Narrative Post Racism

Racism is a historically-rooted structure in today’s society, stemming from hundreds of years of overt inequality and dehumanization. While of course, views of race have progressed to what one may say is relatively equal at face value, and the amount of legally permissible interracial violence has decreased, racism and inequality have still managed to persist. It has been clearly defined by many as a social issue, as a pest that we very much so need to rid ourselves of. In Luvell Anderson’s article, “Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Race”, there are a particular set of suggestions categorized as “post-racial”, intending to “solve” the problems associated with racism. There are 2 broader categories within post-racialism, defining …show more content…
I think one would be capable of coming to this conclusion with just a passing glance—post-racism is the only form that mentions racism in itself. The other 3 forms suggest that fixing racism requires the removal of race, while post-racism, as its name indicates, requires the removal of actual racism. Prescriptive post-racialism disregards the positive aspects of race, like cultural ties and varied perspectives between individuals, and also the parts that have become protective; a lack of hermeneutical resources regarding race would end racial solidarity and the identification of social issues that reproduce themselves in …show more content…
Currently, it seems that these theories would be contingent upon post-racism to work anyway. The removal of race does not solve the implicit biases that are socialized into the public, therefore issues regarding race would be re-allocated to new social problems that they didn’t originally stem from. As an example, the disproportionately low numbers of people of color in media could be attributed to something like merit, and attributing it to racial preference would no longer be a viable explanation, because race would “no longer exist”. As this would demonstrate, the removal of race-talk would no longer provide anyone a method to account for the necessary correction of bias and mitigation of issues due to race. Thusly, I do agree with Anderson’s conclusion that post racialism, for the most part, would leave racism in-tact. One could even say that this is already happening—and not just with race. In the same way that misunderstandings about disability make disabled individuals invisible (as mentioned in N. Ann Davis’ article, “Invisible Disability”), which leads to more ableist assumptions by society, or misunderstandings about the woman’s experience allows for uncorrected sexism, these methods, seemingly born out of a misunderstanding of the function of race, would make the racially marginalized invisible and allow