Why is racism still a problem in America?

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.

President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, stating “there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin” on July 26, 1948.

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the historic Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional on June 12, 1967.

The first race riots in decades erupted in Los Angeles on April 29, 1992 after a jury acquits four white police officers for the videotaped beating of African American Rodney King.

Those riots were nearly a quarter-century ago.

But is the race problem in the United States is improving?

New findings in a poll released by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 49 percent of Americans believe racism is “a big problem.” That figure is up from 2011, when just over 25 percent described racism that way. In 1995, 41 percent of Americans called racism a major concern.

The survey follows a series of high-profile deaths of unarmed black males in Staten Island; Baltimore; Ferguson, Missouri; and other locales, during encounters with law enforcement — episodes sometimes caught on cellphone videos. In recent weeks, black college students have held protests across the country to redress grievances that have included feelings of alienation, threats and their schools’ past ties to segregation and even slavery.

“From the perspective of a white almost middle-aged woman, I do believe racism is a problem — not as big as it used to be — but still a problem nonetheless, said Melanie Johnston, 43, a Hillsborough resident. “I think people have a problem with the unknown — if you don’t know people of other ethnic groups you tend to take the things you see on the news and on TV as your beliefs.

“We see that a store clerk was robbed and killed by black man or the black woman that threw her newborn out of the window, people then generalize that all black people are bad. Just like the old saying: ‘one bad apple ruins the whole cart’ you take that thought on a whole race of people.

“I also think racism is learned and not something we are born with,” continued Johnston, the mother of a 14-year-old biracial daughter. “Kids don’t see skin color when they are small. They just play with the other kids in preschool until mommy or daddy tells them they can’t.”

Johnston, who for 15 years has been married to a man who was born in what now is Belize, emphasized that she growing up was not taught to hate anyone without knowing them. “Once you know someone then you can make that call,” she said, adding: “Solving the racial problem will take time. … As adults maybe we need to expose ourselves to other races in a positive way.”

Some experts agree.

“What we need is true interaction among people so that meaningful dialogue can be established,” said Louis Prisock, assistant professor of Africana Studies at the Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences, who holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “A problem in our society is the lack of interaction, which perpetuates ignorance” and instigates bias, he said.

Prisock, who also holds a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Drexel University, Philadelphia, and has taught courses on the sociology of money and markets, the sociology of wealth, and on black communities in contemporary America, indicated that fear and ignorance have exasperated the racial problem.

Further, Prisock feels fear among Americans regarding not only race but faith and national origin as well, has spiked in the years of the administration of President Barack Obama.

“If I am trying to have a dialogue with you, how is that possible if you do not respect me,” he said. “You take President Obama — he is a highly educated and very accomplished man — yet there are people for whom he simply can do nothing right. He is looked at as incompetent.”

Prisock called attention to statements by prominent members of the Republican Party while on the campaign trail who belittle Obama and his record and who are making inflammatory comments regarding race and national origin.

To be sure, many are becoming increasingly concerned with bias regarding faith and national origin, which many consider exactly the same as racism.

Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claim that Muslims in New Jersey “celebrated” the 9/11 terror attacks has created a national firestorm, spurring a fervent outcry in New Jersey.

“By repeating the false claim — despite a lack of evidence — that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 terror attacks, and by advocating the closure of American mosques and special IDs and databases for American Muslims, Donald Trump must be held partially responsible for the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes and discrimination we have witnessed since the Paris terror attacks,” said Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

CAIR members joined leaders of New Jersey’s Muslim community, interfaith partners and public officials in a news conference in Jersey City to speak out against what they call rising “Islamophobia” in America, exacerbated by inaccurate and inflammatory statements by public figures such as Trump, Ben Carson and others. Awad is among those who believe these inflammatory statements have led to a spike in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its stated mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

To be sure, Trump’s suggestion that American Muslims should registered and put under surveillance by government agencies seems eerily similar to programs in Nazi Germany that required Jews to register with the government and internment camps developed in the United States to register and jail people of Asian ancestry.

During World War II, despite the lack of any concrete evidence, Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the American mainland, Japanese Americans were feared as a security risk because of a high level of anti-Japanese paranoia.

It would seem that history is repeating, as without any concrete evidence, anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia is taking hold among large parts of the U.S. population.

“This hysteria, which is the same as South African Apartheid is going on right now in this country,” Prisock continued. “This registering of people is a hop, skip and jump away from rounding up all the Muslims and putting them into camps.”

“Not much has changed. I always believed that there is a direct correlation between race relations and the economy, said Reginald Johnson, a Metuchen native and president of the Metuchen-Edison Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “Even though many believed in Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s remarks about ‘not being judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,’ the statistics do not add up when we are dealing with our corporations,” added Johnson, an alumnus of Ricker College in Houlton, Maine, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English and a bachelor of science degree in mathematics.

Johnson believes education and more effective government intervention would improve the racism problem in America. He is a vocal proponent of diversity programs.

“One of the best county programs promoting the benefits of cultural diversity is managed by the Middlesex County Office of Culture and Heritage Commission,” he said. “Its role is to develop countywide programs and promote public interest in local and county history, in the arts, and in the cultural values, goals, traditions of the community, the state and the nation. One of their programs, ‘I Like Me,’ teaches diversity programs to preschool and kindergarten classes.

“There is a NJ State Human Relation Council and several human relation commissions in Middlesex County whose charge is to make recommendations to elected officials and law enforcement to help eliminate all types of discrimination based on, but not limited to race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender. Active commissions are in East Brunswick, Monroe, Piscataway, Plainsboro and Sayreville.”

Johnson said that although the black community has seen high unemployment, he never has seen so many black professionals unemployed and/or underemployed. “As Urban League President Marc Morial stated: ‘Black America is in crisis — a jobs crisis, a justice crisis and an education crisis.’ It appears that politics are getting in the way of any progress.”

Politics also has become more commonplace in a world in which anyone with a computer tablet or smartphone has practically unlimited access to news, commentary and rumor. The social media platforms have allowed seemingly endless debate among great numbers of people about any topic — politics and race being among the most popular. But the jury still is out regarding the positives and negatives of social media on race issues in our country.

“There is a saying, that the more things change the more they stay the same,” said Gina I. Humber, a New York special-education teacher, author and national speaker. “There has been some change; neither we as Americans, nor I personally can deny that fact. But the race problem in our country is systemic, and is both overt and covert.”

Humber has written curriculum’s and has conducted independent research studies and surveys as it relates to self-esteem and its connection with diversity, education and ethnicity.

“Because of social media we can acknowledge two truths: One can see individual racism, which our society deems as wrong and deplorable, but the second type is less identifiable, and society tends to overlook and makes excuses for why it happens. In some ways, the answer lies in the truth that we will always have a race problem as long as these two entities exist,” Humber said.

“I believe racism has gotten more overt, said Humber, who is African American. “President Obama is the personification of their fears, ad racism is rooted in fear.

“Social media has allowed overt racism to have a voice, without accountability, and to form groups that support that mindset and create followers. At the same time, social media has also created tools for those who have felt disempowered. Disempowered, because of social-economic differences, but empowered with the tools of creating followers as well. These followers have created viable digital communities where they can impact change as an entire media force,” she said.

But how do we begin to solve the problems we are facing with racism in America?

Perhaps Johnston has a beginning: “We need to get back to the thought that we are all the same under our skin.” she said. “I love the commercial that shows people behind the X-ray machine. You can’t see who they are just that they are human and you get a little shocked when you see who pops out. It ’s funny how when we are kids we are just human and when we become elderly we don’t care about race anymore either.

“My grandmother is in assisted living and has become so close with two Hispanic women — in a million years I never would have seen that coming.”

Gannett New Jersey reports contributed to thins article.

Columnist/Senior Reporter Jay Jefferson Cooke; 908-243-6603; jcooke@gannettnj.com