Racism and White Privilege in the Education System Essay -- Finding Fr

Many people in the United States society believe that people of all cultures, races, and ethnicities are now on an even playing field. People with this belief support their logic with the argument that since equal rights for people of color and women have been required by law for some time now, we are all inherently as equal as claimed in the Declaration of Independence. Many believe that race is no longer an issue, a viewpoint frequently referred to as color-blindness. National polling data indicated that a majority of whites now believe discrimination against racial minorities no longer exists. (Gallagher, 96) Color-blindness allows a white person to define himself or herself as politically and racially tolerant and then proclaim their adherence to a belief system that does not see or judge individuals by the â€Å"color of their skin.† (Gallagher, 98) Many Caucasians in particular are of the opinion that because they listen to hip-hop or cheer for their favorite black, prof essional sports player that they are not racist. Still others believe that because they have a black president, we see black people in the commercial of products we consume, or enjoy television shows with black people that they are actually acknowledging race. In order to examine and dismantle this series of misconceptions, we will turn to the work of various scholars of social justice and privilege, including Peggy McIntosh, Patricia Hinchey and Johnathon Kozol as well as the story of Patricia J Williams. Through a careful examination of these works with the support of some key statistics, it is the goal of this paper to demonstrate the existence of a privileged and unprivileged America, despite the color-blindness many may profess to have integrated into their p... ...hools. New York: Crown Pub. McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women: Working Paper No. 189, 1-20. SueN. (2011, Nov 10). Thom Hartmann Program. Retrieved from Transcript: Thom Hartmann: The Big Picture: A "Race Based" Bake Sale? 26 September '11: http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2011/11/transcript-thom-hartmann-big-picture-race-based-bake-sale-26-september-11 Wight, V. R., Chau, M., & Aratani, Y. (2010, Jan). National Center for Children in Poverty. Retrieved from Who are America’s Poor Children?: http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_912.html Williams, P. (2010). Of race and risk. In Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology (7th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth. Zinn, H. (2007). Why Students Should Study History. In W. e. Au, Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 1 (pp. 179-181). Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.