Swaby 1

Felisha Swaby
Professor Julianna Anselmini
English 101
8 December 2015
Is Your Generation Post Racial?
A good portion of Americans believe that people are currently living in a post racial
society. This may be true assuming that this group of Americans do not understand the meaning
of post racial. Taken directly from the Oxford Dictionary, post racial means,Denoting or relating
to a period or society in which racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exist. Take a
second and simplify this even further, post racial is seeing no separation of skin color. Now, the
generation that is being referred to would be the millennium children and adults. This generation
started after the ending of the civil rights movements and segregation of blacks and whites. This
means that many people believe that everything that happened in the past is completely irrelevant
and that people have turned a new leaf only a short few years later, not true at all. The truth is
post racial generations will never exist because people still factor race into employment,
schooling, and everyday life.
What is really happening is that people are reaching for a nonexistent dream or idealistic
world where race does not matter. Though recent events have negated this theory and put us back
a few years in our progression toward this goal. One of the most prominent reasons that we
probably will never be a post racial society is because too many people refuse to acknowledge
that racism is an issue, previously and currently.
Racism at college campuses has been something that is prevalent in the United States. In
Missouri a group of college students were being antagonized by their peers which led to a

Swaby 2
walkout by faculty and segregation of students and school officials. According to the Department
of Education, there has been a drastic yet steady increase in the number of complaints made by
students about racial discrimination on college campuses (Jackson, 2015). The increase could be
contributed to the lack of noticeable diversity in Colleges, sure affirmative action is supposed to
correct that but there is still a noticeable difference. For example, if there is a college that had a
guideline stating that the minimum of Asian students had to be 10% then they could easily abide
by the minimum but there would still be an excessive amount of another race group. Affirmative
action does not help anyone and the low percentages of minorities at most colleges can easily
discourage minority students from applying.
A group of college students were asked during a poll if they had witnessed or experiences
any racial prejudice at their school. The results were that 82% of students had experienced or
witnessed this. Since 2008, there has been an increase in complaints, that averaged out to 134
complaints a year, filed at colleges from faculty and students that are racial harassment cases
(Jackson, 2015). If students had a more diverse environment they could understand other
people's cultures better which could lead to a decrease in these complaints.
Now, these cases are not just reported at colleges, there are a great amount of similar
cases reported in the workplace each year. The EEOC(Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission) reported that in 1997 there were 29,199 charges of racial harassment in the
workplace. This number showed a steady increase over the years up until most recently, in 2014
there were 31,073 cases ("Charge Statistics FY 1997 Through FY 2014.", n.d.).
As the number of cases increase the number of causes decreases. More times than none,
people are being harassed at work because of their race with no justifiable reason. In fact, 66% of
the cases reported had no reasonable cause as to why there were committed and 3% of cases in

Swaby 3
2014 as opposed to the 1.9% in 1997 showed to have no real solutions to them ("Charges
Alleging Race and Harassment FY 1997 - FY 2014.", n.d.).
Where we still see racism the most is in everyday life. Over just the past two years there
have been racial incidents that have headlined the news for months at a time. One of the most
well known cases if that of Michael Brown. A huge debate in Browns case was whether or not
the caucasian police officer who shot him would be set free. It was a generalized belief that
White Americans would defend the police officer and he would be free. This was proven by a
poll from CNN that states that the majority of people who agreed that Officer Wilson should be
convicted for murder were not white (Bradner, 2014). From my understanding it seems as though
white americans were choosing to ignore the facts that were presented to them. This incident
itself is a just reason as to why post racial generations are a myth.
Though this is not just a black and white matter, literally. There have been recent events
on other minorities that suggest the digression of society. A perfect example would be the war on
terror or presidential candidate, Donald Trumps group of dedicated extremists. Donald Trump
has be completely open to the public about his racial biased. He believes that all Muslims are
terrorist and hate America, which is an unsupported fact. The problem with Trump and his
followers is that they often take their information from sources that are immediately discredited.
Now, just using this unverified information, Trump has made the suggestion to ban all Muslims
from America permanently. Think about that for a second, how can one say that the generation is
post racial when people like Trump still exist?
The sad truth is that in our society today our moral and ethical compasses are
compromised. So much that there is a good portion of the population who would accept
someone like Donald Trump as a reasonable presidential candidate. Though the reality of all this

Swaby 4
is that racism does not just stem from racists, it is everywhere. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva in his
book said:
The new racism: Racism without racists. Today, racial segregation and division
often result from habits, policies, and institutions that are not explicitly
designed

to discriminate. Contrary to popular belief, discrimination or

segregation do not
prejudice or ill will. Its

require animus. They thrive even in the absence of

common to have racism without racists (Bonilla-

Silva, 2006).
The point being made here is that there are people worldwide who are not certain that
race continues to be an issue and factor in our society. Let me be the first to tell you, it is. We
definitely have not converted to a post-racial society, people have just gotten smarter at being
racist in discrete ways. They have been disguising their injustices as advances to deter
themselves from the label of a racist. A generation where there are incidents like the Michael
Brown killing and the banning of Muslims cannot dare to say that they are post-racial. I sincerely
doubt that during the course of my life we will be rightfully able to say that we are. Should that
day would come I will embrace it but until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy the charade we call a
post-racial generation.

Works Cited
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of
Racial Inequality in the United States, 3rd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
2010.

318. Print.

Swaby 5
Bradner, Eric. Poll finds racial divide over Wilson charges. CNNpolitics.com (2014). Web. 1
Dec. 2015.
Charges Alleging Race and Harassment FY 1997 - FY 2014. Race-Based Harassment. Web. 2
Dec. 2015.
Charge Statistics FY 1997 Through FY 2014. Charge Statistics. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
Swaby, Felisha L. Racism in Society. 19 Nov. 2015. Raw data. New Jersey, North Arlington.
Jackson, Molly. "More than 1,000 racism complaints at US colleges. What happened?" The
Christian Science Monitor (2015): 20 pars. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.
Post-racial. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 07 Dec. 2015. <Dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/post-racial>.