White People Should Consider Being Race-Conscious Rather Than Color-Blind

FERGUSON, Mo. - Dec. 16, 2014 - PRLog -- Consider the setting: a racially diverse urban neighborhood where white organizers and most white residents take a tremendous amount of pride in their community’s racial diversity, but many still think the black kids in their community don’t learn the “right values” and avoid the parts of the community they code as “ghetto.”

That reality runs counter to our expectations. The pro-diversity community should be racially conscious and committed to sustaining the diversity that they so happily embrace. Such is the state of race and race relations in the contemporary United States.

Racial diversity makes many people proud, anxious and scared, all at the same time. This ambivalence is no accident. We live in a society with deep racial inequalities and pervasive color-blind ideals.

If white people do not consider the choice of racial consciousness, one that provides few easy answers but still has the clarity and focus to ask the difficult questions, especially those with a sharp focus on inequalities and privilege, situations, like Ferguson will only worsen and multiply.

I find that one of the biggest barriers to racial clarity and change is color-blind ideology. These are ways of talking and thinking that affirm our belief in individualism without recognizing the many remaining barriers to equality.

Ignoring the barriers is of little help in achieving the ideals. For example, in the K–12 curriculum, few kids learn about the legacies of racial inequality, and even fewer learn about the myriad forms of contemporary racism, often subtle and coded, that perpetuate inequity.

They learn instead about the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, and they gain what is often a surface-level multiculturalism, celebrating and affirming difference while avoiding acknowledgments of privilege and racism. This country enacts laws that formally guarantee a platform of equality, but then consider any “real” problems fixed or non existent.

Granted, most people can look around and see stark racial inequalities in the form of deeply segregated neighborhoods, wealth patterned by race, unequal schools, but when all we discuss are the successes of the past and the grit of our own hard work, the playing field still looks level.

Color-blind ideologies are problematic because they specifically remove racism, past or present, as explanatory factors for disparities. If we believe that the problem is not institutional racism, and that racism is something that only bad people harbor in their hearts and beliefs, then we can shake our heads at the fact of inequality and still uphold the system as-is.

In many white communities, inequality stands outside, while going about their day merely trying to do the right thing. Whites talk about valuing diversity in the abstract, claiming their own cultural heritages in ways that make them feel good, and tacitly avoiding blame or responsibility for persistent racial rifts.

In a racially diverse St. Louis community, key players who are mostly white (community organizers, and other actively involved folks) proudly extol the virtues of living in a diverse community, but tend to uphold color-blind ideologies in their understanding of racial dynamics. They take pains to make clear that they are enlightened and progressive, but often make their own housing choices based on opportunity and investment.

Their appreciation of diversity largely takes place through consumption like enjoying “ethnic” foods, feeling good about seeing an array of strangers’ faces on the sidewalks, crafting an identity that resists the homogenous suburbs from which many of them came.

They work hard to distinguish themselves from their racist parents, relatives, coworkers, and friends. No doubt they are sincere, but their community efforts are still essentially pro-gentrification. This is not the social justice effort that is needed to eliminate racial inequalities or to sustain meaningful diversity.

The Tea Party, on the other end of the political spectrum, is not much different. The people proudly claim color-blind stances and work hard to convey their appreciation of both diversity and fairness.

They believe in the positive message that a black family in the White House sends to generations of Americans. They strongly support immigrants who came in through the “right” channels, still proudly believing this is the land of opportunity.

At the same time, they make use of coded racism in their lack of support for welfare and their concerns about undocumented immigration and national security. The Tea Partiers don’t show any significant break from the color-blind and coded racism that we find in a racially diverse community. That kind of racism is mainstream American racism.

If we do not talk about race and diversity in ways that account for privilege, so that we can see the often-invisible workings of whiteness and be race-conscious rather than color-blind, racial disparities will worsen. As we have seen, our current ambivalence has already deteriorated into confusion and denial.

If diversity discourse and efforts at inclusion do not include a serious and open discussion of colorblindness, racism, and white privilege, including the many ways those realities intersect with other identities and oppressions, our racial ambivalence will continue.

It is time to shed the ambivalence, own our racial past and present, and begin to engage the equal opportunity that so many of us in this country claim we are vested in.

John Parker is a senior public relations and marketing professional, activist, journalist, author, and President of Parker Public Relations, a minority owned public relations firm in St. Louis, MO. He is well experienced in crisis communications, and public affairs with over 15 years of diverse experience in media relations, political operations, social activism and connecting individuals and corporations with the world through communications.