Critical Analysis Of The Fallacy Of A Colorblind Society

In this critical analysis paper I will be deconstructing Jennifer Juhler (9:50) from the Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible video. Juhler describes an instance from her childhood where her best friend, a Chinese-American girl, is tormented and embarrassed by a theater teacher. In the scene Juhler’s friend, amongst others, is cast as a Pacific Islander extra. The teacher then asks her to say her lines in an accent; however, when the teacher shows her how she wants her to speak, she does so in a way that mocks her and makes her sound uneducated and silly. When Juhler is describing this encounter, she is in the stage described by Janet Helms as “disintegration”. This scene also exemplifies the concepts of stereotyping and master status.

The stereotype that the teacher is using is the thought that all Asian-Pacific Americans—or anyone from a different country—do not know how to speak “proper” English or speak it with a very strong accent, which in turn is then mocked. Irene Maya Ota explains the concept of stereotyping in her dissertation, “The Fallacy of A Colorblind Society,” by stating “what one member of a racial minority does, characterizes all members of that group” (4). Similar to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk discussing the notion of a “single story,” stereotyping limits the possibility for individuation in an ethnic or social group. This can be extremely dangerous as it tends to generalize a group of people and puts them in a social box, keeping them from being seen as what they truly are from dominant society: as diverse peoples who come from many different backgrounds and have stories of their own. Stereotyping only perpetuates the illogical and misrepresentation of grouping people into five categories based solely on their phenotype. This systematic procedure encompasses Adichie’s notion of the single story and fails to acknowledge the intricacy and diversity of the human race. Particularly in Juhler’s scenario, instead of the teacher allowing the Chinese-American girl to showcase her acting in a creative and productive way, she automatically

This could be proof of the concept of the master status being at play in this scenario. As Irene explained in our first lecture of the semester, the master status represents the first thing that people notice about others—which on average is race. The first thing that the teacher saw was that the student looked Asian and therefor must be from Asia, and even more, must have or know how to speak in an “Asian” accent. As Evelyn Alsultany discusses in her essay, “Los Intersticios,” people tend to automatically choose one part of someone’s identity to focus on when first meeting them. This is a natural human reaction but it can be dangerous if people continue to focus on one part of someone else’s identity and do not try and understand the complexity of that person’s identity. Alsultany explains this phenomenon by incorporating her own personal experience of coming from both an Iraqi and a Cuban background. She interestingly shows how being “otherized” or being identified with can both be a problem. She explains that, “those who otherize me fail to see a shared humanity and those who identify with me fail to see difference; my Arab or Muslim identity negates my Cuban heritage” (236). This shows how master status can override the reality of the complexity of