Colorblind Ideology and Its Repercussions

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At the start of the colorblindness talk last Tuesday, the audience was asked to define colorblindness in laymen’s terms. I was ready to recite the textbook definitions I’d learned in previous classes, but I realized I was having trouble defining colorblindness in simple and relatable terms. I think this automatic pause speaks to the nature of colorblindness; it’s as detrimental as “classic” racism, but its insidious nature makes it more difficult to confront.

Through a hypothetical situation, which takes place in a classroom, colorblindness was explained as an ideology that challenges racism by ignoring it. The situation illustrates how individuals at an early age begin to see obvious differences between individuals of different races and instead of acknowledging and appreciating these differences, they are not only told to ignore these differences, but conditioned to believe that seeing these differences makes us racist.

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Becoming a Hero by Breaking the Silence

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There is a four letter word that is as distasteful as its other four letter counter parts and it distorts realities, paralyzes its victims and creates doubt; FEAR. Tatum, addresses the various degrees of fear in the article “Whiteness: the Power of Resistance” (2008) and I beleive the article hits the proverbial nail squarely on the head. Somehow in some way we were taught that different is “bad” and not “normal” and typically, we fear that which we do not know. We claim to “celebrate” our differences in this country but only if those differences don’t permeate the society that we have established. America, it appears, does not respond well to change an irony that confounds me. That being said, it does not mean that we should give up and stop trying to improve. I am sure you are familiar with the old saying, “the squeaky wheel gets the oil” as often times it’s the small squeaky rumblings of society that capture the attention of society; Occupy Wall Street anyone? For me, this means that the “trickle down” theory may not work when dealing with racism but the trickle UP theory may; meaning, change starts with the individual who carries it forward.

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Unable to Tune Out Racism

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This Spring Break taught me, or perhaps a better way to say it is illustrated for me, that as challenging as this class is when we are participating in discussions, reading seemingly endless stacks of articles, and writing papers, the real challenge of this class transcends the classroom or any assignment we could ever be given. The real challenge is that no matter how hard you try you cannot forget, even for a little while, what we have learned and are attempting to learn. Once your awareness and curiosity in these issues has been ignited, there is no extinguishing it, no turning it off, not even for a little while.

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King’s call to action

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Martin Luther King’s 1967 address to the American Psychological Association called for action not only an academic level from the APA. He called for action. This stood out to me because we, of course, were discussing this speech in an academic setting: the classroom. King advises: “social science should be able to suggest mechanisms to create a wholesome black unity and a sense of peoplehood while the process of integration proceeds.” He calls on the social sciences to find a way to unify and strengthen the African American community whilst empowering to move upward in mainstream American society.

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The “N” Word

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As we left class on Thursday, I decided to ask a question that I have wanted to ask for a while. At 4:15, as class was getting out, I said, “Connie, I have a complicated question that I want a quick answer to. My friends use the ‘n’ word, and I know it’s wrong, but I don’t know what to say to them to prove that it is inappropriate to use. How do I make it clear to them?” After I asked this question, many students chimed in with different times and situations during which they have heard people use this word at any moment, not thinking about the negative effects it can have. One student talked about how, in other parts of the country, the word is not seen as taboo. Here, on the east coast, I take it to be the worst word. If I use curse words or say any other politically incorrect slang words for a group of people, I would never get the same look as I would with the use of the “n” word. Personally, all I need to know is that this word is extremely offensive and I will not use it. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many people. However, because there is such a taboo on the word, it does not take much for someone to understand that, when asked not to use the word, they should not be speaking that way in daily conversation. But then there are the people who do not understand it. They may question why it is offensive and/or why they cannot use it. I never truly had a good understanding and answer until recently.

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First Week of Class – Reaction to Class Activity

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One activity that I appreciated the first week of class was when we each wrote down our different social identities on note cards, mixed up the cards and redistributed them, and then had to say why or why not we thought the card we each received would be in our in-group or out-group. I found this interesting because it made me think about how arbitrary these social identities such as religion, sexual orientation, and disability status in showing how compatible people could be and what values they have in common.

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Eurocentric Racism in the Classroom

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As they so often do, our discussion in class this week reminded me of one of the most influential teacher’s that I’ve had the privilege of learning from at Muhlenberg, Dr. Charles Anderson. Our discussion of how racism directly effects the testing ability of black youth made me feel as if I was right back in introduction to African American Studies and I had to re-visit one particular article that I felt was so relevant to what we are discussing. The article is by Molefi Asante, who is one of the most respected African American studies scholars in the world. He is currently a professor at Temple, where he started the first PhD program for African American studies. He has written countless works, but the articles I read, or should say re-read are titled “Locating a Text: Implications of Afrocentric Theory”, “Afrocentricity”, and “Where is the White Professor Located?”. In all of these articles, among other things, he points out the many flaws in the American education system. More specifically Asante convincingly argues that our education system is based on racist Eurocentric viewpoints that keep white people at the center of every academic subject and only teach these subjects from a Eurocentric perspective. Asante further asserts that because of this narrow and exclusionary education system, young African American students feel alienated, dislocated, unimportant, and above all, marginalized in the scope of academic study. Getting more specific, Asante discusses how non-white groups are portrayed in academic study, specifically the study of history, as the groups that are acted upon rather than groups with agency. He argues that the agency denied to minority groups in the study of history and academia in general further alienates African Americans and other minority groups because it promotes a feeling of helplessness in their lives.

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Modern Clark Study

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During Thursday’s class discussion, we compared speeches from Dr. King and President Barack Obama. Though forty one years apart, we agreed that the speeches called for similar action; time had not changed much. I found the same to be true of the results of a landmark social psychology study. In the course of reading James Jones’s article “Psychological Knowledge and the New American Dilemma of Race”, I found myself wanting more details about the Kenneth and Mamie Clark doll study because of its influence in Brown v. Board of Education. So, as is my natural reflex I typed it into a search engine. One of the first items that came up was the video below.

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White Identity Lost

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Black identity is a topic that is discussed and recognized everyday in our contemporary racism class. They are grouped and recognized as a separate ethnicity in which they promote the distinction between white and black. It never really occurred to me until I read this quote by Lipsitz, that whites have lost their individual ethnic identity.

“Urban renewal helped construct a new “white” identity in the suburbs by helping to destroy ethnically specific European American urban inner-city neighborhoods.”

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Choosing to be Racist?

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This week, we were asked to complete two IAT’s. One that measured our level of association between Blacks and weapons and another the measured ones preference of Blacks versus Whites. I am not skeptical of the tests accuracy. I believe that it can truly measure ones implicit feelings; however, I do question whether these feelings can ever be truly implicit. I believe that the mind is a powerful thing, and that if an individual wants to believe he or she holds certain values, they can convince themselves of it. I do not however think that within an individual, they do not doubt their wanted behaviors. I have a hard time believing that someone can be unaware of their biases/associations when asked directly if such biases/associations exist. They may not know that their bias/association is as strong as a test may show; however, I feel that they must be aware of it. Can someone be truly unaware of his or her biases?

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