The racial issue remained the main problem of American society, and the Supreme Court legally secured the right of states to segregate. In the South, the Jim Crow Laws were in effect, which infringed on the rights of national minorities, and the southern society consisted of two small worlds. In the southern states, segregation intensified due to the adoption of racial laws.
For example, Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which was passed by the Virginia General Assembly, divided American society into two parts, such as whites and people of color (Heim). This obliged to indicate in an official document the person’s origin on a racial basis and mixed marriages were prohibited. The law explicitly stated that one who does not have an impurity of other blood could be called a white person (Heim). A non-white individual was a person with a drop of African American or Native American blood.
These types of legislative regulations and policies strengthened the level of discrimination to a higher degree. One world was for whites, and the other for minorities and in some areas where people of different races lived, the housing tax and rent were higher. This circumstance contributed to the emergence of criminal black regions in which poor African Americans lived. The reputation of these areas forced the whites to bypass them, and the division was present in the hiring.
Promising places were given to whites, and ethnic minorities were provided with unskilled work. African American people responded in the same way to whites, and often, this caused tension in society. Thus, I believe that these changes were major contributing factors for institutionalizing racism to the core of society. The main reason is that even non-racist white people were forced to discriminate African Americans and other people of color because the law itself supported oppression.
Work Cited
Heim, Joe. “How a Long-Dead White Supremacist Still Threatens the Future of Virginia’s Indian Tribes.” The Washington Post, 2015. Web.