Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Color Blind Prejudice

In order to grasp the idea of colorblind racism, one must first understand the definition of racism and the attributes that constitute it. Racism is a belief that certain racial groups are superior to others. Examples of superiority can be elucidated in forms of moral or intellectual superiority. Terms that associate with racism includes segregation, alienation, and inequality. Contrary to the popular beliefs, racism continues to influence our society. Racism is taking a new shape and form which Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Michelle Alexander stipulate as color blind racism. Color blindness suppresses critically important narratives of oppression, strips non-white people of their individuality, and makes the invalid assumption that everyone is

granted equal opportunity.

Our society made attempts to terminate overt racism, however, racism has taken a new mold, one in which sociologist describes as colorblind racism. Colorblind racism contains the belief that racism is no longer a problem and that we all have equal opportunities. Colorblindness prevents us from seeing the historical causes of racial inequality specifically how racial inequality persists to flourish in our current society. If we take the notion of colorblindness as a framework or lens in which one views our reality, the colorblind lens denies the reality that non-white people face. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, American political sociologist, and professor of sociology at Duke University claims that we all participate in racism in one form or another. Colorblind racism is a new prejudice. According to Bonilla-Silva the use of new jargon is implemented into our daily language and means of communication to defend the contemporary order. He gives an example of colorblind prejudice that is used in daily dialect by explaining how people state idioms such as “I am not a racist but,...” and elicit phrases that they believe strongly. The idiom is used as a buffer to speak they're true subconscious initial emotions without the burden of being deemed as a racist. The phrase is used as an excuse and salvation. Usually, the phrases are then followed up with notions like I have black, white, Spanish, etc. friends. These follow up phrases are meant to serve as justification that they aren’t racist, but rather bringing up a vague point.
A myriad frame, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva brings up covers the idea of abstract liberalism.

In our current century, we believe that we have parity and equal opportunities. However, Bonilla-Silva contradicts this notion and rather labels it as a mistake. He argues that our society continues to suffer from systematic disadvantages in terms of the labor market, housing market, etc. The point that is being made on Bonilla-Silva's behalf is that when an individual fails to see color, they fail to recognize injustice and oppression. The problem that color blind racism posits is the notion that the vast majority of minorities who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, as well as invalidates their individual frame of references. The cultural and environmental experiences that one endures in a lifetime is surly differentiated from one individual to the next. The gap of perspective is greater widened when we consider individuals from distinct cultural backgrounds. Culture, of course, plays a pivotal role in the variation of a point of view. Keeping this in mind, by adopting the racial ideology by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity, sounds promising, perhaps even utopian. Although the attempt of colorblind ideology is an attempt to put aside our differences and focus on humanity as a whole, the colorblind framework fails to address

and heal racial wounds on the national and personal level. To some degree, color blindness can be deemed as the form of ignorance rather than an ideology for unity.

Color blindness makes the invalid assumption that everyone is granted equal opportunity. Michelle Alexander a writer, and civil rights advocate talk about the future of race in her Ted Talk. One of the major points that she attempts to get across in her talk is how a certain group of individuals, specifical criminals, are stripped of their humanity by being denied basic necessities like a home, a job, an education, and basic public benefits. She makes it clear that although we say that our society has come far from the old forms of discrimination that we have left behind in the ‘Jim Crow’ era are suddenly legal again. She claims that we have not truly ended racial caste in America and that we have merely designed it. Our current criminal system is currently functioning like a caste system.

Contemporary racism is taking new forms, forms that include; the three strike laws, expansion in the prison system, drug warfare, racial profiling, police brutality, etc.

Our criminal justice system is biased. We see an almost direct correlation amongst mass incarceration and earlier forms of racial and social authority. Our new generation of youth is raised to believe that they will go to jail at least once in their lifespan. The kids that adopt this kind of ideology are raised in communities that are segregated, ghettoized. The youth in these communities are shuttled from decrepit and underfunded schools and transferred to “brand new high tech prisons.” People in these communities are targeted at young ages, stop, frisked, searched, as well as being subjected to interrogation, despite what actions they are partly taking in. They are then arrested for minor, nonviolent offense. The crimes that occur in the underprivileged communities occur with equal frequency in privileged white communities. However, the offenses occurring in white privileged communities are often ignored whereas their underprivileged counterparts are swept into the system, branded as criminals and felons, and alienated from the remainder of humanity. They are then “ushered into a second class into a second-class status” a status that they will the inability to

escape.
The majority of Americans who view colorblindness as a tool to terminate the categorization of individuals by asserting that race is not an issue and that all individuals are treated with impartiality are individuals who are partly taking in colorblind racism. Color Blindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness. Due to the fact that White individuals have never encountered difficulty pertaining to issues of race, they are unable to sympathize and acknowledge that the condition exists. Rather than brushing aside the matter of race by attempting to blur our vision of reality and ignore the racial difference. We need to shift into a new perceptual mindset that allows both Minorities and White individuals to acknowledge and accept their differences.