Color-Blind Racism

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it’s the most important thing about a person if we look back at slavery, the slave trade, and just the civil rights, race was the main factor. It’s sad to say but race is still the main focus in our society. I personally don’t believe that Americans have ever really been a color-blind society. How can you make a society color-blind when all we know is color? Asking a person to stop seeing color would be like making a dog meow like a cat, it’s just not possible. Racial differences have been passed down from generation to generation so stopping racism all together seems nearly impossible. My other reason why I don’t think that a color-blind society is the answer to racism is because we as a society actually keep racism alive because of the way we stereotype different races. We all are guilty of stereotyping different races, some examples of how we stereotype in America is: black people love watermelon and fried chicken and they are good in football and basketball because of their color, Hispanics are only good for producing children and working for low wages, White men can’t jump and so on. We also stereotype blacks with crime, drugs, murder and gang involvement. Of course deep down we all know that most stereotypes aren’t true but as a society we have come to accept such stereotypes which I find to be sad. In my opinion I think that if we as a society keep stereotyping other races and we accept these stereotypes then we are keeping racism alive.

If you were to read the book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander you will find some interesting facts about the system of mass incarceration. She argues that any person who has been convicted of any felony (even a minor felony) is co-signed to second-class citizenship. So in other words under the old Jim Crow, African Americans were discriminated with the denial of equal access to the life opportunities and resources that were available to white people. She feels that felons are being discriminated against just as African Americans were during the Jim Crow era and it has made it legal once again.

Felons can legally be denied employment because of one of the questions on the application. If you check the box yes for “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” it is legal for the employer not to hire you because of that fact. Felons can be denied to college loans and scholarships, employment, military, as well as losing their right to vote and also their right to serve on a jury. Once you have a system that overwhelmingly focusses on people of color with felony convictions, you have the New Jim Crow.

Alexander’s book is full of all kinds of statistics along with some comparisons that shockingly shows the scope of the new legal discrimination system. “More African Americans are under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole” she writes, “than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” This information is very shocking to me; it just goes to show that racism still exists today.

I find it to be interesting that racist ideology is very flexible. At first blacks were looked upon as not even human, then we turned the focus onto genetic inferiority from there we went right to cultural inferiority. In today’s society there is a new ideological twist: “personal responsibility” and “color-blindness”. White people who choose to exercise color-blindness have many excuses they use; here are some of their excuses: It’s not race, its culture…, It’s not race, it depends on a person’s background …, I’m not prejudiced, but…, One of my best friends is black, the big one they use now is I voted for Barack Obama. They also believe that they aren’t racist, that blacks are not willing to work hard, that blacks want everything handed to them, that blacks hold themselves back, not racism. They also believe that blacks are unfairly favored, whites are not, and that blacks live in the past and they need to get over it and move on. The last one is that Blacks cry racism for everything even though they are the racist ones.

There are some people who don’t think that racism is a big issue in today’s society; those people who believe this are living with blinders on. Racism is still a big part of today’s society just look at the University of Oklahoma. In the past few weeks there has been a big cloud hanging over the University of Oklahoma and their chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon because of a 9 sec video clip that was posted on line. In this video it showed party-bound fraternity members on a bus clapping and pumping their fists as they chanted, "There will never be a ni**** SAE. You can hang him from a tree, but he can never sign with me." When I saw this video I was disgusted and very disturbed by it. I do agree with the Universities decision of shutting down the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house along with the suspension of two of the main boys involved. I also think that that fraternity across the nation should be shut down and done away with seems how they were taught song/chant at their fraternity convention. This incident just goes to show that there is still racism that exists in today’s society.

In conclusion we know that colorblindness is a dangerous myth, a myth that has some white people (and some people of color) into thinking that if we ignore race and focus on character, then everything will self-correct and that we as a nation can finally start healing and treat everyone equally. Unfortunately we know for a fact that colorblindness simply doesn’t work. Here is something to think about: maybe being colorblind is ideal if we as a nation can come together someday once we have successfully eradicated entirely our prejudices, conscious and unconscious. When we acknowledge and except our many cultures, ethnicity, skin colors and racial identities as being equal instead of ignoring them and putting our blinders on, we are going to be farther ahead as a nation. We also should think about whether or not we truly want to achieve colorblindness as a nation my answer would be no. I think multiculturalism is a better solution than blindness; it’s time for a change, growth and it’s time to see. People who think we are a “post racial” society need to take a good hard look at what is happening around them and actually see for a change.