The Cramblett Case Analysis

While America is widely recognized as the land of freedom and equal opportunity, a significant segment of its population is limited and restricted merely by its racial identity. Despite America’s legal prohibition of formal racial discrimination in the mid-1900s, colour inequality remains prevalent to this day and is deeply imbedded into the system (Warren 1999:187). Racism as we understand, is the disadvantage presented by unequal treatment to people of colour. Throughout decades of history, there have been uncountable movements and actions which have been taken with the ultimate goal to eradicate racial segregation which impedes the development of America (Robert et al. 2011:24). Yet it is still evident in today’s society that racism undeniably

This mishap not only reveals a gap in medical practice but more importantly it shadows the reality of racial oppression that prevails in American society today. Despite Cramblett’s persistent claim that the issue is not race, her disputes made in her lawsuit filed against the sperm bank are evidently focused on racial complications (Clifton 2014). Two years after the birth of her baby, Cramblett began experiencing issues and burdens associated with having a coloured baby that otherwise would not have existed if it was a white child. Cramblett admits to being brought up in a culturally insensitive family, with little knowledge of black people and their culture (Clifton 2014). Some of the distress that Cramblett voiced was the inconvenience and stress with having to take her baby to a special hairdresser tailored for black people where she was not overtly welcome, the effects of raising her child in a racially exclusive neighborhood and even within her own culturally insensitive family (Clifton 2014). This story brought forth an ugly truth of the racist and cruel reality that the black community have to face in America every day. Cramblett immediately attempted to make an escape when she inched dangerously

The question raised then is whether the recognition of this issue will cause distress to the advantaged and if so, what can be done to lessen the problem. Generally, white people in the U.S believe that they are unaffected by racism since they are not people of colour, so perhaps the biggest step to overcoming this issue is having “whiteness” understood as a racial identity (Robbins et al. 2014:98). On all the different levels that unearned advantage rests, there is one factor that interlocks all the oppressions. Both exist in an active form that is observable and an embedded form that the dominant group is taught to foresee (Robbins et al. 2014:99). It is learned that racism can be overcome once derogatory behaviour towards ethnic groups stops, dismissing the existence of the invisible system that confers unsought racial dominance to white people from birth (Robert et al. 2011:30). The silence and denial of white privilege seems to be strongly enculturated to keep alive the myth of meritocracy in America, the myth that allows equal opportunity for all (Warren 1999:190). If this is maintained, the dominant group will continually gain more power while further increasing the depth of oppression. In reality, the freedom of confident action exists only for a small portion of the American population and this must be acknowledged