This response is to the reading entitled ‘Loot or Find’, ‘Fact or Frame’ by Cheryl L. Harris and Devon W. Carbado from rereading America. In this response, I’m briefly describing and expanding on the frame of “color blindness” pointed out by Harris and Carbado, which is described as the belief that race is not a factor in how we make sense of the world. Harris and Carbado identified three unspoken assumptions underlying “color blindness” which explain how and why “color blinded” people reason in terms of racial inequality.
The first assumption identified by Harris and Carbado is the civil rights reforms inaugurated because of Brown v. Board of Education. According to Wikipedia.com, this case was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional. This case was also the ruling factor in overturning the case of Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which permitted segregation. Information from Wikipedia claimed the decision made by the court for this case stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”, as a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and this ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.
I think because this decision was passed by a United States high court, the highest court of the land, and has changed the main form of segregation in the United States, “color blinded” people conclude in most of their explanation of inequality that race is by and large a thing of the past as stated by Harris and Carbado. The effect is that “color blinded” people no more look into issues concerning people of other race as being discrimination or unfairness. This has overshadowed “color blinded “ people of identifying major racial issues and the process continue to hurt minorities who are victims of racial inequality in society.
Another assumption mentioned by Harris and Carbado is racial consciousness. This ideology is based on the scientific notion that repudiates biological inferiority, that every black person could achieve the same status as whites if they work hard, attend school, avoid drugs and resist crimes. This idea claims blacks deserve all the disadvantages because it’s a natural disaster based on their behavior and not racism. My thought is that “Color blinded” people with racial consciousness do not really understand why minorities do not have the same status as whites, which is the lack of resources available to them to make progress in life. This makes “color blinded” people not to look for the facts causing low improvement in the life of minorities and simply consider them as lazy or drug addicts who do not do enough to be successful. The result is the high poverty level among minorities as they struggle to have equal access to resources and opportunities that their white counterparts enjoy to make them successful in life.
Harris and Carbado also mentioned an important assumption of “color blinded’ people, that is the believe that racism only emerges from very few individuals who declared themselves to be racist. This idea hides the fact that, the entire nation faces a major problem of racism and undermines the significant changes required by the nation as a whole to eliminate the problem. “Color blinded” people do not see the nation as a whole being not united when it comes to race, but rather think the problem is personal to those who indulge in any act that affect other races. These people do not consider the act of hauling resources and limiting access to other races as racism and its sometimes pathetic to reason in that way. I think “color blindness” is a problem which society as a whole has to take active part to fight and eliminate. “Color blindness” among some people in society creates the problem of these people not being in full support of societal measures to solve the problem. At the end, the job is never completed as these people weaken society’s efforts and undermine those measures that can actually solve the problem. “Color blindness” has made these people played the game of pretense that the problem does not exist, as a result no absolute solution is yet found because the only way to solve a problem is by accepting that the problem exists and needs to be fixed. Racial inequality will always be among society until every American agrees that it exists and makes an effort to solve the social menace.
In the modern society, there are lot of effort made by both governmental and nongovernmental activists to bring to light the need for everyone to embrace the fact that race is an issue that must be solved once and for all. But unfortunately, politics has played a major role in determining how issues are addressed in the United States. This led to many people shunning from the subject of race as they fear destabilizing the social order and even losing their political positions. This only worsen the problem as people now consider politics first to fairness in society. Should any issue of racism raise its head somewhere, the nation as a whole is to be blamed for not tackling the issue from the grass root and stop pretending it was a thing of the past. I will not claim there is no improvement on racism but what I’m arguing is the fact that racism exists to a greater extent and haunts everyone in interacting with people of other races.
