system for 120 days. The ban does not apply to the nationalities of those who carried out the 9/11 attacks and in fact, no acts of organized violence have been committed by people coming from the countries named in the ban. Known popularly as the Muslim Ban, this order reflects Trump’s call during his campaign for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S., reinforcing racialized hatred. During this campaign period and currently, the FBI reports an upsurge in hate crimes and attacks against American Muslims driving an overall increase in such attacks against immigrants, Black citizens, Jews, and transgender people. Trump’s senior advisor is Steve Bannon who headed Breitbart News, an alternative-right website and news source that emerged around 2010 centered in a philosophy of ideological white supremacy that champions an identity politic focused on the concerns and rights of white people.

2020 A Commonwealth Fund analysis shows that confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths are disproportionately higher in communities with larger Black populations. Contributing to these poorer outcomes is the far greater likelihood Black and Latino Americans live in poverty and reside in neighborhoods with overcrowded households, air pollution, and inadequate access to health care. Beyond its toll on physical health, the pandemic has affected employment and job opportunities, which impacts those already on the margins more severely than the rest of society. Violence against people of Asian descent escalates.

2021 As Congress prepares to officially accept the electoral votes that confirm a Biden victory, the nation is witness to the disparate ways in which police and National Guard troops treat those who target and threaten Congress in stark contrast to how they treat people publicly demonstrating for Black Lives. This differential treatment lays bare whose lives matter in a very racialized and racist way.

history at a glance

A CONCISE HISTORY OF WHITE PRIVILEGE

Click here for an article on how racist anti-immigration rhetoric
is perpetuated throughout history.

Click here for an article on the impact of the racist history of economic exploitation of Black Americans.

the hierarchy of the race construct

Race is not scientifically or biologically "real." Race was constructed for social and political purposes. Race was constructed as a hierarchy and not as a multicultural "salad" or "soup." In other words, race was constructed in order to reinforce the idea that "white" is superior and at the top of the hierarchy, that "Black" is inferior and at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that all other constructed racial categories move up and down between those two anchors depending on what is happening at any given moment in our history. For example, before 9/11, many Arab Americans were considered closer to white; now, as a result of U.S. foreign policy and rising Islamophobia, the racial category of "Arab" is considered closer to the bottom. White supremacy refers to the ideology or belief system that this pyramid or hierarchy suggests - the idea that white is superior, better, the ideal - while all other races are inferior, worse, less. White supremacy is reflected in individual beliefs, in institutional policies and practices, and in our cultural assumptions about who is deserving and who is not. We do not have to be members of the Ku Klux Klan to be participating in white supremacy.

For more about the construction of race and its consequences, visit Race: The Power of an Illusion website.

videos

Race: The House We Live In is part of the PBS series Race: The Power of an Illusion and describes how the federal government and banking colluded to create the white suburbs while divesting from Communities of Color.

Not All White People Were Created Equal: White Privilege in America.

The History of Whiteness by Kat Blaque.

Scarred Justice:
The Orangeburg Massacre 1968.

Nancy Marie Mithlo gives TedX talk about Americana Indian: Thinking Twice About Images That Matter.

books

James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me
teaches U.S. history while dissecting the inaccuracies and distortions of how history is taught in most textbooks.

Daily Kos offers Black History is American History: Books You Should Read.

Ibram X. Kendi offers A History of Race and Racism, in 24 Chapters.

Describes the ten-year period of the Chicano movement from 1965 to 1975.

Race: The Power of an Illusion website offers a history timeline of the race construct.

timelines

The Atlanta Black Star offers a timeline of 8 Times the U.S. Government Gave White People Handouts to Get Ahead.

The Color of Whiteness draws on U.S. naturalization cases and law to dramatize the shifting and arbitrary parameters of whiteness.

Densho offers a Timeline: Important Moments in Japanese American History Before, During, and After WWII Mass Incarceration.

ERASE Racism NY offers a Structural Racism Timeline.

History of Legal and "Illegal" Immigration to the United States. [Note that "illegal" simply indicates that U.S. immigration law designates who is allowed to come and who is forbidden from coming, determining "legality" of immigration almost always based on race - see How Racist is U.S. Immigration Policy.]

Race Equity Tools offers a number of timelines from a range of historical lenses..

The Huffington Post offers a timeline: Who and What Changed America in the 20th Century.

NYU offers a Timeline of Scientific Racism.

PBS offers a timeline: Slavery and the Making of America.

Teaching for Social Justice and Diversity offers a History of Immigration and Racism Timeline.

U.S. History.org offers an American Anti-Slavery and Civil Rights Timeline.

links

SLAVERY

Click here for a short article on the history of race-based slavery in Virginia.

Click here for an even longer article on "The Birth of Race Based Slavery."

Click here for a link to Slavery by Another Name, a PBS documentary and support materials for teachers.

RESISTANCE

Click here for the article Bold, Black, and Brilliant: Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.

Click here for Dismantling Racism in the Food System.

Click here for 4 Not-So-Easy Ways to Dismantle Racism in the Food System.

AND ...

Click here for Yes Magazine's case for reparations: Just the Facts: A Nation Built on the Back of Slavery and Racism.

Click here for an informative review of Theodore Allen's book "The Invention of the White Race."

Click here for the article "1667: The year America was divided by race."

Click here for a video on "The west was built on racism. It's time we faced that."

Click here for an article on Refuge for Fugitives looking at how people responded to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Click here for the article @X: Making America White 200 Years Ago.

Click here for an audio interview with Mab Segrest on "A Metahistory of Suffering: Race, Lunacy, And psychiatry in Milledgeville, Georgia" - a brief overview of what she will cover in her upcoming book that considers how the history of Georgia's hospital reveals the intimate relationships between psychiatry and settler colonialism.