BY AISLING DOHENY | The Statesman Jim Crow laws that once enforced racial segregation are fortunately behind us, but there’s a new form of racism taking its toll in today’s contemporary world – colorblind racism.
“Betray your race on the power of silence,” sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva said, who was a guest speaker on colorblindness Wednesday night. “Be a part of the movement, not the problem.”
Colorblind racism, according to Bonilla-Silva, is essentially an avoidance of racist talk. The problem being that nothing can get done if no one talks about it. Old forms of racism are less frequent today, but this is a new systematic racism in play.
On Dec. 2, Duke professor and author Bonilla-Silva spoke to an over-capacitated Kirby Ballroom on colorblind racism. Students and faculty filled the seats and lined up against the walls to hear him speak. This event was a part of the African-African American Studies Roundtable program.
“Even if the conversation is uncomfortable, it helps out humanity,” Bonilla-Silva said.
Bonilla-Silva addressed topics such as issues of racism in a post-civil-war era, including police brutality, racial domination in schools and the workplace, prison demographic statistics and colorblind racism.
“It’s not that we are more or less racist than we used to be, but there’s now a question of whether we have a racial order in America and how it works,” Bonilla-Silva said.
Bonilla-Silva calls for college students to organize social movements, work within our communities to educate people on white privilege and work to transform Historically White Colleges and Universities, or HWCU, into truly multicultural institutions.
“Be a part of the movement, not the problem,” Bonilla-Silva said. “The time for theoretical progressiveness is over, it’s now time for action.”
Theoretical progressiveness, according to Bonilla-Silva, is when people stand back and watch racism happen.
According to Bonilla-Silva people constantly claim to not be racist, but hardly do they ever do anything practical to reduce racism. In addition, colorblind racism practices tend to be subtle, institutional and non-racial. This new racism often goes unnoticed by most whites.
“Racism is about racial domination and crystallized into historically specific regimes, providing systematic advantages to some and disadvantages to others.”
Bonilla-Silva was sure to include that there have been positive strides in recent times, such as the election and reelection of a black President.
“There are sweet racial tensions and then there are very sour tensions,” he said.
Students involved in bringing this event to life seemed satisfied with the outcome.
“It went how I thought it would, it was especially cool ‘cause we got to read his books, so it was cool to see his books come to life,” Bridgett Clarke said.
This Monday, Bridgett Clarke will host a post-discussion.
“The post discussion is just going to be a safe place for people to come and talk about what they thought about Eduardo,” Clarke said. “He did say a lot of things that are hard to hear so this talk will just be to see what people thought about it and for us to hear whether they agreed or disagreed.”
This discussion will be held in Bohannon 90 Monday Dec. 7 at 5 p.m.