After many years of slavery and cruel Jim Crow laws, the United States has made unprecedented strides towards equality. Currently, the country holds itself to a notion of color blindness, to receive equal treatment across the board, no matter what their skin color happens to be. The history behind America as a color blind society does not stretch incredibly far back in time, in fact, it is a fairly modern concept. The belief in being color blind has permeated into almost every aspect of American society, from welfare programs to college acceptance goals. On the other hand, due to the pervasiveness of color blind policies, there are a variety of myths and misconceptions regarding programs that are in place to help underprivileged minorities. …show more content…
Although color blindness may appear to be noble at first glance, when looked at with scrutiny, color blindness is a camouflaged form of racism. Williams and Land write that, "As a result of what some scholars have defined White America 's race-related ideology as dysconscious, modern, symbolic, lassez-faire, or color blind--factors that contribute to racial inequality have taken on a more covert form.” By design, color blind legislation is in place to maintain the status quo of white dominance, even in the world of education. Many teachers claim to be color blind, stating that they treat all children as children, nothing more. What these teachers fail to recognize is that color blind racism affects many things including "high-stakes testing, student tracking and ability grouping, low teacher perceptions and expectations, lack of resources given to highly populated minority schools, blame placed on African American families for lack of involvement in education, racially disparate disciplinary reactions and consequences within schools, and poverty in African American communities.” (Williams and Land 579) Using tests to separate students by performance levels came about in the 1950’s, to help create a meritocracy in society. In modern times, testing gets employed in this way, with no regard to one’s background. In No Child Left Behind, testing is the number one factor in …show more content…
In a study conducted to better understand color blind racism, the researchers find that, “Racism springs not from the hearts of "racists" but from the fact that dominant actors in a racialized society receive benefits at all levels (political, economic, social, and even psychological), whereas subordinate actors do not." (Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, and Embrick 558) In the modern era, it is common to hear phrases such as, “Slavery ended long ago.” or, “I did not own any slaves.” or, “Jews have become successful, why haven’t blacks?” (Bonilla-Silva, Lewis, and Embrick 562) Many people believe that society should not treat any race differently because of what happened to that group in the past, no matter how horrible. This is wrong because not is the black community still recovering from past atrocities, all the while fighting modern racism and discrimination. In fact, some whites believe that programs designed to enfranchise African Americans can be considered “reverse discrimination.” When asked whether blacks should receive any reparations for past atrocities, a respondent had said, "It [slavery] doesn 't affect you. Me, as a white person, I had nothing to do with slavery. You, as a black person, you never experienced it. It was so long ago I just don 't see how that pertains to what 's happening to the race today, so...I 'm just like "God, shut up!""
It gives the color blind a different meaning. The color blind will be known at the way for people to overlook racism. However, the twenty-first century is better than the eighteenth and nineteenth century. At least, the government doesn’t openly allow the racism happen. Prashad’s book reminded us that in the 1896: Plessy v Ferguson “ US Supreme Court upheld constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality.”
examines the effects of the colorblindness approach to achieving a post-racial society. Wingfield, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of numerous books and articles concerning racism in America, focuses her research around the effects of the colorblindness ideology on individual cultures and social issues. This article appears in The Atlantic, a left-leaning news source, along with a collection of Wingfield’s other articles, mostly covering issues concerning racism and segregation in America.
The Color-Blind Principle is written by Bernard Boxill discusses how color-blind and color-conscious are two very different things. This work also discusses the problems of discrimination based on something you are not responsible for such as being born black or white. Boxill uses the example of a university denying the rights of students’ admissions because their hair is parted to the right, then later states, “Suppose again for example, that a person is denied admission to law school because he parts his hair on the right side. Though he, far more easily than the black person can avoid being unfairly discriminated against, he does not thereby more easily avoid being the object, indeed, in a deeper sense, the victim, of unfair discrimination.” (463) I disagree with Boxill’s affirmative action idea because the idea of affirmative action is passing the discrimination from one race to the other.
