It’s not over yet

An urban, stylish hairstyle for white girls can get black girls in trouble or fired from their jobs. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has exploded all over the Internet and the news in response to deaths of black people. Just this September, anti-black propaganda posters were found hanging around the campus at the University of Michigan.

Racism is not yet a thing of the distant past as these disturbing examples show. While white people today did not personally enslave anyone, it was only decades ago that Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington and that segregation ended. Those events happened in our grandparents’, and many of our parents’, life times.

Sadly, it would appear that everyone is still not on the same page in regards to racism. A recent study published on behalf of Association For Psychological Science shows that white people perceive anti-black bias as significantly lower than black people perceive it. On a scale of one to 10, white respondents rated anti-black bias an average of between three and four while black respondents rated anti-black bias on average as a six out of 10. The study also showed that white respondents showed an increase in rating for anti-white bias.

“White people probably don’t think that it’s as bad because they’re not the ones that it’s happening to,” freshman Kaylie Shepard said. “People aren’t hating on them for being white but it’s actually happening to black people so they feel it more.”

There’s a good chance racism will continue to be an unsolvable issue for the foreseeable future until everyone can get on the same page. Unless we all pay attention and listen to what people are saying it’s not likely that America as a whole will be able sync up in the necessary way to end bias.

“We’re not working together,” Shepard said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to work through it in the near future, but probably not. It’s a problem that’s been ongoing forever and it’ll probably just keep happening.”