is the title of a book by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. He attempts to answer two questions,
How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant? More important, how do whites explain the apparent contradiction between their professed color blindness and the United States’ color-coded inequality?
He contends an ideology of color-blind racism emerged in the late 1960’s displacing Jim Crow’s in-your-face racism with new ideology of color-blind racism – arguing that these purportedly color-blind contours serve much the same oppressive, racist purposes. He identifies the frames (“set paths for interpreting information”) through which color-blind racism operates: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racisim, minimization of racism. The frames,
comfort rulers and charm the ruled…. Whereas rulers receive solace by believing they are not involved in the terrible ordeal of creating and maintaining inequality, the ruled are charmed by the almost magic qualities of a hegemonic ideology.”
That is to say it is the only way I can process the phenomenon of racially segregated proms in 2009. The NY Times Magazine’s “A Prom Divided” and the accompanying audio slideshow with four students and a white parent. These students were probably born in 1991 and 1992.
Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed. According to Timothy Wiggs, the outgoing student council president and one of 21 black students graduating this year, “We just never get anywhere with it.” Principal Luke Smith says the school has no plans to sponsor a prom, noting that when it did so in 1995, attendance was poor.
Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. “Most of the students do want to have a prom together,” says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. “But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”
“It’s awkward,” acknowledges JonPaul Edge, a senior who is white. “I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together. We hang out. We play sports together. We go to class together. I don’t think anybody at our school is racist.” Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. “It’s how it’s always been,” he says. “It’s just a tradition.”
Tradition, it’s worked, the kids are perfectly fine with it, this community is fine like it is… That’s the recurring theme from the interviews with the white participants. “It really is hurtful.” Is nearly the first sentence from a black student, another black student remarks, “I wish color wouldn’t be such a big factor in Montgomery County period.”
Scandalized twice in one day. I wasn’t planning on going for some sort of record.
That’s….well, very surprising. I guess I’ve just lived out West too long. I’m out of touch with the South and it’s…traditions…