Society has change from what it used to be: 1960’s Civil rights movement (CRM) now we have Black Lives Matter (BLM). During the 1960’s black people were united fighting for freedom, we even had white people within people of color fighting for the rights of people of color, today, however, our society is faced with that is called colorblind, which means people think racism, segregation and discrimination no longer exist and that people of color should stop bring those topic every time something happens to a person of color. Moreover more people of color are in interracial relationships and people believe you can’t be racist if you date someone outside your race or have friends outside your race, however I beg to differ one can be racist while …show more content…
When Michelle talks about colorblind society these are the after effects of a colorblind society, the person who just got out of prison will be labeled ad a criminal regardless of whether they were guilty or not guilty, the fact that they were in prison makes them a person not to hire and a person not to stay around your children. As a society we label these people, distance ourselves, we do not hire them and we fail to help them cause them to want to go back to prison as life is hard for them outside: they cant find a job, proper housing and family relationships are unbendable. Michelle say’s , “ In colorblind America , criminals are the new whipping boys. They are entitled to no respect and little moral concern. Like the coloreds in the years following emancipation, criminals today are deemed a characterless and purposeless people, deserving of our collective scorn and contempt.” Which is what we are doing to people who come out or prison, My ex boyfriend is an ex convict he went to prison, when I meant him he didn’t tell me, all he did was be himself, show me love respect and honesty after months of talking he told me about him going to prison and why he went to prison , a part of me was happy that he first showed me the kind of a person he is before telling me he went to prison because if he had told me that before I would have judged him which is what society does to people who just got out of prison , they judge them , treat them poorly and disregard their feelings, with my boyfriend I decided to be part of the change and treat him like I would like to be treated. When it comes to housing most felons apply for section 8 as they do not make enough money to get a good apartment , therefore they apply for section 8 but for some felons they are
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i...
It would be ignorant to say racism does not exist till today. There is almost a complete 100 year difference between the reconstruction period and the Civil Rights Movement for equal rights to the Black society. While slavery took time to vanish in the south in those hundreds of years, segregation was pushed harshly, laws we 're enacted to prevent Blacks from having certain privileges that whites had. Segregation almost seemed to kick the Blacks out of the society we live together in. The Jim Crow laws had made efficient work in separating the Blacks from the Whites in society, and it took the Civil Rights movement in 1964 to finally bring more equality to the African-American society. However, the Ku Klux Klan and still other organizations had existed and continue to exist despite efforts to bring equality. There is a strong social equality for the Black population in America today, but because of hate organizations and discrimination still existing today, black lives are being lost through murder, and even in forms of police brutality. Take for example the L.A riots in 1992 from the beating of Rodney King, or going back to 1967 the Detroit riots which tore apart these cities. Today Black Lives Matter movements exist to crush out racism in society so people no longer have to live in fear, and it is an existing movement that I think will actually fade as generations in the future work to build up society, and racism will become a thing of a past. There is however, always going to be something that causes prejudices and hate in society if not directed to one group of people. Even today if racism disappears between blacks and whites, prejudice occurs between cultural people here in America. These problems exist mainly in America, and it is socially slowing us down from advancing as a
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines the development of institutionalized racism following the war on drugs, and how it has created what Alexander calls a “New Jim Crow era,” or a racial caste in the US. Alexander describes this undercaste as, “a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society,” (Alexander, 32). Not only is this because of mass incarceration rates among black men, but extends to the effects that these branded felons must face beyond prison walls. By checking the well known box on any application, it has become legal for almost any institution or corporation to discriminate against a marked felon. Alexander notes that, “Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusio...
However, there are still those who are racist and discriminate against people of different color. Even if slavery had ended and people may not talk about it much openly, racial caste and discrimination still goes on in the modern times. From the article, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander states how America has entered the era of “post- racialism” which is said to be the colorblindness era. Alexander states how racial caste is still alive in America and just merely redesigned it. It is those who are poor and colored that “amount to a new caste system- one specifically tailored to the political, economic, and social challenges of our time. It is the moral equivalent to Jim Crow”. The problems with police brutality, drug war, and the expansion of the America’s prison system all got to deal with those who are poor and colored. People of color are more likely to get the racial profile and abused by the police, even if they didn’t do anything wrong. They become labeled as “criminals” and then become part of the practice America has left behind towards slaves. The person of color labelled as a criminal have all their rights taken away from them like a slave. This interferes with their employment, housing, denial of having the right to vote, and excluded from jury
I tried out for color guard in March of 2016. My experience with joining color guard has been one of the best decisions that I have made so far in my life. Not only has it changed me as a person, it has changed the way I look at situations. It sounds weird that an activity could change so much in my life, but it truly has. And it has made me a better person because of it.
