Is America Color Blind? A Discussion of Race in America
Is America Color Blind?
White America!
Erica loves my shit
I go to TRL, look how many hugs I get
Look at these eyes, baby blue, baby just like yourself, if they were brown Shady lose, Shady sits on the shelf
but Shady's cute, Shady knew Shady's dimples would help, make ladies swoon baby, ooh baby! Look at my sales
Lets do the math, If I was black I would've sold half, I ain't have to graduate from Lincoln High School to know that
This is an excerpt from the song White America, off the highly controversial white rapper Eminem’s newest album: The Eminem Show. The saddest thing about this song is not that it is racial or sexist, as many people describe his work, but that it is all too true. Whites do not always have the advantage but America is definitely white, and whites have the greatest advantage of any race in America.
Under the definition of race given in Webster’s Dictionary, “a division of the human population distinguished by physical characteristics transmitted by genes” (346), I am part of the dominant race in America, Caucasians. I have never been perceived as anything other than white, and I have always been aware that I am part of the dominant race in America. I have always been around people of other minorities and have developed friendships with people of many races.
Throughout most of my life being the dominant race has proven to be a benefit to me. I feel there are many advantages that only Caucasians have the chance to experience. As Peggy McIntosh, author of “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” says, “only whites can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of their race widely and positively spread” (122). There are many cases where blacks and other races are widely spread throughout the news but the headlines portray them as murderers, killers, robbers, or in some other negative fashion. Through the news, the media has the power to control the way the public thinks. The way that the media portrays events rubs off on viewers and trains them to think this way. I went to a concert for a black rapper and I can remember the African-American security guards thoroughly searching the African-American audience and just allowing the white audience to pass by without scrutiny.
Whenever suspects are revealed...