Covert Racism - Power and Colormute Society

Power and Colormute Society

Another problem dealing with covert racism is the presence of inequality vs. inequity. Often an attempt at overall equality is made by trying to provide everyone with the same opportunities. Inequity occurs when the conditions and opportunities provided are not equal to those of the majority of Americans. This generally occurs in the education system in the U.S. This unfairness in the system is not overtly in place but stems from a perpetuated injustice and is often maintained through the invisibility of it.

Covert racism uses discursive repertoires to perpetuate racism and to suppress the "racialized" groups. The White majority and this is stronger in the older generations, are afraid of saying the wrong thing and being labeled as racist, so they confine themselves to the social circle they are most comfortable in — an all-white one. This translates in some part of the division of neighborhoods into school districts that avoid integration, they end up investing on the "whiteness" of their neighbourhoods. The wealthy also control some of these divisions, which results in the minorities being excluded due to the low levels of income in most minority neighborhoods. The residential and social segregation of whites from blacks in the United States creates a socialization process that limits whites' chances for developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities. The segregation experienced by whites from blacks fosters segregated lifestyles and leads them to develop positive views about themselves and negative views about blacks.

In 2004 in her book Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School, Mica Pollock called for a strategy within American schools—"a strategy of questioning the validity of race categories to describe human diversity even while keeping race categories strategically available for the analysis of local and national racial inequalities".