During slavery, state governments controlled and dictated the forms and content of African American artistic and cultural production.
Advocates argue that this is still true today.
After the Civil War, governments and politicians embraced minstrelsy, which was the popular racist and stereotypical depiction of African Americans through song, dance, and film. Federal and state governments failed to protect Black artists and creators from discrimination and simultaneously promoted discriminatory narratives. Federal and state governments allowed white Americans to steal Black art and culture with impunity—depriving Black creators of valuable copyright and patent protections. State governments denied Black entrepreneurs and culture makers access to the leisure sites, business licenses, and funding for lifestyle activities that were offered to white people. State governments built monuments to memorialize the Confederacy as just and heroic through monument building, while simultaneously suppressing the nation’s history of racism, slavery and genocide. States censored cinematic depictions of discrimination while also censoring depictions of Black people integrating into white society.
It is undeniable that the labor of enslaved Africans built the infrastructure of the nation, produced its main agricultural products for domestic consumption and export, and filled the nation’s coffers. Since then, federal, state, and local government actions directly segregated and discriminated against African Americans. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson officially segregated much of the federal workforce. While African Americans have consistently served in the military since the very beginning of the country, the military has historically paid Black soldiers less than white soldiers and often deemed African Americans unfit for service until the military needed them to fight. Federal laws have also protected white workers while denying the same protections to Black workers, empowering private discrimination. Approximately 85 percent of all Black workers in the United States at the time were excluded from the protections passed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—protections such as a federal minimum wage, the maximum number of working hours, required overtime pay, and limits on child labor. The Act essentially outlawed child labor in industrial settings—where most white children worked— and allowed child labor in agricultural and domestic work—where most Black children worked.
Although federal and state laws such as the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act of 1959 prohibit discrimination, enforcement is slow and spotty. Federal and state policies such as affirmative action produced mixed results or were short lived. African Americans continue to face employment discrimination today.
California Reparations study, pgs. 13-14