Ever since the United States’ conception, racism has been a very sensitive topic due to people feeling threatened by other “lesser” ethnicities. As antiquated as the concept may be, it still tends to find its way into the conscious and even subconscious of the American people. In the LA Time’s Scholar Won’t Face Charges, the author writes of Henry Louis Gates Jr. who was racially profiled for presumably breaking into a home. This home happened to be Gate’s but the police arrested him anyways. The author writes, “The city of Cambridge called the arrest ‘regrettable and unfortunate.’” (LA Times). Gates was arrested because he was a black man breaking into a home and officers presumed the worst, a subconscious decision. Although racism does indeed …show more content…
An example of people being called racist for misunderstandings and be seen in the situation of France banning the use of burkas and niqabs by Muslim women. LA Times’ Timothy Garton Ash discusses this very issue in his article Behind the Ban where he goes over the ban that took effect on April 11, 2011 in France. Some arguments in favor of the ban include the fact that these veils can be, “a threat to public safety” (Ash) and “…’a mobile prison’…” (Ash) for the women wearing them. Both arguments have their validity but because this is a ban on a minority, in this case Islam (ifop.com), by a predominantly Catholic country (ifop.com), this ban is seen as a racist one. In the case of banning burkas for the sake of safety, a situation some would call racial profiling, a safety precaution is misconstrued as a racial and Islamophobic act. While this issue resides in France and is not necessarily a racist issue, rather a presumed one, the United States does in fact face more race centric …show more content…
Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack illustrates this trending tendency for whites to self-guilt themselves for the sake of validate themselves as “not racists.” McIntosh, a white woman, lists off what she believes to be privileges in her favor but against any colored person simply because they are colored. However, these privileges she lists off can be worked around to work for any other ethnicity. One such privilege listed reads, “I can go into a music shop and count on finding music of my race represented…” (McIntosh 98). This “privilege” that she is supposedly granted for being white is flawed because it can work for any race. A music store does not simply carry one genre of music that represents only one race but rather all types of music from all kinds of backgrounds and origins. Chances are, the majority of races can be represented in some way in a music store through the origins of its music. This trend of self-guilt does nothing for the advancement of anti-racism, rather it creates new racism only this time against