I want to share with you guys Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s idea of colorblind racism. Bonilla-Silva spoke in, I believe it was, day 2 of the documentary we watched in class- Race: The Power of an Illusion. He is a sociologist who focuses on how social structure shapes our lives. I found a book of his, “Racism without Racists” on google books and as I skimmed through, I found some very interesting thoughts. His main idea is the idea of colorblind racism. Basically, colorblind racism is used to maintain inequality. It is still racism, but not as bad as say, Jim Crow racism. For example, a racist remark would be, “Blacks were put on the earth to be slaves.” A colorblind racist statement would be, “Blacks are behind because they don’t work hard enough.” It puts the racist statement in more human terms as opposed to making it all about the skin color. But at the same time, the underlying meaning to the statement is meant to be racist. It is also called, “new racism” because it shifts the race problems onto minorities. I feel like because of colorblind racism, racism will probably always exist. Bonilla-Silva is a very influential individual in the study of race relations and much of his work made me think and is very interesting. Do you guys see colorblind racism in your lives or do you think it isn’t as big an issue as Bonilla-Silva makes it out to be? Even if you just skim the first few pages of Chapter 1, you'll get the idea. Here's the link to the google book, Racism without Racists.
Claire,
ReplyDeleteThanks a ton for posting this. We really considered assigning part of the Bonilla-Silva text for our class on white privilege in order to draw attention to this idea of colorblind racism. Your post makes a few very strong points that need to be covered in class, so I really encourage you to bring these issues up in class discussion.
Bonilla-Silva makes many key points in his book. Among them are pointing to color-blind racism which you pointed to in your post. Colorblind racism ignores the both historical and the continued impacts that race has and continues to have over every aspect of our life. It ignores discrimination, structural inequalities, institutional racism, etc. It also does not take into consideration the historical background of racial hierarchies in the United States and the ways that these hierarchies are no less significance today.
Also, Bonilla-Silva also challenges the myth that we now live in a “post-racial” America. This myth claims that, as evident through the success of figures like Obama and Oprah, race is no longer a hindrance to social/economic advancement. Part of this myth is that people no longer see race and that social institutions no longer use race to create a system of advantage that favors whiteness and disadvantages people of color.
What do we think of this idea of post-racial America? Is race still important or are we moving towards the “end of racism”? How are figures like African American celebrities used as a tool to argue for the insignificance of race in contemporary America? How is this idea of post-racial America tied to white privilege?
Thanks again for drawing the group’s attention to this text.
John