Stamped From The Beginning

Stamped From The Beginning will open your mind to the true origins of racism by challenging your long-held beliefs about it that have been perpetrated by racists throughout history.

When Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he faced an interesting question. How could he appeal to racist voters without sounding explicitly racist himself?  He needed their vote, but certainly wouldn’t be elected if he was openly racist. His campaign strategy was to appeal to racists in sneaky ways. And that included not using labels such as “black” and “white.”

This way he could secure the vote of the large population of what he called “nonracist racists.” These were the people who weren’t obvious in their racist beliefs, such as people who considered black schools inferior to white ones. Usually, these people wouldn’t see any problem with their ideas and not realize they had racist tendencies.

He was able to appeal to these voters through ads displaying the Civil Rights protest and reassuring them by saying, “I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States.” This strategy was extremely effective and soon won him the presidency.

In 1976, Ronald Reagan employed the same strategy to appeal to those who weren’t blatantly racist. He used the story of Linda Taylor to link black people who received welfare to criminal activity. Taylor was a black Chicago woman who committed welfare fraud and received $8,000. Though it was a rare crime, Reagan held her up as a typical example and often exaggerated the amount she was paid fraudulently.

If you were to look into some of the statistics about the safety of black neighborhoods, you might believe they are more dangerous. But these statistics sadly do not come without bias.

For one, if you were just to look at police arrests, you would indeed see more in black neighborhoods. However, this may be the result of an increased police presence in the area due to perceived crime, resulting in more arrests.

This brings to light the ongoing problem of discrimination in the way we show certain statistics.

Take violent crime for comparison. Drunk drivers kill far more people than “urban black violence.” But for some reason, we don’t count drunk driving as violent crime. It might have to do with the fact that 78 percent of drunk driving arrests in 1990 were white.

In fact, drunk driving kills even more people a year than cocaine. The bottom line here is that you are far more likely to die on suburban American roads than in inner-city violence, even if statistics want you to think otherwise.