Color-Blind Racism

What? Both Collins and Alexander discuss issues that are relevant to my community partner and issues that interest me in general. I am an aide in a Canal Alliance English learning classroom. Canal Alliance has set up a program to take adults from the Canal and give them the opportunity to learn English so more doors can be open for them in the future. Most of the students are illegal immigrants who have traveled hundreds and thousands of miles searching for a better life and more opportunities. I do not know a lot about how someone gets deported so I was surprised when another aide told me we had to put a “private” sign on the door so deportation officers can’t raid the building and take away all the students. I thought about how terrifying it is just existing here in the United States being an immigrant because you never know when you or one of your friends and family can be taken away by force. Unfortunately, society and politicians have conditioned us to believe that illegal immigrants are, “an influx of people who want to take your job or rape your daughter… [and that] when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime” (Alexander 4). From what I have seen at Canal Alliance this is not true at all. These students want to learn so they can have a good job and a better life than what they would have had in Mexico. Suddenly, society has decided that people who do not go through the strict channels to come to America should be, “viewed and treated like “felons” or “criminals”…and minor legal infractions…now routinely prompt one of the nation’s most devastating sanctions — deportation (Alexander 5). No society is perfect so there have probably been some criminals that end up in the US but somehow those criminals are the ones focused on in the media which reinforces this notion that banning immigration is the cure to our nation’s ills. In order to deconstruct this sign system, society needs to have an intervention and realize that not every single one of the immigrants is a criminal. We, as a society, need to reflect on ourselves and think about how we would feel if we had to go to another country to be safe and search for a better life and were seen as criminals when we did nothing worth conviction.

So What? LatinX families who are citizens and were born here have the idea forced on them that they do not belong. Because there are still some racist ideologies in our society, there is an income gap between white people and minorities. “In cities, poor housing, no jobs, gang violence, drugs, alarming rates of HIV infection, and a host of other social issues not only shape their view of themselves in the world but also the value that we place on their lives. African American, Latino, Native American, and new immigrant youth are defined more often as America’s problem, not its promise” (Collins 48–49). These children group up thinking they are not enough and unworthy. All the time they see what they could have but can’t because of how our society was formed and shaped from the very beginning. In order to start changing these ideals, we need to, “understand the dynamics of racism as a system of power in a theoretical way [to] set the stage for developing pragmatic strategies for practicing resistance and catalyzing change” (Collins, 44). African-Americans also experience the feeling that they are the problem. They want to be accepted as everyone does and in order to try and be accepted, they code-switch. This means they pull out a different personality depending on who they are speaking to. For example, to other African-Americans, they act how they normally act but with white people, they try and act more white. If they act more sophisticated in the presence of a white person they have a higher chance of being treated with respect and acceptance. However, they shouldn’t have to code-switch. Everyone preaches about being yourself when we look at certain people differently when they do exactly that.

Now What? The cultural domain of power impacts the students who attend Canal Alliance English classes. Above, I briefly discussed that the media portrayal of the LantiX criminals makes people believe that all immigrants behave this way but that is simply not the case. Since the media dramatizes the reality of these situations, people gain, “ideas [which] typically inspire actions, so how we live our everyday lives reflects our beliefs about what is possible, desirable, forbidden, impractical, and true” (Collins 68–69). Since ideas inspire actions, minor illegal behaviors receive harsh punishment and people get deported and ripped away from their family and friends. Collins also discusses that a color-blind society is not necessarily what we want. She mentions Martin Luther King Jr and how he said we should judge each other based on our character and not their skin type. However, having a color-blind society seems like what we want on surface level but not when you really think about it. America is often referred to as a melting pot with several different cultures and traditions coming together. If we lived in a color-bind society those would be washed away. Also, minorities in a color-blind society would just act more white which is still problematic. What needs to happen is accepting each other for who they are and where they come from. The students in my class shouldn’t be seen as construction workers or house cleaners simply based on their skin color. They should be seen as people that are proud of their heritage but have the same opportunities as everyone else.