The United Sates: An Analysis

The United Sates has an incredibly long history of racism and discrimination that many are fighting to leave in the past. Multiple methods and philosophies have been proposed in the effort eliminate such practices, some of which are obviously less effective than others. One method through which people have attempted to combat these issues is to encourage people to be “colorblind,” in which one attempts to not notice or remain “blind” to another’s race. In theory, this would result in the equal treatment of all people, therefore eliminating discrimination based on the color of one’s skin. In practice, however, the refusal to recognize or acknowledge another’s race does not seem produce the desired effect. It does little to address the actual
This ability to quickly and accurately represent an unidentified individual is a common necessity in a number of social situations. Which features one chooses to emphasize is thought to depend on the race of the person using them and the environment in which they are spoken. Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers, the authors of the article Color Blindness and Interracial Interaction, propose that white people are far less likely to utilize descriptors that are specific to one’s race, particularly when conversing with people whose race differs from their own. People tend to atomically and accurately access the race of those they come in to contact with, regardless of intention or acknowledgement. Despite this, many white people attempt to deny this occurrence due to fear of being labeled as prejudiced or racist. Norton and Sommers theorize that this desire to remain oblivious to race despite automatic assessment leads to tension and will result in an uncomfortable experience for all parties involved. Two separate experiments were designed in the effort to test this theory, the first of which focused on the frequently made assertion that white people are “colorblind” in relation to race
In order to determine how efficient they actually are at noticing race, Norton and Sommers designed and experiment using fifty-seven white students consisting of both males and females. Prior to the experiment, photographs were taken of volunteers portraying a variety of different features, which were split into seven categorical dimensions. The categories included race, (either “black” or “white”), age (either “under 25” or “over 30”), gender (either “male” or “female”), hair color (either “dark” or “light”), background color (either “blue” or “red”), facial hair (either “present” or “absent”), and facial expression (either “smiling” or “not smiling”). Using a computer program, the students completed a sorting task by viewing an image and determining which category each photo would fall into. This was then followed by a hypothetical task requiring the subjects to fill out a questionnaire. They were told to imagine themselves having to perform a sorting task and to judge each of the seven categories on the basis of how difficult it would be to differentiate between the two options. The seven categories were then ranked according to how quickly the students estimated they would perceive each category, and then ranked a second time based on how quickly each category was actually