How
far have we really come since Dr. King's passing in 1968? Could those
who argue that we now live in a truly post-racial society be wearing the
blinders of white privilege? Consider the following.
Have we achieved Dr. King's goal of eradicating racial prejudice?
Some
would surely say yes. For example, I dined at a fairly pricey French
restaurant the other night, and there a conversation took place between
me and the white woman sitting next to me. She lived in an elite area in
Manhattan's Upper East Side but also had a vacation home with her
husband in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I currently live. I grew up in
New York City; that was our common ground.
She
said, "Before Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke up supporting the black
protest of the choking and killing of Eric Garner, there weren't really
any racial issues in New York. We had gotten past that."
"That's
simply not true," I retorted. "The racial tension had been there all
the time. De Blasio didn't create it. Many folks, especially black
folks, knew it was there all the time."
From
where did this woman derive her perception? I don't think this woman
was mean-spirited; in many ways, she was quite intelligent. However, a
certain psychological intelligence was absent--the ability to know that
her framework was her own white, wealthy experience.
She
had the unearned privilege of never being disadvantaged by racial
stereotypes. She had the privilege of not having to listen and feel the
pain of her fellow black New Yorkers, many of whose stories and
perspectives clearly wouldn't match her own. She had the privilege of
needing neither data nor experience but nonetheless feeling free to
issue her definitive interpretation anyway.
In short, she drew on her unconscious privilege to conclude that racial prejudice was a thing of the past.
Is "colorblindness" the key to being judged by the content of our character?
Many argue,
"If colorblindness was good enough for Martin Luther King, then it
ought to be good enough for a society that still aspires to the
movement's goals of equality and fair treatment."
Much
of the argument for colorblindness relies on a superficial reading of
the "I Have a Dream" speech, where Dr. King said, "I have a dream that
my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character." Proponents of this view argue that King believed that the
end of racism would be achieved when Americans no longer saw race.
What
allows many folks, especially white folks, to maintain this belief?
There is no data that I know of to support the notion that this kind of
colorblindness helps alleviate racial disparities or racial injustice.
In my experience, many who espouse this view are simply unaware of what
it is like to live in a dark-skinned body. They have the unearned
privilege of not having to think of themselves racially.
Dr.
Beverly Tatum, the president of Spellman College, conducted a regular
experiment with her psychology students. She asked them to complete the
sentence, "I am_____." She found that
while students of color usually mentioned their racial identity, white
students rarely mentioned being white. The same was true for gender,
where women were more likely to mention being female. She concluded that
racial identity for white folks is not reflected back to them and thus
remains somewhat unconscious.
In
short, black folks simply don't have the privilege of not seeing
themselves as a color and know they will be seen as such, while many
white folks easily enjoy not seeing their own. Trying to not see race
before we are truly awake to racism's ugly present and past assigns
racism to our individual and collective shadow, rendering its harm more
insidious as it hides in what presents itself as goodheartedness or
innocence.
To quote Dr. King, "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
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