Colorblind Society and Its Role in Creating Racial Discrimination

According to Wildeman and Emily (1468), issues related to race are often uncomfortable to discuss, and widespread controversy and stress. Color has been used as the foundational pillar of racial differences that pervade the United States and its systems. However, the sources of racial differences are deeper and more structured compared to explicit racial discrimination. A series of flashpoints around America has exposed deep racial divides and reignited a new debate about “color” and its contribution to racial disparities. Different ideas and viewpoints have been advanced, aiming at addressing this core spot in US society. In contemporary America, the most pervasive approach is the idea of “colorblind society.” According to Van Cleve and Lauren (407), a colorblind society is an ideology that takes the race of the table where no one is viewed as different from the others because they are all humans. The idea of colorblindness aims at eliminating all the possible ways of seeing race as a differential factor among individuals. Michelle Alexander (11) indicated that a colorblind society would invalidate racist experiences and individuals’ identities, thus becoming a form of racism. For this reason, the current piece of literature attempts to give insights on the idea of a colorblind society and how the factor of ‘color’ has played a significant role in creating racial disparities in different systems in America.

Sociologists believed that colorblindness is one of the approaches that posit the best way to counter the issue of discrimination by treating people as equally as possible without looking at their cultural, racial, or ethnic backgrounds. In this case, Maddox and Jennifer (59) indicated that racial equality is a call to judge individuals on the content of their character rather than the color of their skins. Conversely, the idea of colorblindness alone is not enough to heal the aftermaths of racial discrimination as it is a half-measure that ultimately acts as a form of racial disparity. Alexander (62) argued that the race-neutral term “colorblind” makes it challenging to prove that the American society is systematically racist based on the people’s refusal to apply common sense and bypass the glaring fact that there are more people of color than brown people incarcerated in the country. The racial discrimination in the context of imprisonment is empowered by offering law enforcement “bizarre discretion” in who and how they approach as well as by rejecting any reform towards racial discrimination that does not recognize a particular racist individual as the source of the problem (68). Accordingly, in a colorblind society (white individuals) who is less likely to experience disadvantages on the basis of race can successfully ignore racial discrimination, justify the contemporary social order, and feel more contented with their moderately privileged standing in American society. According to Burch (402), the idea of colorblindness produces a society that denies its adverse racial experience, invalidates its exceptional perspectives, and rejects its cultural heritage. It is worth noting that individuals fail to understand that the presence of racial discrimination does not necessarily mean one is a racist but realizes that institutional racism can subsist without individual racists but the existing legacy of oppression in different social systems.

As American society strives to combat drugs, factors such as color have played a critical role in restraining these efforts. In the United States, the war on drugs has contributed significantly to the creation of controversial policies and legislation such as the stop-and-frisk searches and mandatory minimum penalties that have been criticized for being oppressive to the minorities. Burch (407) indicated that the issue of war on drugs had generated racial disparities in prosecutions, arrests, rehabilitation, and imprisonment. In the war against drugs, the US society wants to focus on race as an interpersonal belief, and this is far away from the real issue contributing to the issue of institutional and structural racism. For instance, in chapter two, “The Lockdown,” Michelle Alexander stated that the war against drugs does not target to eliminate drug kingpins or harmful substances rather than to eliminate the people of color from mainstream society (70). This war has given the police the power to operate above legal limitations, and this contradicts America’s status as a nation defined by liberties and civil rights for all citizens. Based on different reports on social discrimination in the US, it appears that as a result of mandatory minimum sentencing, Hispanics and African-Americans received more severe sentences as compared to their white counterparts charged with similar accusations on drugs. For instance, in the year 2015, one in every four individuals arrested for drug law violations was African-American, although drug use rate does not vary considerably by ethnicity or race. In different scenarios, the federal laws and policies against drug trafficking have failed to apply uniformly to all cases of illegal behaviors in America. Persistent racial targeting offers another peculiarly United States stamp to the drug war, in American society, African-American men are imprisoned at a higher rate as compared to the rate of incarcerated white men. With the notion of a colorblind society, the American war on drugs provides seamless continuity with the most glaring episodes of racial disparities.

Weich and (194) found that the United States is a global leader in its rate of imprisonment, dwarfing the rate of nearly every country. This situation masks the racial disparity that spread through the US criminal justice system, particularly for the African-Americans. Reports regarding criminal justice in American have indicated that African-Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested and convicted as well as experience lengthy prison sentences. In the American judicial system, ethnic and racial differences among women are less substantial as compared to men but remain prevalent. The US, in effect, operates two different criminal justice systems, one for the poor people of color and another for the wealthy class. By producing and perpetuating regulations that permit racial disparities to subsist in the criminal justice system, the US is violating its obligation as stated in Article 2 and 26 of the ICCPR (International Convent on Civil and Political Rights) that all its citizens, regardless of color, should be equally treated under the law. For instance, in the year 2016, African-Americans formed approximately 27 percent of all the people arrested, which was double their share of the population in the US (Wildeman and Emily, 1473). This was a clear connection between crime and race based on concentrated urban poverty caused by racial disparity in the region. In the colorblind society notion, American society neglects the fact that populations of color are disproportionately victims of crime and markdown the pervasiveness of prejudice in the entire criminal justice system (101).

Truly meaningful and effective reforms to the US criminal justice system cannot be accomplished without recognizing the existing ethnic and racial disparities in the system. In the context of “the felon identity,” Alexander (152) indicated that the current judicial system does not recognize the aftermath of racial discrimination, particularly when an offender is given a plea deal. Alexander stated that when a defendant is provided a plea deal, they are not enlightened on the consequences of admitting quilt as well as the collection of rules they are subjected to as convicts of a felon. In most cases, the offenders are not aware that when admitting guilt, they are at risk of being excluded from housing, welfare, job opportunities, and other primary human rights since the true nature of the plea deal is covered. The high number of African-Americans inmate is a representation that people of color are not wanted in mainstream American society.

Works Cited

1. Alexander, Michelle, 'The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of Colorblindness ' The New Press, New York (2012),
2. Burch, Traci, 'Skin color and the criminal justice system: Beyond black‐white disparities in sentencing,' Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 12.3 (2015): 395-420, available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jels.12077 [accessed 13 Dec, 2019)
3. Maddox, Keith B., and Jennifer M. Perry, 'Racial appearance bias: Improving evidence-based policies to address racial disparities.' Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5.1 (2018): 57-65.
4. Van Cleve, Nicole Gonzalez, and Lauren Mayes, 'Criminal justice through “colorblind” lenses: A call to examine the mutual constitution of race and criminal justice,' Law & Social Inquiry 40.2 (2015): 406-432, available online at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/criminal-justice-through-colorblind-lenses-a-call-to-examine-the-mutual-constitution-of-race [accessed 13 Dec, 2019]
5. Weich, Ronald, and Carlos Angulo, 'Racial disparities in the American criminal justice system,' Rights at risk: Equality in an age of terrorism (2002): 185-218
6. Wildeman, Christopher, and Emily A. Wang, 'Mass incarceration, public health, and widening inequality in the USA' The Lancet 389.10077 (2017): 1464-1474