“Colorblindness” in America “We the people” has been the slogan of America for over two hundred years. We pride ourselves on the fact that we want to treat all people of any gender, background, age and race the same. America has come a long way in many areas like woman’s rights and racial equality. We want to think that everything is all fine and dandy when it comes to racism, but we still have a long way to go. According to the Color-Blind Privilege by Charles A. Gallagher, denying race as a structural bias for inequality, we fail to recognize the privilege of Whiteness. Being a white American has some connotation of putting on our “color blind glasses” on just to say that everything is okay. We want to think there is no racism left in the
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In the Color-Blind Privilege, people are brought up with different backgrounds and have different views on race. Charles Gallagher interviewed many people, but one interviewee, Sam, sticks out in particular. In his interview, he talks about pre and post-civil rights and tries to explain racial opportunity among his peers. He talks about how peers his age who are minorities use race as an excuse for not getting a job. Sam says, “These kids have every opportunity that I do as well”. There were many people in this article that say that job discrimination has ended. This view can be brought back to the media. The media makes successful colored people, like Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice, and Barrack Obama look like America has leveled the playing field for all races. In all actuality racism is still very relevant. In the Color-Blind Privilege it states, “Americans are constantly bombarded with depictions of race relations in the media which suggest that discriminatory racial barriers have been dismantled. Social and Cultural indicators suggest that America is on the verge, or has already become, a truly color-blind nation”. This inconstancy brings me back to the mode of conditioning. We are brought up to believe that all racism is gone because the media wants us to believe that it is obsolete. This conflicts with when we see with our peers, who are minorities, struggling to get a job. We still want to hold onto the idea …show more content…
I do not believe it was my fault though. I knew what racism was, but only because you read about slavery and civil rights in a textbook. I was never really exposed to anything racist in my everyday life and I never thought of myself as racist. My school is the second agent that greatly affected how I looked at race. According to the The Real World, “There is increasing pressure for schools to take on even more responsibilities, including dealing with issues that used to be taught at home or in church, such as sex, violence, drugs and alcohol, and general morality, and citizenship”. I went to a mainly white school. We had maybe a total of ten African Americans in our school of about one thousand students. The dynamics between everyone made it feel like everything was fine. I never saw any of my peers treat them differently and I never treated them differently so, I assumed that everything was decent. It was not until college that I realized that many people still feel there is a lot of racism left in America. My eyes were opened just by talking to people and learning about their experiences when it comes to their
In the Color-Blind Privilege, people are brought up with different backgrounds and have different views on race. Charles Gallagher interviewed many people, but one interviewee, Sam, sticks out in particular. In his interview, he talks about pre and post-civil rights and tries to explain racial opportunity among his peers. He talks about how peers his age who are minorities use race as an excuse for not getting a job. Sam says, “These kids have every opportunity that I do as well”. There were many people in this article that say that job discrimination has ended. This view can be brought back to the media. The media makes successful colored people, like Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice, and Barrack Obama look like America has leveled the playing field for all races. In all actuality racism is still very relevant. In the Color-Blind Privilege it states, “Americans are constantly bombarded with depictions of race relations in the media which suggest that discriminatory racial barriers have been dismantled. Social and Cultural indicators suggest that America is on the verge, or has already become, a truly color-blind nation”. This inconstancy brings me back to the mode of conditioning. We are brought up to believe that all racism is gone because the media wants us to believe that it is obsolete. This conflicts with when we see with our peers, who are minorities, struggling to get a job. We still want to hold onto the idea …show more content…
I do not believe it was my fault though. I knew what racism was, but only because you read about slavery and civil rights in a textbook. I was never really exposed to anything racist in my everyday life and I never thought of myself as racist. My school is the second agent that greatly affected how I looked at race. According to the The Real World, “There is increasing pressure for schools to take on even more responsibilities, including dealing with issues that used to be taught at home or in church, such as sex, violence, drugs and alcohol, and general morality, and citizenship”. I went to a mainly white school. We had maybe a total of ten African Americans in our school of about one thousand students. The dynamics between everyone made it feel like everything was fine. I never saw any of my peers treat them differently and I never treated them differently so, I assumed that everything was decent. It was not until college that I realized that many people still feel there is a lot of racism left in America. My eyes were opened just by talking to people and learning about their experiences when it comes to their