The Color of Color-Blindness: Whites&#8217; Race Talk in &#8216;Post-Racial&#8217; America

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

“Gender is one of the most important predictors of racial identity, with women more likely than men to incorporate multiple races into their self-identification, all else being equal. This finding emerges across black-white, Asian-white, and Latino-white biracials, though the effect is most pronounced among black-white biracials. Biracial men are relatively more inclined to identify with their minority race, which can be attributed in part to the gendered nature of racial prejudice in the U.S. Men of all racial backgrounds are more likely to say they experience discrimination, and biracial men are more conscious than biracial women of their status in society as people of color.

Social class also consistently predicts how biracials identify. Put simply: “Money whitens.” Biracial people who grew up in more affluent families or in more affluent neighborhoods are more likely to identify as white and less likely to identify with their minority race. Higher incomes enable biracials to display external markers of wealth and increase their social mobility; when coupled with their mixed-race appearance, this can lead biracials to be perceived as white.

That said, relatively few biracial people identify as white – only 14 percent in my sample. Among black-white biracials, the rate is even lower: Just 5 percent identify as white. The category “white” does not extend to biracial blacks as it does to biracial Asians and Latinos.” —Lauren Davenport

Alex Shashkevich, “Stanford scholar examines biracial youth’s political attitudes and self-identification factors,” Stanford News, March 29, 2018. https://news.stanford.edu/2018/03/29/biracial-youths-political-views-self-identification-examined/.

The Color of Color-Blindness: Whites’ Race Talk in ‘Post-Racial’ America

The Color of Color-Blindness: Whites’ Race Talk in ‘Post-Racial’ America

Reitman/DeGrange Memorial Lecture Series
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire
Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)
Thursday, 2013-09-26, 16:00-17:30 EDT (Local Time)

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology
Duke University

Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Sociology Deptartment Chair at Duke University, will deconstruct whites’ post-racial or color-blind talk & suggest this is the new, dominant prejudice in the U.S.

Post-racial arguments did not emerge in 2008 with the election of President Obama. White America has believed a version of post-racialism since the early 1980s. In this talk, Professor Bonilla-Silva will address three things related to this subject. First, to be able to clearly discuss racial matters, he will begin by defining what racism is all about. Second, he will be devote some time to characterizing the nature of and describing the practices associated with the racial regime of Post-Civil Rights America. Third, the bulk of the talk will revolve around the examination of “color-blind racism” or whites’ race talk in the contemporary period. He will conclude his talk with suggestions of what is to be done to prevent color-blindness from sealing the (white racial) deal in America.

Co-Sponsored by the African and African-American Studies Program, and the Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies Program.

For more information, click here.

Tags: Dartmouth College, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 5th, 2013 at 01:10Z and is filed under Live Events, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Mixed Race Studies

The Color of Color-Blindness: Whites’ Race Talk in ‘Post-Racial’ America

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