A typical white family today has on average eight times the net worth of a typical African American family, according to economist Edward Wolff.

Mortgage discrimination testing revealed differences in treatment that disadvantaged homebuyers of color 45% of the time.¹ Upper income African Americans are 8 times more likely to have high cost loans than their white counterparts.² The presence of high-risk lenders is 3.7 greater in minority neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.³ Upper and middle income African Americans and Latinos are 10 times more likely to have high cost loans that low income whites.⁴

1. FHCGB Audit 2005-2006
2. MA Community Banking Council
3. Paying More for the American Dream, 2008
4. MA Community Banking Council

African Americans and Latinos are discriminated against when in the market to purchase a home, according to 2004 & 2005 audits; still 60% more likely than whites to be turned down for a loan, even after controlling for employment, financial, and neighborhood factors. According to the Census, whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%.

Shannon County, South Dakota, home of the Oglala Lakota on Pine Ridge Reservation is identified as the poorest place in the country.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan reframes the issue of immigration as one of national security. Congress passes the Immigrant Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, leading to increased patrols along the U.S.-Mexican border, sanctions on employers of undocumented workers, and an amnesty program for long-term undocumented residents.

The Model Minority vs. The Welfare Queen comparison becomes popularized, stereotyping Asians as smart, wealthy, hard-working, docile, and spiritually enlightened, in contrast to Black women as misusing welfare payments through fraud, child endangerment, or manipulation.

Over 500 Indian activists traveled to Washington, DC to deliver a revamp proposal and review treaty violations with Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officials. BIA officials refused to meet, so activists took a week-long siege of the BIA building. The BIA finally agreed to review the 20 demands and provide funds to transport the activists back home. After, the FBI classified AIM as “an extremist organization” and added leaders’ names to the US “key extremists” list.

In a special message to Congress, President Richard Nixon says drug abuse is “a serious national threat”, kickstarting a chain of events that results with the unfair imprisonment of black and brown citizens over the next decades.

White church leaders and members get involved in Citizen’s Council, commonly referred to as the White Citizens’ Councils, an associated network of white supremacist organizations.

In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, is murdered while visiting his grandparents in Mississippi. Supposedly, while out with his friends and cousins, he whistles at a white woman. Later that week, Till is taken from his grandparents’ home by a group of armed white men and never heard from again. Till‘s body was later found in the river, face beaten beyond recognition and body bloated. Caroline Bryant Dunham, a storekeeper who alleged in Emmett Till’s trial that Emmett Till had attempted to rape her, insinuating that her husband and brother-in-law were right in murdering him. She later recanted her testimony in 2016.

“Operation Wetback” is a program designed to expel illegal immigration, unfortunately causing thousands legal immigrants to be unfairly deported.

White mobs in Los Angeles attack Mexicans leading to the famous Zoot Suit Riots. Police only arrest Mexican youth.

FDR signs Executive Order 9066 ordering the evacuation and internment of Japanese-Americans.

Even before Pearl Harbor, Japanese are discriminated against in the U.S. After the attack, discrimination grows to monumental proportions.

The Wagner Act empowers white people with the right to collective bargaining, helping millions gain entry into the middle class over the next 30 years. But the Act permits exclusion of non-whites to unions, denying them access to better paid jobs, union protections, and benefits. Many craft unions remained nearly all-white well into the 1970s.

The landmark Social Security Act provides a safety net for millions of workers, guaranteeing income after retirement. But the act excludes two occupations: agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominately African American, Mexican, and Asian. Instead of these workers passing wealth on to their children, their children had to support them.

Takao Ozawa, a Japanese-American, files for naturalization, reserved at the time for “free white persons or those of black nativity”, arguing that because he has white skin, and he and his children speak proper English, etc., he should be classified as white. The courts make it clear that the term “white person” means Caucasian, and Mr. Ozawa is racially unqualified to be a naturalized citizen.

In the small railroad town of Corbin, Kentucky, a violent mob expells the majority of African-American families in retaliation after a white man was robbed by two white men in blackface. However, according to the affidavit, some white residents stand up to the mob, protecting black houses and businesses. The town remains white to this day. A former mayor is interviewed by NPR in 2016 about the incident, and he believes it did happen, just “not to that severity.” Denial, silence and shame has been the the town’s answer to this day.

White Americans murder 40-250 African-Americans in late May and early July. Six thousand more black people are left homeless from the burning and vandalism, with about $400,000 in property damage, or about $8 million today adjusted for inflation.

The Jones Act makes Puerto Rican’s U.S. citizens eligible to serve in the military, but not eligible to vote in national elections.

Birth of a Nation is the first blockbuster film in American history, grossing $60 million by 1917. The film depicts the Klu Klux Klan as heroes, who protect white women from aggressive Black men – played by white men in blackface – who want to rape them. The movie sparked a influx of Klan members. It was also the first movie to be screened in the White House under President Woodrow Wilson, who said, “It’s like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

Leo Frank, a Jewish merchant accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, is lynched in Georgia. Many reporters deemed the conviction a travesty, and in Georgia, antisemitism and hatred toward Frank grows leading to his death. In 1986, Frank is posthumously pardoned by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, although not officially absolved of the crime.

After several short term renewals, the Chinese Exclusion Act is made indefinite.

The Supreme Court issues the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, determining “separate but equal” facilities for Blacks are legal. This ushers in legal segregation affecting Blacks and Mexican Americans which will last until the 1960s.

Hawaiian royalists begin a coup against Dole’s republic, but ultimately fail. Queen Liliuokalani is arrested, convicted of treason, put on house arrest, and forced to absolve the monarchy.

