Category: Uncategorized

“There ain’t no future in your frontin’.” – MC Breed

Last week, my friend and fellow classmate Lamar White Jr. tweeted a pale-toned portrait of Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal. In response, the Governor’s Chief of Staff Kyle Plotkin proclaimed this was not an official portrait and accused White of race-baiting. Many others decidedly weighed in and White’s tweet went viral. Time’s Jack Linshi explained why the whitewashed portrait evoked such a deeply unsettling reaction:

Modern America might be a different place if the distinction between a lighter-skinned Jindal and a darker-skinned Jindal was a mere question of artistic vision. But today, in an age of expanded civil rights, this pick-and-choose attitude toward race has only heightened. The decision whether to dissect or ignore the paint color of Jindal’s portraits is but a small yet important choice among larger, modern issues.

It’s about whether post-9/11 airport security unfairly targets those who appear to be Middle Eastern; whether affirmative action is anti-Asian; whether grand juries would return different decisions if the defendant were not black. At its core, what Plotkin decries as “race-baiting” is question of who has the power to decide when an issue deserves to be investigated in racial terms. Choosing to throw the “race-bait” accusation is simply a convenient disengagement from these issues, all of which are complicated by histories that conflate complexion with race, and race with power.

One-fourth of our college students believe racism is no longer a problem today. Don’t think racial issues exist in our society? Look no further than the Grammy Awards. Since 1959 there have been 795 nominations for the three major performance categories of the Grammy Awards — album of the year, record of the year, and best new artist. Forty-eight percent of nominations are white males, 21 percent are white females, 19 percent are black nominees, and 3 percent are musicians of Latino origins. As for Asians, we are basically invisible.

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“It’s beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success / Hear my words or listen to my signal of distress.” – J. Cole

According to the Sentencing Project, “If current trends continue, one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males — compared to one of every seventeen white males.” Cornell Law School notes, “Race matters in the criminal justice system. Black defendants appear to fare worse than similarly situated white defendants. Why? Implicit bias is one possibility… Judges hold implicit racial biases. These biases can influence their judgment.”

In other words, justice is not blind. Unconscious racial bias can lead to racial inequality. It is important to be conscious of our hidden biases, but as Stanford Law School points out, “The goal of racial justice efforts should be the alleviation ofsubstantive inequalities, not the eradication of unconscious bias.”

Implicit or unconscious bias is a mental shortcut “that fills in gaps in our knowledge with similar data from past experiences and cultural norms.” It is a normal part of how we make decisions. Unconscious racial bias pervades our law, education, and politics. It is not always a bad thing, but it often tends to be negative. National Public Radio notes, “There are big racial differences in how school discipline is meted out: students of color are much more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students, even when the infractions are the same.”

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