Preview

Color Blindness And Systemic Discrimination In Society

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1631 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Color Blindness And Systemic Discrimination In Society
Color blindness or also referred to as race blindness is the exclusion of race in the assessment of a human being. Color blindness is a new concept that strives to mineralize racial discrimination. Our society has strived to find a state of colorblindness but has yet to succeed. Past discriminations have hindered the progress of colorblindness in society. Due to racism in the past many hurdles were created for minorities to overcome in the present. Hurdles such as poverty and negative stereotypes. These hurdles in turn have made it hard for our society to truly become color blind. The racism from the past has made our society unable to truly practice colorblindness because it has caused individual, institutional, and systemic discrimination in the present.

Discrimination in the past came in many forms but it started with systemic discrimination. In the early 1900s the Anglo-Saxon ideology was at a high. In the segregation of Mexican student’s article, the author shows how these ideologies affected Mexican American in California. Even though Californian had equality law for Mexican Americans, they were still discriminated against. “Mexicans were only
…show more content…
But the most negatively influential of this type of discrimination is that of schooling. During the early 1900s Mexican American children were discriminated by Caucasians. Mexican American children were made to go to a separate school. “…school segregation of /Chicano students in public elementary and secondary schools in California has its origins in racial ideologies of Anglo-Saxon superiority…” . Caucasians justified this institutional discrimination by calming that Mexican American children were not well versed in English and this was a hindrance to Caucasian children. The school Mexican Americans children were sent to had a “dumbed” down curriculum so that in the future the Mexican American children would provide a cheap source of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Racism is a word that sparks a nerve in many individuals today. As hard as it is to believe, racism is still a big factor in what we as a society know as a unified America. Although, it is not as obvious as it was in the past, it still goes on, just in ways that are less noticeable. We ask the question, is the emphasis on a color-blind society an answer to racism. Ward Connerly claims it is a way to stop the segregation and make America a whole as it has been striving to be for the longest. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva believes color-blind racism is the new racial ideology and still brings about racial inequality. As the solution to the question progresses, we ask ourselves, will a color-blind society change the way whites view blacks and minorities? Will it change the discrimination that is brought about everyday from individualistic opinions? Those that say they are not biased against other races are the main ones that are judgmental to how certain ethnicities act. Regardless of a color-blind society, there is still going to be racial inequality.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    People are now growing up with the assumption that it is a good thing to be colorblind, which means not judging someone based on their race.…

    • 205 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although I had previously noticed some racial undertones in Mexican culture, I never fully questioned the root of this discrimination. It was far too easy for me to overlook racism in Mexican culture- when racism in America was far more visible. In class, we watched part of a documentary called, “The Black Grandma in the Closet,” from the series Black in Latin America. In the first portion of the film, Professor Gates mentions how Mexico unintentionally transpired “a policy of whitening” through the removal of racial categories. Noting the 1925 publication of Jose Vasconcelos’ essay “The Cosmic Race,” Professor Gates explains how Vasconcelos’ attempt to unite the people of Mexico by establishing one great mixed race ultimately diminished black identity. This revelation was made personal when the Port of Veracruz was stated to be the most widely used port to carry black slaves to Mexico. I say this because half of my family lives in Veracruz and my father spent the majority of his young adult life…

    • 489 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Colorblins In Race

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In this excerpt, from the novel “Clashing Views in Race and Ethnicity,” two views are stated on the concept of a “color-blind” society. The person in support of a society as such, was a black man, with a mixed-racial background. He viewed these racial categorizations present today, on the same continuum used during Jim Crow and slavery. Overall, he cringed at the thought of division due to race from other groups of people. I believe his take was a form of ignorance. A colorblind society to him, a black man, is to not label him by his race. A colorblind society to white people, specifically those that are racist, is to ignore the existence of race that they have fabricated, and racist acts that they have committed against minority groups. A…

    • 1222 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color-Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America. By Charles A. Gallagher…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Statements like “I don’t see color” or “We are all just people,” are good examples that one might be engaging with colorblindness. Colorblindness often acts as a person’s denial to acknowledge another’s race or ethnicity as a relevant part of their identity. One might take the colorblind stance in order to be a “neutral” player in the discussion of race. A good example of this is Stephen Colbert’s skit on colorblindness on the Colbert Report, because he illustrates both the consequences of the colorblind position and the benefits of addressing the topic as a white man.…

