Margaret Zamudio and Francisco Rios wrote, “From Traditional to Liberal Racism: Living racism in Everyday Society” in hopes to enlighten people on racism from the past along with current racism issues in our society. The article that they wrote dives into hundreds of student journals and illuminates an extremely remarkable contradiction between people throughout the years having their own perception and observation of racism as something that occurred only in the past, but in reality is very prevalent in our current culture. Their research has led to many different findings, the most prevalent being that daily racist events take place in the life of students. The racist events experienced by these students are sectioned into either an old fashioned or current “liberal” group in order to establish a connection amongst the past and present racial developments. Zamudio and Rios come to the conclusion that modern racism in the liberal age is mainly due to white privilege and its precedent that dates back to the beginning of slavery. With that being said, the conservation of white privilege is due to the inequality observed in several different organizations. Laksiri Jayasuriya also dials into the differences and prevalence of old racism versus new racism in his article, “Opinion: Old Racism, New Racism”. Jayasuriya states that past racism stems from how people specifically “feel” about race. In this sense, he means that race evokes a multitude of emotions including disgust, hate, and anger, along with more sadistic evils like the holocaust and how many German people were brainwashed into thinking that the Jewish population and other people of different cultural backgrounds were inferior to them. On the other hand, Jayasuriya argues that present racism is mainly due to cultural difference. This is because immigration has heavily sparked in recent years, forcing many people to foreign countries, which in a sense makes them different from the people of the country they immigrated too. Slavery and its atrocities, the civil rights movement, and current racist outbreaks are key events that shape Carmichael’s arguments and beliefs that Blacks must organize to fight for their libertarian independence of whites. 

Racism itself is an extremely important topic that has been dominant in human culture since the beginning of mankind. It is almost as if racism was coded in our DNA as a human species. It also occurs all around the world. The Israelites, for example, were victims of racism during 1500 BC. The Egyptians during this time ruled the land and prosecuted all Israelites, making them slaves and therefore inferior. Slavery was also extremely prevalent in the birth of America. Immediately after the first American settlements, a large amount of work needed to take place in order to create a thriving country; therefore the white people of America decided it would be beneficial to use black people as slaves to do their dirty work. This was a very dark and depressing time in American culture. Many of these slaves were treated unfairly by not being paid a sufficient wage, and being forced to work in order to survive. Carmichael makes note that this behavior set precedent for white supremacy. Carmichael rightfully argues that black people were chosen as slaves for the sole reason that their skin was black. In addition, Carmichael states that their skin color automatically made them inferior, inhuman, and therefore fit for slavery.

“Black Power”, like the two articles, dives into racism, past and present. The first and second article illuminate past racism, just like Carmichael illuminates when he talks about the civil rights bills that were initiated because of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement occurred during the middle of 20th century and encompassed social movements with the goal of ending racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans in the United States. This aligns with Carmichael’s goal of ending oppression and fighting to change the racist societal institutions. They also wanted to secure federal protection of their rights, outlined in a bill of rights. Historically, and before the civil rights movement, black people had little to no rights. These include not being able to eat in the same areas as white people, not being able to sit in the same general area as white people, and in some cases not being able to vote, along with a multitude of other segregations. Carmichael blames the failure to pass a civil rights bill on the incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. In Carmichael’s opinion, white people are scared that if they give too much power to black people then they will seek revenge for their past persecution. The civil rights movement however, was not the end of racism. To this day, America still faces many problems with racism.   

Racism was and still is prevalent in America. The most recent and monumental forms of racism in our current society is the many African American deaths by white police officers. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were two of the African American victims of police shootings that have caused uproar among Black communities because they believe racist white police officers are hunting down innocent Black men. This uproar is unexpectedly passionate, reflecting the struggles of a society devastated by years of structural racism.

Carmichael, who shares the rich, vivid experiences of life in a white-dominated society with many African Americans, is inevitably greatly influenced by the great atrocities that many whites committed towards blacks, and still commit to blacks to this day. This injustice is apparent in many of the staunch arguments that Carmichael proposes, reflecting heavily on the history of slavery, the civil rights movement, as well as recent white on black shooting, serving to fuel his arguments against white injustice and racism. Carmichael’s noble cause, stemming from years of atrocities towards African Americans, is thus inevitable, as it is spearheaded by a passionate desire for justice and equality for all. 
