Race and racial discrimination in America

Race and racial discrimination in America

Race and racial discrimination have continued to be problems faced by American society since its birth. According to Neville, Awad, Brooks, and Flores (2013), the election of President Barack Obama into office showed the start of a new post-racial era where the American society had moved past its racial past. They argue that if a black man could be elected twice, then the country had moved past its racial divides. However, a report by Mazzocco (2015) shows increasing gaps between the races. In the report, a black person, in relation to a white person, controls only twentieth of the country’s wealth, is six times likely to be incarcerated, and three times likely to live in abject poverty. The reports further showed that the black person is expected to live four years less than his white counterpart and that they are less likely to graduate from high school because of the inferiority of their K-12 education system. These rising inequalities have made it necessary to come up with different approaches, such as the colorblind approach, to help sensitize and therefore reduce racism and racial inequalities in America.

The colorblind approach to racism suggests that bias comes from people’s emphasis on irrelevant and superficial categories such as race, therefore, the bias can be minimized by de-emphasizing the group associations (Rosenthal & Levy, 2010). In its simplest form, colorblindness opposes categories based on race and society’s perceptions of the race while focusing on individual qualities like behavior and personality (Mazzocco, 2015). The concept has overtime enabled people to ignore the prevalence of racism in America as it provides non-racial clarifications as to why people still endure inequalities brought about by race. According to Peery (2011), principles of anti-discrimination present in the law can be attributed to the creation of colorblindness since they represented a “moral principle that prohibited discrimination” (p. 475). Individuals in support of the principle argued that equality of races was established in the Fourteenth Amendment, under the Equal Protection Clause and later in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1968 Fair Housing Act (Beaman & Petts, 2020). Besides this, proponents have used Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech to support the approach where King says that he dreams of an American society that judges people based on their character and not by the color of their skin.

Later, Justice Harlan suggested that anti-discriminatory principles required the law and the Constitution to be colorblind because the principles required everyone to be guaranteed the same privileges and rights under the law while recommending equal treatment (Peery, 2011). Later in 1970, a scholar, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, called for the move regarding racism in America (Wise, 2010). As the white population had become increasingly agitated by riots on racism seen in the 1960s, Moynihan suggested that to move forward; the nation had to de-emphasize issues on race and racial discrimination and focus on other concerns. In his second book, The Truly Disadvantaged Wilson proposed that the blacks were locked out of manufacturing jobs because of the declining economy and that to solve their inequalities, the government should make policies intended to provide opportunities to all, irrespective of race (Wise, 2010, p. 32). Wilson asserts that the poor living conditions and inequalities experienced by the black community are race-neutral, largely depending on changes in the economy and inadequate funding on education. Despite strides made by the colorblind approach in reducing race and racial discrimination, there are arguments that it has helped many Americans ignore the persistence of racial inequalities in America.

Colorblindness was developed for the whites as a way to make them believe that the United States provided equal opportunities to all without seeing the persistence of racial disparities (Beaman & Petts, 2020). Colorblindness suggests that certain groups of sub-categories can be ignored or avoided, a move that has been found to have negative consequences on the minority race. This form of colorblindness is undesirable in a not-so-ideal world where people’s lives are affected by racial divides. According to Rosenthal and Levy, colorblindness, at its core, encourages similarities among groups of people, for example, where they could identify as members of one nationality, and this improves intergroup attitudes (2010, p. 218). However, these cross-group similarities tend to offshoot the assimilation ideology, where all groups are encouraged to adopt the most dominant and mainstream culture. This is the case where “acting white” has become a cultural explanation for inequalities seen in education outcomes for black students where institutions are organized for the benefit of the white student (Beaman & Petts, 2020). For the same reason that colorblindness refuses to recognize race, it helps to normalize racial inequality to levels where there is no need to fight or discuss it.

Additionally, the same way that colorblindness can be used to emphasize similarities, it can be used to emphasize the individual differences in each person (Rosenthal & Levy, 2010). Since colorblindness is based on the principle of treating people as individuals, it does not focus on identities of disregarded ethnic and racial groups. This uniqueness has been criticized for being too cognitively taxing as people have to attend to each unique quality in an individual where it hampers social interactions by downplaying racism. Beaman and Petts posit that this allows people to tolerate or accept everyone while at the same time engaging in activities that maintain their white privilege (2020). This is often seen when an individual justifies racial hostility and prejudice by using colorblind explanations. Whites rarely experience the negative effects of racism in America, unlike American Indians, who have been categorized as being nonexistent, stereotypical, and historical (Fryberg & Stephens, 2010, p. 116). This has downplayed the role of American Indians and their culture where figures like Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, Geronimo, and Pocahontas have been depicted in contemporary ways as business people, doctors, lawyers, or even teachers.

The colorblind approach to reduce race and racial discrimination fail because it completely ignores the issue of race in explaining racial inequalities. The polyculture approach was proposed to solve gaps in the colorblind approach. According to Rosenthal and Levy (2010), this approach does not focus on the differences present in ethnic and racial backgrounds, but instead, it focuses on the connections between the groups created from the mutual influence and past interactions (p. 224). The approach argues that there are no pure or impure cultures belonging to specific groups and thus being used to create the divide. It suggests that if people better appreciate and understand the interactions and sharing of cultures, then they can learn to respect and change their attitudes on a different culture. This improves ethnic relations, as seen in the growth and adoption of Kung Fu fighting worldwide (Rosenthal & Levy, 2010, p. 224). The fighting technique is as a result of Asian and African cultures, extending beyond to become popular around the world. Polyculturalism shows that all cultures are a result of contemporary and historical interactions between different racial groups.

In conclusion, the colorblind approach was advanced to divert the focus on race and racial discrimination on other issues in attempts to explain racial inequalities. This approach emphasizes on individual qualities like behavior and character while downplaying their ethnic and racial backgrounds. This encourages equal treatment of people in society by not focusing on race. However, this has created an environment where racial inequalities and prejudice are being ignored and not discussed. The polyculture approach can solve issues not addressed by the colorblind approach since people will be more appreciative of other cultures.