Racism
1970
President Richard Nixon issues his Philadelphia Plan to establish goals and timetables for affirmative action.
1971
April: In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court endorses busing as a remedy for school desegregation.
1972
July: An Associated Press story breaks news about the Tuskegee Study, a syphilis study conducted by the Public Health Service. This study, which began in 1932 and lasted for 40 years, was conducted to record the natural effects of syphilis. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause death in its end stages if it is not treated. The study involved telling African Americans with syphilis that they were being treated, when in actuality they were not given any proper treatment. In 1997, the survivors of the study receive a formal apology from President Bill Clinton.
Nov.: The American Indian Movement (AIM) organizes the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington, D.C., to bring attention to the government issues concerning Native Americans, including treaty rights and inadequate housing. The march ends in a takeover by Native Americans of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
1973
March: In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that education is not a fundamental right. The Court argues that unequal school funding does not violate the U.S. Constitution.
1974
July: In Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court strikes down a desegregation plan involving black schools in the city of Detroit, Michigan, and white schools in the outlying suburbs. The Court holds that courts may only order remedies among different districts if discriminatory intention is shown in each district or if a discriminatory policy in one district has segregative effects in other districts.
1975
June: After Judge Arthur Garrity issues a plan to desegregate public schools in Boston, Massachusetts, race riots erupt. Governor Francis Sargent calls in the National Guard and appeals to President Gerald Ford to send federal troops to quell the riots.
1977
In U.S. v. Ramsey, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that law enforcement officers can stop and question people of apparent Mexican origin about their citizenship.
1978
June: In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court strikes down a state medical school admissions policy that set aside a specific number of seats for minority candidates. The Supreme Court holds that medical school admission policies that allow for positions based on race are unconstitutional. Justice Harry Blackmun writes "[I]n order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race....And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently. We cannot--we dare not--let the Equal Protection clause perpetuate racial supremacy."
1980
July: In Fullilove v. Klutznick, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds an affirmative action program for federal contractors.
1982
June: In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court holds that Texas may not deny public education to the children of illegal immigrants.
Late 1980s
A series of court decisions that reverse segregation orders coupled with white flight into the suburbs leads to resegregation of public schools.
1986
The DEA's Operation Pipeline begins training state and local police to search for drug traffickers on highways. The methods involve traffic stops and drug courier profiles. Police officers are told to give Latinos and West Indians "extra scrutiny."
1988
March: The Civil Rights Restoration Act mandates that an entire organization comply with anti-discrimination requirements, not just the specific programs within larger organizations that directly receive federal dollars. This Act corrects the Supreme Court decision, Grove City College v. Bell (1984), which limited the government's ability to withhold federal funds from organizations that discriminated on the basis of race or sex.
1989
In U.S. v. Sokolow, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the practice of using criminal profiling in stopping and questioning suspects while engaging in drug interdiction efforts in airports. Although it does not endorse racial profiling, Sokolow does support police work based on generic stereotypes about offenders.
June: In City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that general assertions of past racial discrimination are not to be used to justify the use of racial quotas for the awarding of public contracts.
1990s
A number of high profile cases occur involving police brutality against Blacks and Hispanics, including Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. In addition, racial profiling becomes a widely reported public concern after controversies over highway patrol stops in New Jersey and Maryland.
1991
• The Civil Rights Act of 1991 is passed. This act places the burden on the employers to show they do not discriminate. This act was created "to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to strengthen and improve Federal civil rights laws, to provide for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination, to clarify provisions regarding disparate impact actions, and for other purposes."
March 3: African American Rodney King is viciously beaten by Los Angeles, California, police officers during a traffic stop, sparking a national debate over racially motivated violence and police brutality. On April 29, 1992, all four officers who beat King are acquitted. After the decision is broadcast on television, riots erupt throughout Los Angeles. Rioters drag white bystander Reginald Denny out of his truck and beat him, and approximately 150 fires rage across greater Los Angeles. In August of 1992, a federal grand jury indicts the officers for violating King's civil rights and two of the officers are eventually convicted.
1992
Sept. 4: After a 77-year-old white woman is attacked in an Oneonta, New York, home she was visiting, the police attempt to examine the hands of every African American resident in the town during the manhunt for the perpetrator.
1994
• California passes Proposition 187 to deny health care, education and welfare for illegal immigrants. The Mexican government complains that the discussions about Proposition 187 have xenophobic and racist undertones. In 1998, a U.S. District Court judge blocks implementation of Proposition 187, declaring most of it unconstitutional.
• Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray publish The Bell Curve, a controversial book on race and IQ. Critics, such as evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, assail the book for promoting scientific racism.
1995
• The Supreme Court rules in Adarand Constructors v. Pena that federal affirmative action programs must fulfill a "compelling government interest." Furthermore, as with the City of Richmond v. Croson(1989), the Court calls for "strict scrutiny" of affirmative action programs.
Oct. 16: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan organizes the Million Man March of African-American men on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall. The march is to advocate "unity, atonement and brotherhood" and includes efforts to register African American men to vote. Critics of Farrakhan point out that his racist and anti-Semitic views are harmful to Black-Jewish relations in America.
