For the past semester, we have been learning about how race and ethnicity vary from person to person and how racial dynamics affect our society. We’ve questioned the validity of race and debated whether race will ever be erased as a factor in everyday lives. Last week former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice expressed her views on race saying that America “will never be a race blind society”. She discusses how although we’ve made significant progress since the days of segregation, it isn’t likely that America will every eliminate race as a constraint from social fluidity. What surprised me the most about the article was the comments. Many people were berating Rice for pushing the issue of race and for supposedly seeing racism as just a black thing. I wasn’t sure if people were just commenting because they already didn’t like her and just wanted another reason to think she was stupid or if people were really that ignorant to thinking that race isn’t a big issue and that the only reason it’s a problem is because people bring it up. I myself agreed with Rice’s statements: although we have many significant improvement from having blacks and whites segregated, racism is still a big issue that isn’t just black and white. A lot of people argued that Rice saw the problem as only affecting blacks but I just think that it’s because that’s what she can relate to living in the south. People were also quick to attack certain sides (liberals or conservatives) for the existing problem of race and also blaming it on different institutions (some argued that it is more of the government’s fault and social programs while others blamed schools and others blamed the people themselves). I had my own opinions about whether or not racism will ever be eradicated but I wondered if people arguing about race would actually help fix the problem. We’ve studied different articles written by a number of different people in the field of sociology and have debate extensively on the different aspects of race and race relations but does that actually help the problem? If conservatives are blaming liberals and liberals blaming conservatives will that actually help fix the problem or will it create just more tension between groups? People say that acknowledging the problem is half the battle but if people are just going to argue against and refute other people’s ideas is that actually helping the people being affected by modern-day racism?


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