racial discourse

observations or questions on how/why to talk about race and racism with others

Stop pretending we’re all the same

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Watching a roleplay with my classmates, I couldn’t help but notice my peers’ difficulty in describing the interaction occurring on screen. The roleplay was a business scene, wherein an employee and HR representative were discussing the employee’s career advancement opportunities. We were given a very brief introduction to the scenario, and nobody seemed sure what was happening in the beginning, so when we were asked for analysis of the interaction students struggled to identify who …

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Why is it all black and white?

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Have you ever heard the sayings “black as night”, “pitch black”, “black out”, “black magic”, etc..? What do these all have in common? At first glance you can see that they all have the word black in them. However, if you look at the phrase as a whole, it is clear the word Black is used to depict darkness, whether that be literally or figuratively. Dark is the opposite of light, usually representing good. Let …

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Race Talk: Why is it Lacking?

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Our education system and schooling curriculum lacks transparent information regarding the country’s racial history and lacks the general knowledge of how to have race talk. Some teachers, who should be educating and pushing the barrier, still frequently ignore race talk or are visibly uncomfortable when racism is discussed. These classroom dynamics are crucial, and teachers and educators set the tone. Teachers need to be able to preach inclusivity, create a positive and productive classroom dynamic, …

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Language of Color

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After centuries of racial pejoratives and terms focusing on the absence of whiteness, the commonly standard term describe those whose ethnicities can be described as something other than white is “person(s) of color.” This is leaps and bounds better than more archaic terms which were used, with “colored” being similar linguistically but becoming pejorative socially and “negro” being a word borrowed from a language other than English, thereby further emphasizing the “otherness” of people of …

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A Conversation With a Cop

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I recently met a police officer two years older than me. I started talking to him and having friendly conversation before learning that he was a cop. Naturally, upon finding out about his career, I asked him his thoughts on the current Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality. His response was “Yea, it’s a shame that it was a few bad cops. I work with hispanic people and stuff. I’m definitely not racist.” This …

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Paradox of White Fragility and Institutional Power

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‘Race talk,’ as Daryl Wing Sue describes it, by itself violates many of the standards and norms that society fights to uphold. Race talk invites emotions into the space and it invites topics deemed too impolite for small talk into a conversation. As a result, race talk is consistently pushed into designated spaces. Aside from society, a key influence on the success of race talk is the awareness of power and privilege that those in …

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“But that’s not racism!”

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The word “racism” evokes strong emotions in people, and for many, it’s just about the worst thing one can be called. As language evolves and words take on new meaning, the gravity of the word “racism” hinders people’s willingness to accept new meanings and uses for the word. The term “systemic racism” faces this problem, as there are those who, before understanding its meaning, assume that it is an indictment of the United States and …

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Stop Normalizing Color-blind Ideologies

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I have been thinking a lot about the ideas of prejudice and the denial of racism that were presented in the article ?Beyond Prejudice: Toward a Sociocultural Psychology of Racism and Oppression by Glenn Adams, Monica Biernat, Nyla R. Branscombe, and others?. W?ithin this article, they suggested models that account for the denial of racism, which they identified as being the “restriction of the range of phenomena to which the concepts of racism and oppression …

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You Can’t Ignore Your Whiteness

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We have to discuss white fragility.  Psychologist Robin DiAngelo defines white fragility as: “a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.” Whiteness is something that we continue to allow people and especially white people to avoid and it must …

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Do Racists Literally Just Have to Die Off?

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I find myself always being the one asking the loaded questions about racism. I always want answers to the big questions and it’s something that doesn’t really have a straightforward answer. For so long, before I decided to educate myself, the questions I would ask would be about how to end racism. Because there was no clear cut answer, I just figured there was no way to end racism because there were too many racists …

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Shifting Mainstream Understanding of Individual Racism

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As the academic semester comes to an end, in my contemporary racism class we have been discussing and connecting various concepts to develop our understanding of the role of modern racism and its consequences to marginalized identity groups in the United States. We discussed how, under the influence of mainstream media, we tend to focus on individuals who exhibit old-fashioned, overt acts of racism and the obvious, direct consequences to people of color. This leads …

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Psychology is for one, but not for all

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Dr. Jonathan Lassiter, a professor at Muhlenberg College, expresses in one of his works “Whiteness in the Psychological Imagination” how the psychological narratives of people of color is left out of most studies, but particularly in psychological research. He addresses how whiteness is so ingrained in society that even when one is asked to imagine a “person”, a white person is what first appears in their mind. He explains how white is synonymous for person …

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