Race Reflection

When I decided to take this course, I felt that it would help me to better understand the power of race in our society. Having attended high school in a small, primarily white town, I was not exposed to heavy race issues until I began my college career. Issues like slavery and segregation were taught in a passive way; making it known that these were bad things that happened while simultaneously engraving this notion that the past is the past, and that it’s not like that today. While I had never considered myself to be discriminatory towards people of color, I’ve slowly discovered that I did in fact have a color blind way of thinking. Much like the way it’s described in the course material we’ve covered so far, I too had the mentality of “everyone has the same opportunities”. I now recognize that simply isn’t true and the concept of race has a significant impact on the life chances for individuals of color. I’ve also used this knowledge to make a conscious effort not to identify people by the color of their skin, or to categorize certain groups of people based solely on stereotypes. Something that has been extremely valuable to me so far is taking a look at the past and trying to get a sense of how this notion of “race” was constructed in the first place. Having only skimmed the topic of slavery and racism in American
History classes growing up, it’s sometimes hard to recognize just how big of an impact slavery had on controlling race relations in America.
The more I learn about this topic, the more I believe that the power struggle is closely associated with that of under class whites not wanting to be at the bottom of the barrel. Patterns of this have shown time and time again when people of color have begun to make progress towards a better quality of life, pushing the poor white communities below them. In these cases, the rules of the the racial system in society change to benefit these poor white communities while oppressing the communities of color, leaving them with the same
endgame of being at the bottom of the American hierarchy. I find this extremely problematic because there has never been a clear and concise reason why “white” has been deemed the superior race, other than using it as a way to justify slavery. Even with that the question of why whiteness is the most desirable still remains. As someone who is interested in pursuing a career in law, I found it extremely fascinating that at one point in time the only way to become a citizen of the United States was if you were “white”. It agains brings me to the question of how and why whiteness became the criteria for success in America. The fact that your race was being determined by the law and the highest powers in law is extremely insightful when looking at the social political construction of race, and how it became a way to further political and sometimes economical goals. People from a race that did not fit into the category of white were forced into specific race binaries that restricted them culturally and identically. Obviously having a Supreme Court composed of all white men at the time was a leading factor in this, but in ways this is still happening today in many ways. Although we do not have a “white” criteria to become a citizen, this notion of racially identifying someone is still widely used, and seeing people as “different” or “un-American” due to race is still used as a way to easily allow americans to see them as an enemy.