From Racism to Racial Terror

This chapter will address racism through the lens of Black Americans, a group who has experienced an ongoing struggle to be treated as humanly equal. Anti-Black racism is an antagonistic system of beliefs that seek to erode and dictate the humanity of Black people. Most compelling is that it is enacted through misplaced, racialized thinking that Whites are superior to Blacks. This chapter will highlight how anti-Black racism has advanced to a state of racial hate and racial terrorizing that is reminiscent of the Jim Crow era of White vigilante justice. Anti-Black racism is manifested in the everyday personal and work experiences of Black Americans. For this reason, anti-Black racism is a problem that concerns not only the field of human resource development, but all stakeholders involved in leading and managing, educating and developing, and enforcing and practicing laws and policies that protect the well-being of all persons within the contexts they serve.