Color Blind Racism Analysis

African Americans are fighting for their lives in a war that they do not even know exist. In Ralph Ellison’s short story, “Battle Royal,” this idea is made clear by the narrators struggle to be seen as an equal among the white men in the story. Ellison uses a white woman, a blindfold, and an electric rug as symbols to illustrate the struggles African Americans face.

Many individuals are often alienated from society. One of many causes can be the racism of African Americans. The alienation caused by racism can affect individuals and society. Due to their race, they were discriminated and led to racial inequality. This can all be depicted in “Incident” by Countee Cullen, “ A Black Man Talks of Reaping” by Arna Bontemps, and “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. In “Incident”, a young African American is called a racial slur because of her physical appearance. Also, “A Black Man Talks of Reaping”, describes how a black man is discriminated and face racial inequality. Lastly, in “We Wear the Mask” shows how blacks had to hide their true identity because they were colored and did not fit in society. In all three text of Cullen, Bontemps, and Dunbar all show how racism can make an individual feel alienated.

Racism is a big part of this book. It shows the absurdity of what people thought back then, which is an important lesson. It is important for us to learn what people’s views used to be, and how important it is not to go back to that mindset.

Reading the content in this book made me get a picture of what it was like to be a colored person in this time. My eyes were opened to the meaning of the word “nigga”. Nigga is such a derogatory term, yet now-a-days it is used by people so much. Kids in this generation use it as a term of endearment when they see their friends, or they say it when they are shocked by something. Frankly, I don’t believe they know how serious it really is. The fact that white people could look at a person and see less than a human being when they did nothing wrong distresses me. They (white people) treated them as if they were property and below them. Even though we don’t have racism to this extent

Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal,” is set in the deep south during the late 1940’s era. Racial tension in the south has always been exorbitantly high. In the 1940’s keeping segregation is still a priority for half the population in the southern states, slavery may be abolished but the physical act of welcoming African-Americans as “Americans” is far from the minds of many Americans. Ellison’s short story accentuates this idea of racial tension and social standards, between the elites of the town and the very intelligent former high school graduate. The story touches on a sensitive topic that America has yet to realize, and it is that people that are considered to be minorities can be subjected to be oppressed, based on their

Institutionalized racism remains as one of the dominate ways in which one race stays in control over other races, in “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison its illustrated socially, also economically in African Americans but it’s displayed through the men. In other words, the history of battling to survive and overcome institutionalized racism is the same as the battle of slavery the protagonist and is family are giving the tools to survive before the patriarch of the family dies. These two issues of social and economic are just two ways in which the elite whites kept African Americans in servitude and bondage of the mind, having them to think they couldn’t achieve greatness in life except for what was allowed by the dominate race. The narration within “Battle Royal” depicts a struggle that is passed down from one generation to the next until an elder in the family leaves a plan of survival.

Blacks had to deal with many discrimination issues throughout their experiences in Vietnam. “The armed forces were dominated and controlled by whites, and more often than not the cultural needs of African American were ignored” (Young 339). Dr. King described the Vietnam War as racist stating: “ a white man’s war, a black man’s fight”. However, personal racism was the most noticeable, as stated by James E. Westheider.

The Myth of ‘Post-racial’ America: Color-blind Racism in the Push to Repeal Affirmative Action in Higher Education

One of the intresting things about the book is that the author is almost like a combat or field journalist in the way he approaches the subject matter going to the extremes of changing his skin color with pills and tanning lamps, and trying to live the actual experiences of a black man in the south at that time that the author really wants to get it right in telling the story that he has to get in the mix and really live it instead of observing from the sidelines that the author is in a way is almost willing to lose life and limb to live the experience and get

I chose to review “Unit Four: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military”. This unit focuses on the slave’s involvement in the war, and their desire to fight for their freedom. I chose this because while I can imagine a man’s desire to fight for his freedom, I was curious as to how well that assistance was accepted. War gave hope of freedom to even the most remote and illiterate slaves. All slaves had the sense that one of the primary outcomes of the war would be the relinquishment of slavery. Free blacks and escaped slaves believe that if they fought next to the white man for their freedom it would prove that they were equal and deserved the same citizenship. At the beginning of the war the laws didn’t allow for blacks to join the

Instead, they received more sufferings, pain, mistreatment, and disrespect. After this novel was released, readers began to read, listen, visualize, and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the South, but more importantly, the amount of brutality that was used to enforce this racism. This book sheds light

In “The Colored Soldiers”, the landscape favored “up the hills you fought and faltered/in the vales you strove and bled” (13-14). The vast amount of blood shed covered the area utilized during the war and not any area seemed safe from blood. He even went as far to say, “for the life blood of their thousands/did the southern fields bedew” (“The Colored Soldiers” 51-52). Whether white or black a life still entailed a life when silenced by the entrance of a musket ball. The blood that seeped everywhere did not hold barriers of separation and dislike, but rather “their blood with yours commingling/has enriched the Southern soil” (“The Colored Soldiers” 67-68). African Americans lost hundreds of lives while participating within the war while numerous individuals appeared to look down upon them.“Dunbar, with rare courage for a black poet who was supposed to remain decorous, reveals the predicament of a man ‘of color’ in a white society,” announced Allen B. Fox. The Civil War revolved around the hatred of changing the laws of owning slaves, yet blacks fought in a battle that “for their blood has cleansed completely/every blot of Slavery’s shame” (“The Colored Soldiers” 75-76). They partook in a war in which no one wanted them to actively engage in the first place as many suffered hatred towards them. Within “The Colored Soldiers” Dunbar described flashbacks of, “your ears still heard the thunder/of the foes’ advancing tread” (15-16). A fear of death waltzing towards one left soldiers on ease especially African Americans due to the feeling of everyone teamed against them. Yet, even after the end of the Civil War, African Americans sustained a horrendous lifestyle when during the later parts of the 1800 when lynching and death became common throughout the south. The poem “The Haunted Oak” displayed how a mob of people walked through town “and now they beat at a

Affirmation- “… genuine friendships developed between the French and black American soldiers, and the level of cooperation between the two forces seemed nothing short of miraculous in light of recent experiences in the U.S. Army. Here both sides needed each other.” This part of the chapter resonated with me. Despite of the racism towards the African American, it was surprising to see that a “genuine relationship” developed between the French and black American soldiers. This occurrence shows that good things happen in a bad situation.

In the novel “Fallen Angels” racism is so relevant that it motivates hatred towards black soldiers and the Vietnamese. In the 1960s racism was at an all time high in the United States. The rights and freedoms of the African-Americans, were slowly being worked out, and people were unsure about the new African-American rights movement. This racial problem finds its way into the bunker of Richie’s squad. The American soldiers always made racist remarks such as “He’s probably a damn cong” (Myers, W,1988, p.20) .

Today’s society, the United States has an appealing mystery on how racism can progress without racists. The discrimination and exclusion appear to operate during the Post-Civil Rights period of Jim Crow. Inside the book, Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s, makes valuable arguments on the tremendous degree of racial inequality within the country that White Americans believe race is no longer important and justifies the apparent contradiction between their acknowledge color blindness with United States color-coded inequality. Color-blind Racism is a label as new formed of racism in American.