After the election of Barack Obama it was argued that America had become a “post-racial” nation. This was based upon the argument that the election of the first black president indicated that race no longer served as a limiting or differentiating factor in the United States. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the racial inequalities which are still clear in the country. One concept challenging this idea is the theory of color-blind racism.
Color-blind racism is the concept that ignoring the historical institutional racism which created the inequalities of today is a distinctly racist way of viewing the world. In this “post-racial” America the concept of color-blindness has been used to ignore the historical context of inequalities in our country. In doing so it is portrayed that all people of this country are equal and begin with a roughly equal chance of gaining success. In this context policies, such as Affirmative Action can be classified as racist as they seemingly attempt to give one race an advantage over another. The problem with this is that in our country the starting line is nowhere close to even.
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According to the lectures the wealth gap between black and white families in 2009, a year after the beginning of our “post-racial” phase, was over $230,000. In fact, the average net wealth of white families was nearly ten times the net wealth of black families. This is a legacy of a number of racist policies in our country, particularly the favoring of white families for receiving mortgages. If the racial history of this inequality is not addressed, then it would be difficult to challenge this