Analyzing Race and Colorblindness in Academics

As American universities and colleges grow their demographics, diversity and ideas there is a continued and an accelerated debate regarding freedom of speech within these higher education institutions. College campuses are struggling to simultaneously provide a learning environment that is inclusive to traditionally unrepresented students while also providing an environment that allows for ideas to be challenged and debated no matter how offensive or controversial.

Racial formation is a vast sum of signifying actions and social structures that clash in the creation of complex relationships and identities that is a labeled race. Throughout the history of the United States, a large array of strategies was engaged in regarding education that took advantage of nonwhites. Since policies by those who supposedly “protect our rights” attempted to eradicate social, economic and cultural aspirations, dominated groups were more often than not suspicious of the school 's interests. According to John Ogby, “children from dominated cultures often failed school because they considered the school to be representative of the dominant white culture” (Spring, 101). This portrays racial formation having an effect on equality. “Acting white” meant to attempt to do well in school because

Colorblindness has helped disseminate racism in the United States since the Civil Rights movements of the mid-sixties, by perpetuating anti-blackness and racial discrimination against other minorities. Colorblindness is a new form of racism, the new “Jim Crow” which “Legitimizes the state and society as racially neutral although they are not neutral” and creates the belief that we have become post-racial and we are all equal. While preaching homogeneity, colorblindness uses mechanisms by which white racial domination is structured and as a result, colorblind racism has caused a widespread of anti-blackness and racial discrimination against Latinos, Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians.

Racial diversity is something that is often discussed on college campuses. As a student who self-identifies as a minority in more ways than one I often feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the subject of racism and race. However, often times when these issue are discussed I learn something new; this was the case when reading the articles this week. This week’s articles examined the issue of race from different perspectives. This allowed me to re-examine the issue in a fuller manner; it also allowed me to question some of my own notions that I hadn’t really challenged before.

Following, numbers of shootings involving law enforcement and black men, race became a pertinent topic among American people. It seems that two groups have revealed themselves through these discussions, those who believe race is still a problem in America, and those who believe America is a post-racial society. History is one of the clearest indicators showing that race may still be relevant in modern communities. A plethora of connections can be drawn between discrepancies in poverty, incarceration, and poor education between whites and blacks when you look at events in our nation’s history such as slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and more. With that being said, one of the more significant examples of institutional racism in America is one that is rarely

As I walked into the University Student Center after my Issues in Public Policy class one August day, a disturbing sight immediately struck me. For a moment I thought I needed to pinch myself because I felt as though I was having a horrible nightmare. Then, I thought that maybe I needed to check my calendar to make sure that I had not traveled back in time to the sixties when segregation was still an accepted practice in the United States. Much to my dismay, I was not dreaming, and it was still in the year 2000. As I continued to look around at my fellow students, my stomach churned, and it was not because I was hungry. The sight that lay before my eyes was not only very disturbing but also

My race is Black, my ethnicity is African American and my culture (349) could be described as complicated. In applying these factors to my personal experiences I will refer to Matthew and Emirbayer’s “What is Racial Domination?” to explain the racial biases and discriminations that I have experienced from Arkansas to Los Angeles and ultimately Irvine. From the day of my birth my life and the opportunities presented or denied have been defined by racial domination and the Institutional racism of White Americans.

The University of Mississippi has its share of racial issues, which result in bad media coverage and lessening the number of diverse students even more. The University of Mississippi has recently had an incident involving race which ended with a protest and the voluntary withdrawal of a student. The use of the peaceful protest made the University become aware of the severity of the racial comment. The use of protests are to demand that colleges be aware and to demand punishment for the racial crime committed. Peaceful Protest usage seem to result in positive outcomes such as within the situation at the University of Missouri. This situation involved “racial inequality and the lack of action from university authorities” (Rhoden). The unfair treatment of a minority and lack of punishment for the racial matter caused the students to begin protesting. Regular students began protesting but with

Our racial ethnicity is influential in what we do in life, whether it would be with school, personal relations, or even job opportunities. There are many Americans today that hold racial prejudice against people of different color and different ethnicity, which as a result narrows many opportunities that minorities can actually have. In the essay “Race in America: “We Would Like To Believe We Are Over The Problem” Maryann Cusimano Love an associate professor of international relations in the Politics Department at Catholic University, addresses “To “get over” racial problems” (Love 387) we need to acknowledge them as well as the history of those racial problems in order to move forward as a multicultural society. Love reveals a study conducted by The University of Connecticut which shows “19 percent of the 14,000 college

Colleges are vastly known to have people who bring in their ideas and cultures to campuses. However, there are sometimes when people from two different cultures conflict with each other and it causes problems for not only a college campus but for a society as well. Take the racial conflict between African American and Caucasian Americans, their feud has been going on in America for the past two decades. In 1992, Rodney King was beaten by L.A. police which started the “L.A. Riots” (Biography.com, 2015). During 2012, Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman (Biography.com, 2016). In August 2014, unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson (Buchanan, 2014). These events have two significant things in common. The three victims were killed by white individuals and they were killed on the basis of discrimination and mainly direct racism.

According to Obear and Martinez (2013), race caucuses “can be a powerful multicultural incentive to deepen the competencies of higher education administrators and student affairs practitioners to create equitable, inclusive campus environment for students and staff” (p. 79). This article discusses how diversity training targets racism on college campuses. Race caucuses can deepen the competences of higher education leaders by making it possible for them recognize racism, internalized dominance, internalized oppression, and its impact on personal and profession development within the institution. By using this type of methodology, universities are slowly seeing social and organizational change that eliminates racial barriers.

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

remains the most unresolved issue on campus [in the US] today” (Bikson & Law p. 91). Frequent campus reports of racially-motivated hate crimes imply that this remains a huge issue. Proponents

In this empowering keynote, Dr. Hart asks young men and women these questions, challenging them to return their organizations to an ethical pursuit of the highest standards of friendship. Through group discussion and targeted stories, Hart helps students see the realities, the possibilities, and a path forward. Hart is an avid participant in the Greek-letter community and has served Alpha Omicron Pi Fraternity in a variety of roles. She currently works as the director of educational initiatives for Holmes Murphy Fraternity Practice. Lawrence Ross Blackballed College is a word that means many things to many people: a space for knowledge, a place to gain lifelong friends, and an opportunity to transcend one's socioeconomic station. Today, this word also recalls a slew of headlines that have revealed a dark and persistent world of racial politics on campus. Does this association disturb our idealized visions of what happens behind the ivied walls of higher learning? It should because racism on college campuses is as American as college football on fall Saturdays. Lawrence Ross, author of The Divine Nine and Blackballed, works to rip the veil off America's hidden secret: America's colleges have fostered a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for African American students. During this keynote, Lawrence talks about the white fraternity and sorority system with traditions of racist parties, songs, and assaults on black students and the universities themselves. With a