1996
• In Whren v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that police officers can make a traffic stop for a traffic violation--even a very minor violation--as a pretext for a criminal investigation. Critics such as the ACLU assert that pretextual searches violate the Fourth Amendment and that sanctioning such searches "invite[s] discriminatory enforcement."
• California adopts Proposition 209 to ban affirmative action.
1998
In a position paper, the American Anthropological Association calls race a social invention.
2000
Stop Racist Profiling
October 22, 2001: Rev. M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither protests racial profiling by police as he stands near officers surrounding the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Headquarters in Los Angeles, California, during the October 22 Coalition's sixth annual national protest against police brutality. The coalition rallied against the LAPD, who they believe use excessive force against youth and minorities. (Credit: David McNew/Getty Images)
April: The Confederate flag is removed from South Carolina's state capitol.
June: Geneticist J. Craig Venter and rival geneticist Francis S. Collins announce the completion of the first draft of the human genome sequence. Venter says that race "has no genetic or scientific basis." Collins reports that there is more variation within races than between them.
2001
Sept. 2: The U.S. pulls out of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances. The George W. Bush Administration objects to the "hateful language" expressed against Israel in the proposed final conference statement. Many African and Arabian representatives assert that the U.S. decision to pull out is because of its reluctance to address the demands for reparations from Western governments for the enslavement of tens of millions of Africans.
Sept. 11: Radical Islamic terrorists hijack planes to attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York, killing approximately 3,000 people. Following these attacks is a renewed reliance on racial profiling techniques and a rise in hate crimes against Arab Americans.
2002
May 10: Questions of racism lead Maryland to enact a moratorium on executions, pending a study to determine if blacks are unfairly being singled out for capital punishment.
June 17: Federal agencies are partially barred from using racial profiling. However, the guidelines do allow agencies to single out those who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent.
2003
June: The George W. Bush Administration issues new guidelines to restrict the use of racial or ethnic profiling.
2004-2005
Findings culled from U.S. Department of Education data reveal that, on average in America, African-American students are suspended and expelled at almost three times the rate as that for white students. However, African-American students have been found to be no more likely to engage in misbehaviors than other students who are from similar social and economic environments.
2006
• The number of hate crimes in the U.S. rises, with 52% of them classified as racially motivated.
Hate Crimes in the U.S. in 2006
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Feb.: The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Department of Justice begin actively examining unsolved civil rights-era murders to determine which cases can still be prosecuted.
July 27: President George W. Bush signs a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act.
Aug. 31: An African-American student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, sits under an oak tree during a school assembly. The following morning, nooses are found hanging in the tree. A series of racially-motivated incidents occur, culminating in an assault on a white student on December 4. Police arrest six African-American students, later dubbed the "Jena Six," accused of the attack. The case generates international media attention and raises questions of racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system. Following the Jena Six incident, noose-related hate crimes surface across the country.
2007
• Gannett News Service (GNS) conducts an analysis of 44,000 housing discrimination complaints filed between 2002 and 2006 with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The GNS analysis indicates allegations of housing discrimination nationwide, with race-related complaints most common in the South.
• Virginia becomes the first state to express "profound regret" for its history of slavery.
April: A study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice reveals that police are much more likely to threaten or use force against African Americans and Hispanics than against whites during traffic stops or other encounters.
2008
• The Civil Rights Act of 2008 is introduced "to restore, reaffirm, and reconcile legal rights and remedies under civil rights statutes."
March: The United Nation's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination cites the United States for failing to meet international standards on racial equality. The 18-member committee finds that the U.S. has racial disparities in its institutions and calls for the George W. Bush Administration to take action to end racist practices against minorities.
March: McClatchy Newspapers obtains an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo from February 2006, the contents of which indicate that since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government has been secretly using profiling techniques that use nationality as an indicator of security risks. Critics charge that the profiling targets Muslims.
March 18: Presidential candidate Barack Obama tackles the issue of race relations in America in a speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In his speech, Obama says that while there is racism in America, progress has been made and "[w]hat we have already achieved gives us hope--the audacity to hope--for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."
April 23: In Virginia v. Moore, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that the Fourth Amendment permits police officers to make an arrest and search a suspect if there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed in their presence and "to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety." In the facts of the case, police officers arrested an African-American man named David Lee Moore for driving with a suspended license instead of issuing him a summons pursuant to state law. The officers then searched Moore and found crack cocaine and cash. Some, such as Stephen J. Fortunato Jr., a former associate justice on the Rhode Island Superior Court, argue that this Supreme Court ruling okays racial profiling.
July 10: The American Medical Association (AMA) formally apologizes to African-American doctors for past racism from the medical group.
July 29: The U.S. House of Representatives issues an apology to African Americans for the institution of slavery and the Jim Crow laws that followed until the passage of civil rights laws.
Nov. 4: Barack Obama becomes the first African American to win the presidency, resulting in more than 200 postelection racist incidents in America.