DuBois understands part of the problem. Blacks and whites have become intertwined in a vicious cycle. Slavery itself did not create, but enhanced negative attitudes towards blacks. In quite the same way, the institution of slavery greatly enhanced the way blacks felt about whites. White landowners were responsible for disenfranchisin...
E. D. Hirsch and Lisa Delpit are both theorist on teaching diverse students. Both of these theorist believe that when teaching diverse students, teachers need to see their students for who they are. Seeing your students for who they are, means you look past the color of your students’ skin and recognize their culture. According to Stubbs, when teachers look at their students equally, no matter the color of their skin, then the teacher is considered colorblind (2002). Being colorblind is not a great thing because we should not treat all of our students the same, since each student is different. It is important to see our students for who they are because our classes are unique. Instead, our classes represent a rainbow underclass. According to Li, the rainbow underclass is the representation of families who are culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged (2008). In order to meet these student’s needs, teachers need to think about the struggles that each student face.
Earlier in the semester we watched a video over Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy. This video was inspiring for people to look at what has happened in our history and society. This has been a major social injustice to African-Americans for so long, and it is now time that it needs to be confronted. People are often confused about why some people get upset about the way African-Americans react to some things, it is because they never had the opportunity to heal from their pain in history. In the article “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” it is talked about how racism is, “a serious illness that has been allowed to fester for 400 years without proper attention” (Leary, Hammond, and Davis, “Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome”). This is
“Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action: A Comparison of Color-Blind Versus Modern Racist Attitudes” explains the connection between colorb...
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New, 2010. Print.
Many people in the United States society believe that people of all cultures, races, and ethnicities are now on an even playing field. People with this belief support their logic with the argument that since equal rights for people of color and women have been required by law for some time now, we are all inherently as equal as claimed in the Declaration of Independence. Many believe that race is no longer an issue, a viewpoint frequently referred to as color-blindness. National polling data indicated that a majority of whites now believe discrimination against racial minorities no longer exists. (Gallagher, 96) Color-blindness allows a white person to define himself or herself as politically and racially tolerant and then proclaim their adherence to a belief system that does not see or judge individuals by the “color of their skin.” (Gallagher, 98) Many Caucasians in particular are of the opinion that because they listen to hip-hop or cheer for their favorite black, professional sports player that they are not racist. Still others believe that because they have a black president, we see black people in the commercial of products we consume, or enjoy television shows with black people that they are actually acknowledging race. In order to examine and dismantle this series of misconceptions, we will turn to the work of various scholars of social justice and privilege, including Peggy McIntosh, Patricia Hinchey and Johnathon Kozol as well as the story of Patricia J Williams. Through a careful examination of these works with the support of some key statistics, it is the goal of this paper to demonstrate the existence of a privileged and unprivileged America, despite the color-blindness many may profess to have integrated into their p...
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New
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
The ability for all children from varying walks of life to receive a well-rounded education in America has become nothing more than a myth. In excerpt “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch argues the government’s fanatical obsession with data based on test scores has ruined the education system across the country (107). In their eyes, students have faded from their eyes as individual hopefully, creative and full of spirit, and have become statistics on a data sheet, percentages on a pie chart, and numbers calculated to show the intelligence they have from filling out bubbles in a booklet. In order for schools to be able to provide a liberal education, they need the proper funding, which comes from the testing.
‘Zero-tolerance’ policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while high-stakes testing programs encourage educators to push out low-performing students to improve their schools’ overall test scores. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline (Gabbard 2013:33).
Over the past four-hundred plus years, racism has plagued the history of American society. The idea that one person is inherently better than another because of the color of their skin has always been present from our founding to today. During the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the mid 1900’s, racism was repeatedly being dealt blows by those brave enough to stand up for the rights they felt belonged to citizens of all shapes and colors. One important event that led to progress for people of color was the desegregation of the schooling systems. From young girls walking into all-white schools to black men being selected to participate in different academies, the Civil Rights movement to desegregate schools was influential in how progress
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.