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7 Harmful Practices Mainstream Media Exhibit When Talking About Race

Posted byBy Leo | Published on: | Updated on February 12, 2014 CommentsComments (8)

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Diverting From Race
What It Means: The practice of asserting that other social identities besides race, such as class, gender or sexual orientation, are the real determining factors behind a given social inequity.

This ranks systems of power and dismisses racism as a primary, or even legitimate, determinant of social inequity. This logic inhibits an understanding of intersectionality, promoting an either/or instead of a both/and framework, which is more sociologically and historically accurate than a single identity or non-racial analysis.

The fact that the American public is comfortable acknowledging economic inequities, yet opposed to “skin color counting in who gets ahead” highlights a society-wide symptom of denial of systemic racism. The contradictory nature of this denial, for instance, is visible in the disparity between the public’s treatment of affirmative action and a complete lack of national discourse around legacy admissions, a process that disproportionately benefits individuals from white, upper-class backgrounds.

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