Colorblindness: Does It Foster Racism and Support White Supremacy?

Colorblindness: Does it foster racism and support white supremacy?

Picture this, you pick up the Sunday newspaper and read this story.

Final exams are vastly approaching at Harvard law school and as usual they are going to be brutal. Students across the campus are spending the majority of their time in the library preparing for the gauntlet of exams.

Peter is a student at Harvard and he too, like the other students, is getting prepared for final exams. It's Thursday night and Peter has been at the library studying for six hours. He has taken every measure he can think of to stay awake including coffee and Red Bull but now he can't keep his eyes open any longer. He decides to call it quits for the night when he looks at his watch and notices that it is 2:30 a.m. He knows that the last campus bus comes in ten minutes and that the bus stop is on the other side of the quad. If he misses the bus he will have to walk the four miles to his apartment. He quickly packs up his books and puts on his Alpha Tau Omega hooded sweatshirt. He then begins to run from the library across quad to the bus stop. In his haste, Peter does not notice the police on the quad and runs right past them because he has to make the bus.

Before he knows Peter is tackled by the police and forcibly detained. The police start to berate him with questions and Peter's only thought is to get his student identification card so the police will let him go. The police realize that Peter is reaching into his pocket and they begin to beat him. Peter is so badly beaten by the police that his nose is broken, and he suffers two broken ribs. Peter is then arrested and taken to jail. He is thrown into a holding cell and not allowed to nurse his

injuries. Peter is held overnight and released the next day once the police realize that he is a student and he explains his story.

Peter wants to sue because he feels that this was an incident of brutality and overreaction on the part of the police. The police attempt to justify their actions on the account that Peter looked suspicious and when Peter reached into his pocket they feared he was going for a weapon.

You are a student at Harvard and you are outraged by this event. You think about all the times you have been at the library late and the times you had to run for the bus. You wonder why there has not been a big issue made out of this tragic story and want to take action. However, you later find out that Peter is 6'6" tall and he weighs around 250 lbs. To go along with that Peter is also African-American.

Does this change the way you think about the situation? Now do you think the police had a right to be suspicious of Peter running across campus or their being scared when he reached into his pocket? Did race play a part into the police's actions? The way the story is told in the newspaper is how it would be told under the colorblind approach. The factor of race is ignored and all of the others factors remain the same. However, as you can see in this story when you add in the factor of race it completely changes the situation.

I added this story to see if the factor of race changes the way a reader thinks of the situation. I purposefully attempted to portray Peter as Caucasian in the story with the descriptions I used, while also keeping his actual race concealed. I thought

that almost everyone would be outraged by the story before the race of Peter was revealed. However, once his race was revealed I believed that some readers would think that the actions of the police were justified. Some readers may feel that a large black male running across the campus of an Ivy League school at such a late hour is suspicious and the police had a right to stop him.

I believe that this story helps to show the negative implications that can come from using a colorblind approach. If the factor of race were taken out of my story, while it still would create an uproar, it would help to erase the factors that may have been behind the beating. In the fictional story the actions of the police may be the result of racial profiling. The police may have believed that Peter was suspicious because he was a large, black male running across the campus of Harvard. Without knowing the race of Peter there is no way to find out if racism was afoot and in order to reach a truly colorblind society we need to erase the racism that already exists. Thus there are times when race needs to be accounted for and this is not allowed under the colorblind approach.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the negative effects of the colorblind approach. I believe that by utilizing the colorblind approach in society

it might help to foster the racism that is already prevalent and support white supremacy. The first section of my paper is used to define the colorblind approach as well as give a brief history of the approach. This section is meant to help the reader understand the approach. The next section deals with the colorblind approach and the relationship it has with covert racism. This section is used to define covert

racism as well as show how the colorblind approach may lead to more covert racism. The third section of the paper illustrates the negative affects that the colorblind approach can have on society. I used this section to strongly suggest that the colorblind approach is not working in society. The fourth section of my paper has alternatives to the colorblind approach, because I could not effectively advocate against the approach without providing possible solutions. My hopes in writing this paper is that the reader will be able to see the holes in the colorblind approach and realize that there are better ways to deal with the racism in our society.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF COLORBLINDNESS

The colorblind approach is a method used in society where an individual's race is supposedly not recognized at all and each individual is judged according to his or her personal attributes. In the colorblind world, race is an arbitrary factor Ð'- one upon which it is doubly unfair to allocate benefits and impose burdens, the race

of a person tells us nothing about an individual's capabilities and certainly nothing about her moral worth.

This approach is used in society to erase racism and stereotypes and allow for equal opportunity. If used correctly everyone would be placed on equal footing without anyone receiving any benefit or privilege. Its apparent goal is to treat everyone equally without reference to context, situation, history, or culture. On its

face, the position is ostensibly