Amanda Feinman
Poughkeepsie, NY
Race is a social category, which is given meaning by institutional and cultural systems of advantage of disadvantage. Race is significant in light of these conferred and withheld advantages: it continues to dictate the distribution of resources; it impacts access to education, healthcare, employment, and other areas of the public sphere; and it affects internalized perceptions of ourselves and others. Racism is any action, project, or redistribution of resources that works to reproduce the dominant racial power structure. This occurs on the level of individual actors, groups, institutions, and societally.
Despite normative liberal notions that we are in an era of equal treatment – of “post-racism,” or “color-blindness” – race continues to hold societal weight. To act and think under any kind of “color-blind” framework is oppressive, because it erases the historical, social, and political importance of race as a constructed category. As a white person who was brought up in a “liberal” ideological environment, I was taught from a young age that race shouldn’t matter, and that in order to achieve fairness we should not consider it. Though this advice may be well-intentioned, it is dangerous. To operate under a framework that “doesn’t see” race at all – and, consequently, “doesn’t see” the systemic advantages conferred and denied on the basis of race – is an exercise of privilege.
