Race Reflection

When I decided to take this course, I felt that it would help me to better understand the power of race in our society. Having attended high school in a small, primarily white town, I was not exposed to heavy race issues until I began my college career. Issues like slavery and segregation were taught in a passive way; making it known that these were bad things that happened while simultaneously engraving this notion that the past is the past, and that it’s not like that today. While I had never considered myself to be discriminatory towards people of color, I’ve slowly discovered that I did in fact have a color blind way of thinking. Much like the way it’s described in the course material we’ve covered so far, I too had the mentality of “everyone has the same opportunities”. I now recognize that simply isn’t true and the concept of race has a significant impact on the life chances for individuals of color. I’ve also used this knowledge to make a conscious effort not to identify people by the color of their skin, or to categorize certain groups of people based solely on stereotypes. Something that has been extremely valuable to me so far is taking a look at the past and trying to get a sense of how this notion of “race” was constructed in the first place. Having only skimmed the topic of slavery and racism in American
The more I learn about this topic, the more I believe that the power struggle is closely associated with that of under class whites not wanting to be at the bottom of the barrel. Patterns of this have shown time and time again when people of color have begun to make progress towards a better quality of life, pushing the poor white communities below them. In these cases, the rules of the the racial system in society change to benefit these poor white communities while oppressing the communities of color, leaving them with the same