In Bonilla-Silva's book chapter "The Central Face of Color-Blind Racism", he discusses the different frames of racism. One of which was the minimization frame, which is the belief that whites have that discrimination is no longer a problem and that it's a "thing of the past". This connected to a part of Wise's speech when he talked about White Denial. Some whites choose to believe that discrimination is no longer a problem, simply because they may not be exposed to it even though people who actually are discriminated against and it affects their lives negatively on a daily basis say that it's affecting them. It's something hard to comprehend, especially when Wise was saying that in the 60's during the civil rights movement, whites said that black children are getting the same education opportunities, and that there was not a discrimination problem. This seemed absolutely ridiculous to me.
Another part of Wise's speech reminded me of Lipsitz article on "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness". Wise stated during his speech that in 2006, the most housing discrimination occurred in recorded history. In a society that whites claim to be "discrimination free", how could this have happened? Lipsitz discussed in his article how from 1968 to 1972, housing costs in the inner city increased by 200 percent. It seems as though in 2006, this cycle repeated. The question is, how long will this cycle continue to repeat before it is stopped?
One question that keeps coming into my head while doing the readings and while watching Tim Wise's speech was, "How do we fix things?" This is a question that I'm not sure I will ever find the answer to, but I have faith that as time goes on we get closer to finding an answer.
After reading your reflection on the frame about naturalization, where you mentioned about "segregation of neighborhoods", it reminds me of all the neighborhoods in Chicago. I believe Chicago is the most segregated city across the U.S because each neighborhood can be identified easily when looking at the map. Because of these segregated neighborhoods, I wondered if we are the one who put ourselves into the issue of race, but yet we said that we did not create it. Even though it is a social fact, like how we discussed during class, but it constantly happening in every moment in our society. Like you said at the end, “how we fix things”, it is hard to solve this problem. Hopefully, as time goes on, things will turn out differently. Race problem has been around for over fifty years, yet we are still in the progress of making improvements to solve this issue.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your reflection on the frame about naturalization, where you mentioned about "segregation of neighborhoods", it reminds me of all the neighborhoods in Chicago. I believe Chicago is the most segregated city across the U.S because each neighborhood can be identified easily when looking at the map. Because of these segregated neighborhoods, I wondered if we are the one who put ourselves into the issue of race, but yet we said that we did not create it. Even though it is a social fact, like how we discussed during class, but it constantly happening in every moment in our society. Like you said at the end, “how we fix things”, it is hard to solve this problem. Hopefully, as time goes on, things will turn out differently. Race problem has been around for over fifty years, yet we are still in the progress of making improvements to solve this issue.
ReplyDeleteI was also shocked at the statistic about the belief that Elvis is alive in comparison to the belief that racism is non-problematic in today's society. Also, I completely agree with the dilemma that you note. Race needs to be discussed and acknowledged without judgment but much of society fears the potential repercussions of doing so. It's almost as if the problem of discrimination is focused on a dialectic issue: We need to discuss race to eliminate discrimination but we should also view everyone as equal. There is a middle ground in that argument (respecting differences and viewing each other as equal) but I think we (as a collective unit in society) have not found that and need to do so. My question is how does someone start that process when many people are so close-minded?
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