Queen Liliuokalani proposes a new constitution to give power back to the monarchy and voting rights to native Hawaiians. In response, Sanford B. Dole, founder of Dole Inc., stages a coup against the Queen with the support of the United States. Dole heads a provisional government until Hawaii’s official annexation in 1898.

Civil War Myths persist today¹, a famous example being “the Civil War was about state’s rights, not slavery.” A big push for this narrative comes from the Lost Cause Movement, propagated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC started as a group of wealthy Southern women who came together over the core values of reestablishment of slavery and commemoration of confederate soldiers, going on to erect most of the confederate statues that are still around today. Textbooks also contribute to Civil War myths. An excerpt from The History of Georgia says, “The master often had a barbecue or a picnic for his slaves. Then they had a great frolic. Even while working in the cotton fields they sang songs. The beat of the music and the richness of their voices made work seem light. The slaves were easily turned to Christianity. Baptism seemed to really wash away their sins.” These textbooks were not decommissioned out of elementary and middle schools until the late 1970’s.

1. 2011 Pew Research Poll

Years of anti-Chinese sentiment, said to stem from the Union Pacific Railroad company hiring Chinese as strikebreakers in 1875, culminated in tragic riots. Seattle’s Chinatown was burned down on October 24. That year there were also violent riots against Chinese in Washington, Alaska, California, Wyoming, South Dakota and Nevada.

In the South, the federal government never follows through on General Sherman’s Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave “40 acres and a mule” as reparations. The only monetary compensation made for slavery is up to $300 – to slaveholders as compensation for loss of property. When slavery ends, its legacy lives on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that white slave owners and their descendants accrue. Economists who study how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 trillion.

270 million acres—10% of the total land area of the United States—are converted from Indian Territory and given away to private hands, overwhelmingly white, under Homestead Act provisions.

Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright came up with the term “Drapetomania” which asserted black slaves who fled captivity had an illness.

Foreign Miners Tax in California requires Chinese and Latin American gold miners to pay a special tax.

Despite the 1831-1832 Supreme Court ruling that the Cherokee had the right to stay in their lands, President Andrew Jackson sends federal troops to forcibly remove 16,000 Cherokee men, women, and children. This move breaks the Treaty of New Echota, and the Cherokee refuse to move. In May, American soldiers herd the Cherokee into camps where they remain imprisoned through summer. At least 1,500 perish, with the remainder beginning an 800-mile forced march to Oklahoma that fall. Four thousand Cherokee die in total during the removal process, though they did fight back. One notable figure being Seminole leader Osceola dying of malaria complications on January 30 at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina after leading a valiant fight against removal of his people to Indian Territory, though ultimately the Seminole are forcibly relocated.

In the US Supreme Court in the 1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the unanimous decision held “that the principle of discovery gave European nations an absolute right to New World lands.”

New Jersey restricts voting rights to tax-paying, white male citizens, disenfranchising women and black people, in a move historians believe happened to give the Democratic-Republican Party an advantage in the 1808 Presidential election, as voters from these groups often voted for the opposing Federalist Party.

The first time racial population statistics are written in a document, the government chooses not to count Black people and Native Americans, instead creating 5 categories: white males 16 and older, white males under 16, white females, all other free people, and slaves (counted as three-fifths of a person for tax and representation purposes). This system contributes a to a multiclass coalition of white people as opposed to a multiracial coalition of those who had an economic interest in common.

This Act only permits “free white persons” to become naturalized citizens, opening doors to European immigrants but not others. Only citizens could vote, serve on juries, hold office, and in some cases, even hold property.

A slave market is built on the foot of Wall Street in New York City, where Africans and Native Americans are sold as slaves. This highlights that the North was not unstained from the slave trade, and that Natives were also sold into slavery.

As the first legislative body in colonial America, the Virginia House of Burgesses debates the question, “What is a white man?”, passing a law in 1682 limiting citizenship to Europeans and defining all non-whites slaves for all intent and purposes.

On July 30th 1676, in a quintessential example of the divide and conquer tactic, tobacco farmer Nathaniel Bacon led other farmers to attack the Susquehannock Indians. Governor Berkeley refused, so in retaliation the farmers burned down Jamestown and killed many of the Susquehannock.

Maryland slave laws rule that all Africans arriving in the colony are presumed to be slaves. Free European American women who marry enslaved men lose their freedom. Children of European American women and enslaved men are enslaved. Other North American colonies develop similar laws. In South Carolina, every new white settler is granted twenty acres for each black male slave and ten acres for each black female slave brought into the colony.

Virginia amends its fugitive slave law to include fining of people harboring runaway slaves, with a fine of 30 pounds.

Virginia passes a fugitive slave law, fining pounds of tobacco to offenders helping runaway slaves. An enslaved person is to be branded with a large R on their back or face.

John Punch, an indentured servant in the Virginia colony, runs away along with a dutchman and a scotsman. However, they are caught and brought to trial. The dutchman and scotsman are sentenced to 4 additional years of servitude – 1 with their master and 3 for the colony, but Punch is given perpetual servitude; the first time slavery is put into law in the colonies. Thus Africans and white people are treated differently in the eyes of the law. The ruling class needed a consistent reliable labor force and they could not have that labor force banning together and challenging the authority of the colony.

Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto lands at Tampa Bay, Florida, beginning an expedition across the American southeast on behalf of the Spanish crown. He encounters Timucuan Indians and begins taking land from them. The Timucuan warriors resisted Soto’s men, but were defeated. Soto executed 100 of them, known as the Napituca Massacre. This is the first large-scale massacre by Europeans on American soil.

Before 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and came to the Americas, Native groups had thriving and rich societies. In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe. Cities such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlan, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, botanical gardens, and clean streets. Pre-Columbian indigineous Mexicans developed corn by a sophisticated process described as “man’s first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering”.