Colorblind Nation: The Disappearance of Race and The Rise of Racial Inequality

• In Event: 376 - Regular Session. Race and Ethnicity

Abstract

In June of 2014 CNN’s Don Lemon asked actor Morgan Freeman, both African Americans, if race had anything to do with income inequality between whites and blacks. Freeman responded “Today?” …No. … You and I, we’re proof…Why would race have anything to do with it?...Put your mind to what you want to do and go for that. It’s kind of like religion to me—it’s a good excuse for not getting there.” Freeman’s concluding remarks on the connection between race and income inequality was that “Making [race] a bigger issue than it needs to be is the problem here.” This line of thinking, what I call colorblind egalitarianism, is the tendency to claim that racial equality is now the norm while simultaneously ignoring or discounting the real and ongoing ways in which institutional racism continues to disadvantage racial minorities. This paper will examines how the concept of colorblindness has shifted from an abstract societal goal to a normative belief system that now frames how individuals and institutions understand race in the context of equal opportunity, social mobility and perceptions of institutional racism. How colorblindness is used in the media, by politicians, by individuals in their conversations about race, by the business community when they discuss diversity, and the language of colorblindness in the courts and educational settings are the focus of this paper.

Author

• Charles A. Gallagher, La Salle University