Preserving Mythological Nonracialism

Sean Feirick

Blog 2

            Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has showed us how whites tend to believe that color blindness is in full effect, but in reality colorblind racism is a major issue in society. In chapter three in Bonilla-Silva’s book, “Racism Without Racists”, he explains how there are different styles of color blindness, one being color blind racism. He explains how whites avoid the issue of race and how they try and make it seem that nonracialism exists by using semantic terminology. Whites may use phrases like,” I’m not racist, but,”, “Some of my best friends are (racial minority)”, and a major one being, “Blacks are the racist ones, they don’t want to live with us”. The way I see it is if you have to start a statement by saying one of the phrases that I just listed, whatever you say that follows that statement is most likely going to be a racist comment. Back in the day when racism was more verbally straight forward, whites would say any sort of racist comment that they wanted because in a way it was the normal way of life in that time period. As time has passed, whites feel that our nation has become colorblind where everyone is equal and racism does not exist. Colorblindness is nowhere near being fully implemented in our society. Whites now feel it necessary to avoid all racist talk because it is somewhat awkward and they feel out of place. They want to believe that colorblindness is true even though they may hold racist views towards racial minorities.

            Bonilla-Silva explains, through his interviews with the respondents, that talking about race in America is a highly emotion matter. He noticed that college students were the most likely of all demographics to use semantic moves when talking about the issue of race. One of the college students used a semantic move when talking about if he would ever date  black women, him being white. He said, “No ill never date a black girl, but it just seems to me like I’m not as attracted to black women as I am to white women, for whatever reason. It’s not about prejudice; it’s just like, you know, whatever”. They key quote that he said was the part about not being prejudice. If he has to even bring that up he is most likely prejudice. Bonilla-Silva distinguished that younger, educated, middle class people are more likely to make full use of the resources of color blind racism than older, less educated, working class people.

            One example that I have seen of this form of color blind racism is that of one of my friends. My friend grew up in somewhat of a middle class, white family that tends to have some pretty racist views. My friend was applying for college and he applied to the University of Illinois. He had a pretty high SAT score so he thought he was going to have a good chance in getting in to the school. He found out that he was not accepted and he was pretty upset. Later he found out that another kid from our high school, who was black, got accepted with a way lower SAT score then his own. He was talking to me and he used a semantic phrase in order to not sound so racist, he said, “I’m not racist, but, how did a black kid get accepted before me, a white kid?” That was such a perfect example of contemporary colorblindness racism. My friend felt that it was because of affirmative action that the black kid got accepted in to that school. Was he right, or was he just being plain racist? I would say the latter.

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6091/THE-STYLE-OF-COLOR-BLINDNESS.html

http://sites.psu.edu/kielceskirclblog/wp-content/uploads/sites/863/2013/04/bonilla-silva_forman_2000_i__m_not_a_rac.pdf