Color-Blindness and the Color of Inequality

In a recent announcement at Emory University, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, professor of sociology at Duke University, asked two questions. "Why is there such a high race in the country where" racial discrimination "may have been the past? How do Caucasians explain the contradiction between color vision anomalies and color of inequality they claim? "

Sewan Youn wrote an article on the campus newspaper EmoryWheel.com and gathered the main discussion of Bonilla-Silva.

He believes that white people use four central rationalizations or "frameworks" to deny racial discrimination that still exists in American society, politics, and the economic system. He stated that these four frameworks are abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racial discrimination and racial discrimination minimization.

Bonilla Silva repeated his argument in the book "No racial discrimination" and abstract liberalism stated that "white people can be shown more morally and reasonably." Idea on political liberalism like opportunity equal. "

Naturalization is a "framework that allows white people to explain racial phenomena by meaning that they are occurring in nature," Bonilla-Silva said. Caucasians say that ethnic minorities are also reasonable to argue that they tend to separate themselves to prove that other white relationships are reasonable, in other words, "lack of mixing is It is a lack of mere desire. "

He stated that cultural racial discrimination is the most common framework. He explained, explaining that the minority social status is low, such as "black eats too much" or "Mexicans do not pay much attention to education", is based on fixed ideas.

Racism is not universal, as racists are rare and claim to be difficult to find.

Bonilla-Silva said that minimizing racial discrimination is also related to hesitation of public debate on racial discrimination. He interviewed a white man who said that ethnic minorities said that "if things go wrong" white people used racial discrimination as an excuse for suffering reverse discrimination.

Bonilla-Silva said other examples from his interview with many white people showed a similar response.

At the end of the lecture, Bonilla-Silva proposed "five things that we (minorities) should do", including the development of a discussion of counter-arguments against the four frameworks and the start of a new civil rights movement.

Another style element of color blind racial discrimination is projection. Caucasians racially or ethnically motivate blacks and other ethnic minorities to avoid taking responsibility for racial discrimination or feeling sick about their own. When a female college student discussed a so-called self-isolation problem, she stated to African Americans: In other words, I do not know what other people are doing, but there is no problem in talking to black people or other minorities or becoming friends. They just fell into their differences, so they pulled themselves apart. (Bonilla-Silva 2003)

Bonilla-Silva (2) said color-blind socialism is "an ideology that gained unity and control in the late 1960s and interpreted contemporary racial inequality as a result of non-racial mechanics" . In order to analyze the color blind racial discrimination, Bonilla-Silva responded "Involving interview data mainly" (11) to the survey of university students' social attitudes in 1997 and the Detroit Area Study (DAS) in 1998 (12) )passed it. Bonilla-Silva decomposes the analysis of color blind discrimination into four central themes, expressing how Caucasi interpret the world without racial issues.

This ethno-blind or color-blind ideology lacks the theory and interpretation of sociology (for a comprehensive review, see Eduardo Bonilla Silva's book "Race Discrimination Without Racial Discrimination: Persistence of racial inequality in the United States "). What fascinates me is how do you know this ideological epistemology, that is, understanding of the importance of race? Three possible explanations are highlighted. In other words, many Caucasians generally can not understand the importance of race. These three points are by no means exhaustive or even deterministic; instead they will try to provide some sociological insight into this deeply alarming social problem.