July 2020 Newsletter (1)

WHITE PRIVILEGE DOES NOT MEAN YOUR LIFE HAS NOT BEEN HARD. IT MEANS THAT YOUR SKIN COLOR IS NOT ONE OF THE THINGS MAKING IT HARDER. “With [colorblindness], we are told that all people are the same under the skin and that we all have the same equal chances of making it. Therefore, the ‘logic’ continues, if a minority person fails to achieve, then the blame lies solely with the individual” (Rodriguez 8). “The rhetoric of colorblindness enables Whites to erase from consciousness not only the history of racism and how that history plays itself out economically, politically and socially, and culturally in the present; such an insidious discourse also dissuades both the individual and institutions from engaging in anti-racist strategies for dismantling white privilege and for reworking the terrain of whiteness” (Rodriguez 8). “Colorblindness justifies withdrawal from social action by assuming that racism will cease to exist when people stop noticing racial and cultural differences” Dernman-Sparks and Phillips 52). “Colorblindness obscures the reality of institutional racism by attributing the source of the problem to seeing differences rather than to a system that denies certain racial groups equitable economic and political gain” (Dernman-Sparks and Phillips 52). During UNG Leads this fall, there will be presentations that examine different aspects of cross-cultural communication. Please consider participating in the programs.