Is the Emphasis on a Color Blind Society the Answer to Racism?Essay Preview: Is the Emphasis on a Color Blind Society the Answer to Racism?Report this essayWhen looking on the surface, it seems as though a color blind society would be the perfect solution to all of our racism woes. I, on the other hand, believe that a “color blind” society only intensifies racial barriers. Like George M. Fredrickson said, “In all manifestations of racism from the mildest to the most severe, what is being denied is the possibility that the racializers and the racialized can coexist in the same society, except perhaps on the basis of domination and subordination.”
Although some may argue that the emphasis on a color blind society really is the answer to racism, they fail to realize that it only serves as a crutch for people to feign ignorance where racial issues are concerned.
To begin, a color blind society blind society is not the answer to racism because achieving a color blind society is impossible; too much social stigma that comes along with being black or a dark-skinned minority. For example, whenever I walk into a store or any retail establishment, I am stalked. I am stalked because the second I walked into the store I was red flagged as a possible thief or a potential problem. Its not because of my behavior, or my attire, its because of an outfit of an entirely different kind; my skin. I was pegged as problematic because of my black skin, a factor in which I had no control. I was once told “To be a black person in this world is the worst type of person to be.” At first, I thought the person the person who told me this was just being a nuisance, but as I got older I began to understand exactly what he meant. To be black is this world is to be a belligerent, uneducated, ignorant, loose cannon of a human being; an ulcer on the skin of mankind. This is why an emphasis on a color blind society can never be the answer to racism because no matter how much someone “disregards my skin color” and actually judges me based on merit, I will always be just the ignorant black girl because my behavior was already predetermined based on my black skin.
Another reason the emphasis on a color blind society could never be the answer to racism is because “blacks and dark skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life.” (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva “Racism without Racist: Color Blind Racism”). How is possible that in a country where “equality” is peddled like drugs, whites still reign as the “superior race?” According to the passage, “Racism without Racists; Color Blind Racism in the United States”, blacks and dark skinned minorities are thrice as likely to be poor more so than their white counterparts, they posses about 1/10 the net worth of whites, and they are 6 times less likely to get a job than whites. Not only are we socially inferior but economically too. To make matters worse, black and other dark skinned minorities also receive in inferior education compared
”, whites are 2/3 as likely as dark skinned blacks to be unemployed. Blacks with dark skin are also 3/2 as likely as whites to be unemployed. These facts explain why, despite the overwhelming evidence, no serious effort is being made to change racial disparities in our society. According to a recent article, “The effects of government racial barriers on African-American unemployment rates are likely to be as large as those of whites.” The most recent survey taken from a nationally representative sample of 1,000 students took place in 2007 (http://www.research.cs.mu.edu/sarx/research_survey/SurveySurvey01.pdf). While 1 in 4 blacks (32.1%) are in poverty, just one in 5 white (20.5%) blacks is poor. These results do in fact support the contention that the economic hardships and benefits paid to the 1% of black and poor blacks depend in large part on their own ability to succeed, not on the abilities of their employers (I will not try to explain why this would be true). In fact, this is precisely why I believe the most direct racial discrimination of all is the wage gap of wages paid to white people. As economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin writes, “[G]iven the earnings gap between black and white workers, whites have, on average, a more likely economic chance for having the same job at the same wage scale as their black equivalents.” http://ec.europa.eu/immigration_market_data/cacom/CAC/CAC2/Facts.asp&p=11&hl=en&hl=en&jpe=12&src=9&srd=F0n8LrT8_4Z8VV_8tRf_XRdQ-rKc6fjf4&d=2009&p=11&qid=1669&q=11&srt=s9&ssr=s9&pg=1329&ei=tjUwzD_KJ7pU5Q8Q_jQ2G8w8_3rQ-rDKc6fjf4&source=http://ec.europa.eu/immigration_market_data/cacom/CAC/CAC2/Facts.asp&f=0&hr=2&srd=CAC.europa.eu&ei=Jd6mCQx-Ds4q1zI1o6vYcE_YUzOQIjG8gq4Kw&nolof=1&ei=r4zXQv_U7S5M0XxK3c6i_jHwFjb9wCkE9r2fU8U8W6H1Vd5jvbHnjE+&ssr=s9&pg=1214&ei=9eZzmCc+QjJ5Y6F_P1K2W_y1UwEd_i6DZlV8kRxOqE%97+c4yPvB