The Michael Brown shooting has resulted in nationwide outrage in the U.S., with some people even wondering whether Brown would have died if he had been of a different skin color. On November 25, U.S. President Barack Obama said in response to Ferguson shooting that race-based resentments in America are “not just made up [but] … rooted in realities that have existed in this country for a long time”. Indeed, this is not the first time that the country has displayed signs of racism in its modern era. Racism permeates every facet of the U.S., even though the country is often described as the “melting pot”.

A British national newspaper, The Guardian, claimed that the Ferguson shooting showed the parallels to cases of violence against blacks in the past. Despite the clear differences, negative images and stereotypes still exist to this day. Blacks are still the most common targets for police violence when doing ordinary things. In the case of the Ferguson shooting, Brown was merely jaywalking down the middle of the road. Another example is Timothy Stansbury Jr., an unarmed 19-year-old New York City teenager who was shot and killed by New York Police Department (NYPD) Officer Richard S. Neri Jr. in 2004 - and all he did was startle an officer while walking up a stairwell.

Apart from the most blatant cases of police violence, the police has long been accused of their racism-hinting behavior and treatment towards Black people. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights in the U.S., approximately 80 percent of total stops made by NYPD were of blacks and Latinos, who make up 25 percent and 28 percent of New York City’s total population, respectively, from 2005 to 2008. On the other hand, only 10 percent of stops were made to whites, who comprise 44 percent of the total population of New York.

The police are not the only ones to perpetrate a passive form of white domination. White domination takes various forms in modern society. Professor Eduardo Bonilla – Silva from the Department of Social Sciences at Duke University calls the modern day racism as “racism without racists”, saying it is how white domination is maintained these days in regions such as Ferguson. Bonilla – Silva pointed out that the main problem today is “not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits”.

Although an African – American president is in office today, domestic surveys in the U.S. have continuously supported some of the commonly held stereotypes of African – Americans in the workplace. They are deemed less hardworking and less intelligent than their white counterparts. Although discrimination is no longer as blatant as in the era of “no blacks need apply”, Professor Devah Pager from the Department of Sociology at Harvard University showed that black job seekers were 50 percent less likely to achieve success in a job market than white job seekers of similar academic background and qualifications.

The media have also frequently depicted white domination over blacks and have shaped African – American stereotypes. The media often displays them as gangsters or drug dealers, focusing on the negative aspects of the black community. Racial stereotypes have also been portrayed in other forms of media such as movies, TV series, and commercials. In 2007, Intel launched a national commercial in the U.S., in which a white manager stands over six black athletes bowing on both sides of him in rows of 3. Despite Intel having officially claimed its innocence, the campaign received criticism for invoking such a powerful slave imagery.

Ferguson shooting sheds new light on extent of racism in the U.S. Racially motivated violence and other forms of white domination still exist in the modern society. It becomes more difficult to stop, as it is not as obvious as before. Doreen E. Loury, director of the Pan African Studies program at Arcadia University in the U.S., suggests, “The first thing we must stop doing is making racism a personal thing and understand that it is a system of advantage based on race.”