programs continued in much of the country, most
polls indicated that about 60 percent of whites and
35 percent of blacks opposed racial preferences.
Numerous instances of racial violence took place.
In 1990, Congress passed a law requiring the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to keep records of
hate crimes. In 1996, a rather typical year, the agency
reported 8,769 such occurrences, with about 63 per-
cent based on race. The decade’s most highly publi-
cized racial hate crime was the 1998 murder of Afri-
can American James Byrd, Jr., when three white
supremacists dragged his mangled body behind a
pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. Although black-white
conflict tended to attract the headlines, in Los An-
geles and many other cities confrontations between
Hispanics and blacks, often organized into hostile
gangs, was a growing problem. Two significant race
riots occurred. In 1991, when a car driving a Hasidic
Jewish leader struck and killed a black child in the
Brooklyn community of Crown Heights, the result
was four nights of rioting, in which one Jewish stu-
dent was murdered, 188 persons were injured, and
more than 150 were arrested. That same year, several
police officers were taped beating Rodney King fol-
lowing a high-speed chase and his refusal to obey
their orders. The next year, after three of the officers
were acquitted of using excessive force, rioting and
looting broke out in Los Angeles, resulting in fifty-
three deaths, ten thousand arrests, and the destruc-
tion of about four thousand buildings.
The sensational murder trial of O. J. Simpson
demonstrated that African Americans and European
Americans tended to perceive American society from
radically different perspectives. For the latter, the ev-
idence against Simpson appeared overwhelming. In
addition to DNA tests and the bloody glove found on
his property, he had a motive, time to commit the
murders, and a history of violent behavior. Yet, John-
nie Cochran achieved an acquittal by convincing the
predominantly black jury that Mark Furman and
other white police officers had planted evidence be-
cause of their desire to destroy a successful black
man. When the jury announced that Simpson was
not guilty, one juror raised his fist in a black-power
salute. Over national television, a group of black law
students at Howard University cheered in delight.
Following the trial, 85 percent of blacks said they
agreed with the verdict, compared with some 24 per-
cent of whites.
Canada In comparison with the U.S. population, a
much larger majority of Canada’s peoples were of
European ancestry. According to official statistics,
racial minorities constituted only about 9.4 percent
of Canadians in 1991, but largely because of immi-
gration, they grew to include almost 14 percent by
the end of the decade. Despite the country’s global
reputation for toleration and equal rights, it had
many of the racial and ethnic inequalities found in
other modern societies. In employment and educa-
tion, racial minorities were significantly underrepre-
sented in prestigious positions, and a number of stud-
ies indicated that discrimination continued to be
practiced against minorities. There were significant
differences, however, among the various groups,
with Asian Canadians showing more gains than
black Canadians or aboriginal peoples. Statistics also
showed even greater variation in the criminal justice
system. Whereas black Canadians in 1996 made up
about 2.2 percent of the country’s population, they
comprised over 6 percent of prison inmates. Asian
Americans, in contrast, made up 7.2 percent of the
population but only 2.4 percent of persons incarcer-
ated.
At the beginning of the decade, Canada already
had strong federal and provincial human rights leg-
islation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of
race or ethnicity. In 1995, the Parliament revised
and strengthened the Employment Equity Act, de-
claring that no person should be “denied employ-
ment opportunities or benefits for reasons unre-
lated to ability.” The statute further announced the
goal of correcting the “conditions of disadvantage”
of minorities in employment equity, which “means
more than treating persons in the same way but also
requires special measures and the accommodation
of differences.” In 1996, the federal government
proclaimed the Canadian Race Relations Founda-
tion Act, designed to focus its efforts on eliminating
all racism against minorities, with particular empha-
sis on systematic discrimination in education and
employment.
Public opinion polls by the Centre for Research
and Information on Canada (CRIC) usually showed
growing support for the concept of racial and ethnic
diversity, even though many French-speaking peo-
ple in Quebec feared that multiculturalism posed a
challenge to the survival of French culture. A minor-
ity of Canadians agreed with Neil Bissoondath’s
Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in CanadaThe Nineties in America Race relations 699