The way humans look externally and feel internally has been a barrier and the kernel to many of America’s social conflicts. Audre Lorde’s essay, “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” attempts to answer why Black women feel contempt among one another. It resonates that Black women, in lieu of their hatred for each other, should replace it by bonding together because they share the same experiences of being women and Black. In the essay titled, “Colorblind Intersectionality,” penned by, Devon W. Carbado seeks to expand the definition of “intersectionality,” which is a theory Professor Crenshaw initially introduced as a, “Drawing explicitly on Black feminist criticism,” (Carbado 811). Carbado is able to provide other forms of intersections by
Aside from individuals who were actually convicted of a felony, the tens of millions of Americans who were arrested without ever being convicted for a crime are no exception to this form of legalized discrimination as the same constraints applied to convicted felons are unfairly applied to them as well (Alexander 145). When it comes to felon discrimination, the severity of the felony does not matter. Public housing policies deny eligibility to people who have even the most minor criminal backgrounds. Due to the fact that people of color such as African Americans and Hispanics are primary targets of police in the War on Drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested for minor, nonviolent crimes as opposed to people who are white (Alexander 145). Instead of racial discrimination being nonexistent in present society, Michelle Alexander argues that racial discrimination has merely been extended to occur through subliminally discriminative colorblind practices (Alexander 11). The criminal justice system still targets racial minorities and deprives them of basic human rights by permitting legalized discrimination, such as the discrimination existent in public housing seen by the usage of racially restrictive covenants in the past, and by the
Today many people believe we live in a post-race society and the concept of colorblindness stems from this notion. Colorblindness refers to this idea that race doesn’t matter; that we shouldn’t see it or distinguish it and we are all equal. This ideology of colorblindness is harmful to individuals, their experiences and society as a whole. The concept of colorblindness denies people the power to define themselves while also classifying important aspect of their identity irrelevant or non-existent; race being one them. In the novel Black, White and Jewish, Rebecca Walker struggles with her racial identity and the impossibility of colorblindness in society.
Colorblindness affects more people than you might think, around 1 in every 12 males have color blindness (CBA). Although it is more common for boys to have color blindness girls can also get it, about 1 in 200 girls will have colorblindness (CBA). Look around you; chances are someone you know has colorblindness. There is nothing these people can do about it; it is a genetic disease.
In the black community, African-Americans are discriminating against each other, putting those with lighter skin complexion against ones whose skin is darker. In the African American community it’s like a battle of the skin tones. This type of racism is also known as colorism, the belief that those with lighter, fairer skin are treated with a higher respect than those with darker skin, this issue has been happening for a long time within the African American community. This form of racism is more offensive, severe, and different than the common traditional racism. The African American community is supposed to be united under the race Black, but that is where the problems come in. Under the ethnicity of African American, and have pride in their skin color and supposed to be joined together, there is a system of separation within the different shades of “Black.” In the black community, there are all kinds of shades of black, yellows, light, brown, dark brown, and other shades. According to Dr. Ronald Hall, a social work professor at Michigan State University, "As a result of having been colonized particularly by Spaniards, the British, etcetera, a lot of people...
Throughout society today, colorism and racism play a huge role in many lives. Though the similarities between the two may confused individuals, there happens to be a difference between colorism and racism. Racism is the belief that all members of each race processes certain characteristics or abilities specific to that race. Gloria Yamato says, “Racism is persuasive to the point that we take most of its manifestations for granted believing, “That’s Life” (Yamato 65). Racism can vary seeing as though you could be a specific type of racist. The four different types of racism that exist today are the “aware/blatant, the aware/covert, the unaware/unintentional, and lastly the unaware/self-righteous” (Yamato 66). Colorism is prejudice and discrimination against individuals with a darker skin tone. Colorism typically happens between individuals of the same ethnic and racial groups. In society today, colorism exists due to the accumulated experiences of racism, “which can generate questions and doubts in the minds of people of color about their place in a predominately white society” (Osajima141).
We have a long history of racism in America that has been structured to favor White people. Structural racism can be defined as, “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies the dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time”(Structural Racism, 2004,p. 11). Overt racism became illegal during The Civil Rights Movement that took place between 1954-1968 (Tuck, 2015). Although society seemed to be heading toward a more socially acceptable society, the movement enabled white people to blame the struggles black face as a character flaw. White people will believe that black people have a lot of problems because their culture is bad or they have bad values. The message they are reinforcing is that being black is inferior, and this is an example of structural racism operates. Structural racism is a system of forces that keeps people of color in a permanent second-class status, and it is the foundation of racism in our society. Society is structured in a way where the hierarchy of white people oppresses Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, etc and has
The world has lived through generations of racism and racial profiling. After the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Civil Rights Movement, the American people thought they had passed the days of hatred and discrimination. Although Americans think that they live in a non-racist society, minorities today still live in the chains of oppression and prejudice through sports, schools, and social media.
Colorism has became a huge issue in today’s society. Colorism is an issue because, it is a form of racism, it reflects back on the days of slavery, it is overall rude, and jail terms are affected.
Racism is a huge social problem in the world today. Many races today are being discriminated for being a certain race. Racism has been a social problem for a quite long time now, and it is still a social problem. The vast majority are being discriminated because of a certain group of a race, or person, done something that was awful, but this does not mean the whole race is to blame for the actions of others. Other races are looked down upon because of the color of their skin or maybe because they look very different. Racism has led up to genocide because one group fears another, or because of the way a race looks. A person who is racist is not born racist, they are taught to be racist or they see other people being racist, and they want to