Color-blind egalitarianism as the new racial norm

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139015431.006

3 - Color-blind egalitarianism as the new racial norm

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014

Charles A. Gallagher

Edited by

Karim Murji and

John Solomos

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Charles A. Gallagher: Affiliation:
La Salle University in Philadelphia
Karim Murji: Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
John Solomos: Affiliation:
University of Warwick

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Summary

Profound changes are currently taking place in the United States in terms of how race, race relations and perceptions of social mobility are defined, perceived and understood. It is now the case that a majority of white Americans subscribe to a color-blind narrative of society where institutional racism has been eliminated and the American Creed of ‘racial equality for all’ has been achieved. The perception held by a majority of whites is that skin color is no longer the basis for discriminatory treatment, nor does race play a role in shaping socioeconomic mobility. White Americans can now point to President Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, as proof that the goals of the civil rights movement of the 1960s have been achieved (Ludwig 2004). As many whites now see it, the United States has shifted from a country where race was the means by which all socioeconomic resources were allocated to a meritocractic country. This perspective, which I define as color-blind egalitarianism, is the tendency to claim that racial equality is now the norm, while simultaneously ignoring or discounting the real and ongoing ways in which institutional racism continues to disadvantage racial minorities. Color-blind egalitarianism reflects the fact that most whites, as expressed in national polling data, now view race as a benign social marker that has little or no bearing on an individual’s or group’s educational, economic or occupational mobility. This ‘leveled playing field’ perspective of society held by most whites is now the commonsense understanding of race relations, even though an extensive body of research documents how and in what ways institutional racism and racial discrimination continue to shape the life chances of racial minorities. In this chapter, I examine how color-blind racial egalitarianism came to dominate the narrative of race in the United States and the implications which this perspective holds for both race relations and the challenges which scholars face when they attempt to examine race-based social inequalities.

Type: Chapter
Information: Theories of Race and Ethnicity
Contemporary Debates and Perspectives
, pp. 40 - 56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139015431.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

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