The Issue Of Racial Inequality
Oppression and Whiteness
Some people see race as if it is something concrete, but what they don’t see it’s true definition behind it. Race can be defined based on the difference in physical appearance, for example, by the most obvious trait we based race off is; skin color. Inequality appears when people living, either on the same country or different continents, are not treated with the equal amount of respect and not given the chance to secure their rights in a fair and equal manner. Race and inequality are often linked together because of the “issues that began in the early 1800s such as racial segregation.
Today’s world, the American still faces hurdles to overcome in the matter of racial equality. What is Racial Inequality? Racial inequality is categorized as uneven in the distribution of economic resources, and opportunities. Color-blind racism is a new term for current racial inequality in the United States as the result of nonracial change. What I truly take this in as, changing the name so you not fully being seen as the bad person, it’s more of a camouflage. Color-blind racism elaborates the thought that race is no longer an issue in our society and that they are non-racial excuses for inequality. Some examples are Whether getting a promotion at work, being underpaid or due to opposite sex. Some people have to deal with unfair practice that would prevent someone of color or the opposite sex from having equal opportunity at the job. Most workplaces also discriminates based on sex, race, religion or national origin which Implies from our lectures how Young describes “social groups” which leads into the 5 different faces of oppression. (Lectures, Inequality and oppression)
We live with the ramifications of the paradox even today and effects how all americans live and thrive in our country. Here in the Us, We seemed to be “up to date” with diversity. Their’s Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans, Muslim American and so forth, who still faces racial inequality which leads me to “whiteness”. How does whiteness come to play in this situation? Based on the materials I learned from this class and personal experiences european americans seemed to be granted more privileges than the rest. Some call it“white privilege”. People, well mainly white people believe that racial inequality is dead, but I wonder how they come up with this conclusion?
It pretty much still exist today and they don’t necessarily recognize this because they never once experienced inequality and the discrimination in their lifetime due to their skin color. A good example for this, is the film we watched in class called “ The Color of Fear” whereas they were a group of men with different races and backgrounds; African American, Chinese American, Japanese American, Latin American, Native American, European American and full blood American. Throughout this get-together they discussed the oppression they all faces. The whole conversation went left immediately due to the ignorance of one of the guys (full blood american) kept fighting the idea how americans don’t discriminate and kept denying the idea of inequality the society has treated other races. One strong key point that was mentioned from the African American was that “no white man will ever know the mistreatment and how it feels to be a black man in a “white centered” society because in their head United States of America, the Land of the Free are strictly created or made for white people. They don’t realize how things are basically handed to them without any hesitation based of their sex, religion and so on.
There are 4 different types of Whiteness; Housing, Criminal justice, Education and Media & Popular culture. All four of these plays a big roles in whiteness. Housing seems to be more available for working hard white families than it is for working hard black, asian, or mexican families. Why is that? I don’t really still quite understand how more resources for housing seems to be more available for other due to their race or skin color. Just because their skin color are not the same doesnt mean one is less reliable or have a stinger work ethic than the rest. For example, the film we watched about how a certain community did not let any African Americans buy houses just because. It even said “No colored people” for their advertisement board, isn’t that obvious enough. (Class film, Lee) Criminal Justice play a huge part when it comes to whiteness.
A good example for this is the article that was handed in class “Marijuana and Racial Inequality” explains how young black people are arrested 7 times the rate of young white people for marijuana where statistics shows 10 percent of white people smokes and uses marijuana than blacks. Evidence shows enough how they focus in lower income neighborhoods who are mostly occupied by African American, Mexicans and Asians not whites. We never see any police roaming around white communities to arrest young white males for this type of crime since it’s easier to fill their quotas on the other side of town.
The past studies show that inequality and whiteness in education is something which is basically everywhere around the world. Inequality in education can be connected to the low rate of development and progress in the society. For short, more resources are made available for schools around higher class and median class neighborhood, If you live in a lower income neighborhood, the chances of getting better education are pretty limited. Whiteness is not even considered a race because white people consider it to be the norm, thus whiteness becomes invisible. As against this, black and brown people are categorized into racial kind and according to this invisibility of one’s own race, the ‘others’ are viewed as abnormal or deviant. But what white people fail to realize is that racism does damage not only to the victims, but to the racists as well. This is because they fail to establish alliance with other people which can turn out to be powerful, assuming that whites are superior and whiteness identifies itself through non-whiteness. When one group is privileged, the other groups will be more likely to be oppressed in similar ways that are relative to it.
A white person is advantaged not because of who they are, but because they benefit from the fact that other people view in the modern U.S. society. McIntosh argues that because white privilege is normalized in our society, America is not a free country as it portrays since opportunities are not equal for all people. For example, this privileges of whites can be more access to health care, earn larger incomes, obtain higher education, keep jobs even during a recession, or better living and housing conditions (Lecture, McIntosh). I think whites are raised and taught not to recognize white privileges.
