Talking white and Colorblindness
Growing up as an African American male I was often told that I talk white why is this. Why is it that I cannot just be talking correctly? This idea that white people are meant to talk a way and black people are not meant to talk this way or black people aren’t meant to talk correctly is due to stereotypes developed early when America was being created and these thoughts about people that are different continues to stay around. This helps me understand why the default or the best thing is always something after white. And things that are bad are black and things that are white are pure. An Example of this is how white cakes in the stores are called Angel’s food cake but some chocolate cakes are called devil’s food cake. This brings up the topic of color blindness as well. The idea of your white friends saying “I don’t see you as black” being a good thing.
These stereotypes are built into the thoughts and teachings everyone is taught in America. A study was done with police officers of all ethnicities with a pop-up gun range where you had to shoot the “bad guy” and this test shows that not only did the white officers shoot black males more often but this showed that all the people were more likely to shoot a black person more. This is due to what we learn about people. We are taught things knowingly and unknowingly about cultures and skin colors in American society. This process is started when we are all children and how we began going to school and then we are immediately treated differently. A study was done that shows teachers unknowingly focuses more on the things students of color do wrong than the white students who do the same things in the classroom.
Colorblindness is not ok for this fact as well. Some colleges are beginning to use a somewhat color blind selection methods. This is terrible because of the fact white people are going to be the ones who go to the best private schools and have the best opportunities to make their college resumes and applications look better. While on the other side if color and knowledge of where you come from are considered it helps college admissions people to understand the backgrounds of each student and why it is that they have better opportunities.
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