Social Problems: Is the United States Post-Racial?

At the end of the book, Spring (2016) discusses the Great Civil Rights Movement and the “post-racial”

Race issues in the United States have plagued our country ever since our inception as a nation. Racism has fueled division, rioting, feuding, debate, and worst of all Civil War. Race issues have altered the way people work and the jobs that they are hired for. Race has also been a contributor to the rate for which one is paid. Race has also contributed to policies that support Law enforcement and or minorities. Some of these cases were; Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), the Court prohibited racial segregation in public schools. Loving vs. Virginia (1967), this decision holds that state laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage are unconstitutional. Another example, the Court found that a city school failure to provide English language instruction to students of Chinese ancestry to be considered unlawful discrimination in Lau vs. Nichols (1973). The University of California Regents vs. Bakke (1978), the Court decides that a public university may take race into account as a factor in admissions decisions. The decision holds that a state denies an African-American defendant equal protection when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have been purposefully excluded was in Batson vs. Kentucky (1986). Then a final example, Grutter vs. Bollinger (2003), In this case, the Court finds that a law school 's limited "affirmative action" use of race in admissions is constitutional. Because of racism we have also seen where we now have sub cultures in secret

When watching a TED talk you automatically know your going to leave with some new profound thought or have your ways of thinking changed slightly. The primes behind TED talks is “Ideas worth spreading” right there in their mission statement is what persuasive speech is. In Ms. Alexander’s TED talk she did just that, she spread the idea to her audience of what the future of race in America will look like if we don’t seek to change the social, economical, and political policies that almost certainly put people in america as legal second class citizens.

Every day, race is discussed and criticized in news articles, magazines, television, and various other parts of the media. Although we seem to be past segregation, race is still a polarizing issue. Many people today still assert the idea that certain races are of a lower class or are to be feared, when people are nothing more than products of their own environments. If all minorities were given the same opportunities, these misconceptions and stereotypes would disappear. A post-racial America is not possible because the past of racism will continue to linger throughout generations, people are born as judgemental, and there will always be that one person whose ignorance outweighs all else.

If I were to travel in time to 1950 and share the news that there would be a black president within the next century, chaos would arise. People then did not seem to realize that there is no white and black, no race: only humans. According to an New York Times article, “Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations” by Kevin Sack and Megan Thee-Brenan, the election of a black president has bettered the idea of race relation. An increase of people are beginning realize that capability is not directly affected by the color of skin.

Race relations in the USA today had gotten worse since the 1930s. People today use the names that we have gotten back in the past that people call each other to not be friendly. They each other names that relates to their color. Over the years it had, yes, gotten worse.

There are many people who say that we are living in a post racial society in the United States today and there are aspects of life in which that seems to be true. Yet there are many areas of life however in which race still is an important divider that has a major impact on the experiences of the minority peoples in the United States. In 2010, about 41% of the U.S. population identified themselves as members of racial or ethnic minority groups. According to the Centers for Disease Control, compared to non-minorities, some minorities experience a disproportionate level of preventable disease, death and disability (. http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/remp.html ).

When Europeans arrived in the America, they encountered people whom they had never before seen. The natives were viewed as savage and uncivilized, regardless of their well-established culture and presence. As the colonies formed and Africans began their slave-bound voyages to America, many colonists perceived them as inferior. Eurocentrism allowed for a foundation on which the race concept was built and flourished. As research shows, there is only one species of human beings, Homo sapiens. “Race,” used as a construct to stratify societies, is not a reference to biological variation.

He acknowledges that the resentments of the black and white communities “aren’t always expressed in polite company,” but these resentments are manifested within our society in destructive ways, like racism (Obama, par. 31). The audience feels that he is knowledgeable and credible on the immediate topics affecting our future and our daily lives.

The election of President Obama marks the most noteworthy political accomplishment for African Americans in the United States during the post-civil rights revolution, thus bringing about a change in the country’s social and political landscape that was steeped in racial discrimination since the founding of this great nation. Because social and political conditions are subject to constant change, President Obama’s

Post-racial is an adjective that denotes or relates to a period of society in which racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist. Many believe this is a term applicable to the current state of America. The popularity of this term in correlation to American society blew up when the 44th president of America, Barak Obama, was elected in 2008 making him the first African American president in this country. This was a revolutionary election in history which gave hope and a newfound perspective for many young African Americans who have been searching to see a role model resembling their own skin color and for old African Americans who survived the unjust prejudices inflicted by governmental law only decades ago. Martin Luther King’s great dream for his children to be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the character of their person was finally granted, and America has finally overcome all racial issues. Everyone could finally rejoice and walk the country truly free knowing race could no longer hold any obstacle or boundary for the people of America, right? Unfortunately, that idea is far from the truth. This idea that America is now a post racial society has even been denounced by Obama himself in a commencement ceremony at Howard University. The president states that his election did not create a post racial society, though he does note it is important to note and respect progress ("Remarks by the President at Howard University

Since the election of Obama in 2008, society has been said to be marked by a new era, in which is called post racialism (Esposito, 2009). Post racial thought focuses on the notion that race is no longer an issue in today’s society, as if to say racism has been eradicated due to electing an African American President in the United States. Racial categories are said to no longer be of concern or have any meaning, however, post racial thought conflicts with how our society is constructed. Race is evident throughout the various institutions in our society, i.e. government, schools and popular culture, and it is impossible to discuss these institutions without the inclusion of race and or racial categories. Further, Esposito (2009) contends both

Before any further due, let's make one thing clear: we are not in a post-racial society, we are nowhere near it and Obama's election cannot change that.

A post racial society is one that does not place value judgments on ethnicity. The age old ethnic prejudices, discrimination, and overt racism that have been a staple of all societies, and have cause innumerable suffering vanish with the advancement to a post-racial society. Skepticism of the post-racial ideal arises in part due to colorblindness in society. Colorblindness plays a crucial part in post-racial society, and is necessary given the cultural diversity within races, as well as new scientific evidence discrediting the concept of race all together. In the Ted Talk “the dangers of a single story”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes the ignorant assumptions that are made about individuals based solely on their racial background. Adichie

It is evident not only from reading Tim Wise’s article but from my social interactions on a day to day basis as well that we do not live in a post racial society. Those who believe otherwise usually come off as naïve or blind to what’s really going on in the world we live in. Even when presented with the evidence regarding racial inequities which show that these prejudices have been infused into our systems there are still those people who believe we have reached the point of a post racial society (Wise 18). I always knew there were those people who felt differently about the racial progress we have seen but it wasn’t until reading this article that I realized the scale of this epidemic.