    • 535 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color blindness is the inability or the decreasing ability to see color or the differences in colors. John Dalton wrote the first paper pertaining to Colorblindness called “Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colours” in 1798. He himself was colorblind and originally named the disability daltonism.…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In short, this proves my claim that similar to the Civil Rights Movement, many ethnic groups endured brutality, verbal abuse, and more for the change that they needed to prosper. Similarly to Latinos, Asian Americans have had trouble in classrooms because of the languages that they have learned rather than English. According to the Justia Supreme Court center “The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English language instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not speak English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures, denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational program”. The information from this source shows that Asian American students were left out of education due to their language. This is applicable as many minority groups were left out of education because of the language they spoke or because of who they were.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Recently in AVID class we watched a TED talk about “color blindness” and “color braveness” by Mellody Hobson. During her talk she focuses on how race has impacted our lives and what she thinks of it. Although she talks about both “color blindness” and “color braveness,” she wants people to become color brave in order to make the world a better place. Mellody Hobson gives a powerful speech and her view on racism is geared toward the reality of racism today.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A problem for the black community in America is colorism. Margaret Hunter defines colorism as “color stratification, a process that privileges light skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market”. Professor Hunter has found research that shows lighter complexion individuals have greater advantages, but the same research states that darker complexion individuals are deemed “authentic” in their ethnicity. Colorism is a result of racism. Media, image companies and cosmetic institutions help perpetuate this negative construct.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color Blind Racism

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Bonilla-Silva looks to answer two questions in this literature: “How is it possible to have this tremendous level of racial inequality in a country where most people (white) claim that race is no longer a social relevant social factor and that “racists” are a species on the brink of extinction? More significantly, how do whites explain the contraindication between their professed color blindness and America’s color-coded inequality?” In “Color Blind Racism”, Bonilla-Silva challenges the idea that we live in a society that is nonracist or nondiscriminatory. He insists that regular white folks engage in unintentional discrimination every day because of the social construction of the ideology of race. Today’s racism may be somewhat different than racism during the Jim Crow era. Instead, there is a different type of racism that has materialized around the 1960s. Bonilla-Silva refers to this type of racism as the “New Racism”. Since its emergence, color blind racism has become structured into almost every institution and has become a part of everyday life. Because of this new racism that continues to be socially constructed, blacks and other minorities suffer from inferior jobs, education, and housing. Bonilla-Silva discusses four central frames of color blind racism: 1) Abstract Liberalism. According to Bonilla-Silva, abstract liberalism allows whites to reasonably support racial inequality. 2) Naturalization. Naturalization is a way that whites can perform everyday actions that may seem natural because it’s the way of life. 3) Biologization. Biologization gives the idea that biological characteristics are the reason blacks maintain an inferior status. 4) Minimization of Racism. This frame suggests that racism isn’t a big deal. These four central frames of color blind racism give a different excuse to maintain white privilege, different from the tactics used in the…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Colorism And Racism

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page

    Because of their foundations, colorism and racism intertwine and, what is more, colorism an expression of internalized racism (Hunter, 2007). As a matter of fact, both of the terms mentioned are related to the preferential treatment of individuals based only on skin color. (Hunter, 2007). In academic terms, racism is a sociological dimension that supports unequal treatment of people of different skin color (Pollock, 2008). As a result, the black are considered to be inferior and are thought to be less intelligent than the white. Racial discrimination is another dimension inextricably connected with both racism and colorism. It constitutes many activities which aim is to diminish the black (Pollock, 2008). Besides, black people have to face…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In today’s society it is essential to understand the difference between disparity and discrimination. There are numerous people who still believe that the world is prejudice. This paper will compare and contrast disparity and discrimination. The paper will give examples of both and there relation to the criminal justice system.…

    • 959 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color Blind

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I’ve been privileged enough to grow up color blind, and so has the younger generation in my family. That’s what happens when your great-great grandmother is white on your mother’s side, and great grandfather is Cherokee Indian on your father’s side. It has been said that if you have one percent of black blood in you, you were considered black. Due to the generational gap my father’s birth certificate says Colored, my mothers says Negro, and mine says African American. When I was asked about color there was no black or white. There was brown, tan, pink, etc, however children are quick to pick up racial biases from family members, schoolmates, friends and television.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The United Sates has an incredibly long history of racism and discrimination that many are fighting to leave in the past. Multiple methods and philosophies have been proposed in the effort eliminate such practices, some of which are obviously less effective than others. One method through which people have attempted to combat these issues is to encourage people to be “colorblind,” in which one attempts to not notice or remain “blind” to another’s race. In theory, this would result in the equal treatment of all people, therefore eliminating discrimination based on the color of one’s skin. In practice, however, the refusal to recognize or acknowledge another’s race does not seem produce the desired effect. It does little to address the actual…

    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays