A color blind society is unrealistic and so it is in our best interest to understand why people act the way they do around various races. In fact, that is the goal of anthropology in general.

Why do white families, on average, have over 8 times the wealth of black families? White families have so many more opportunities than African American families do, which is significant when it comes to wealth because whites are able to get more high-paying jobs.

Why are infant mortality rates so much higher? Infant mortality rates are higher in African American families because of their low socioeconomic status. They often do not go through all of the necessary events during a pregnancy, which causes problems once the baby is born. Why? Because they cannot afford it.

Why are schools, cities, and cafeterias like Derby Dining Hall and the Union still segregated – 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education? The “black hole”? Because no matter how hard we try to erase racism from society, there is always going to be a small percentage who disagree. It is unrealistic to think that we can conform the entire human race.

Walk with me in Kansas City – from the Plaza to Troost. The initial thought is Plaza is primarily Caucasian and Troost is primarily African American. Why? Because 'bad things' happen on Troost. That's what everyone hears about in the news. But the Plaza...Oh no, its a fun place to go out both for the family entertainment aspect as well as a romantic date.

How many suspect that there are people with racist attitudes somewhere in this room today? Of course there are racist attitudes in this room. It would be unrealistic to say otherwise...we're in a 400 person lecture hall, so I bet there are some who have racist viewpoints.
That’s all it takes. Today I’ll show you how, using some of the terms we have already learned.

Name the paradox – Biological Myth – Social Reality. Racism does not exist biologically because race in biological terms refers to a subspecies. This doesn't make sense because there is no set number of differences for race. Lets take blood type for example. There are four major types A,B, AB, and O. But its not like we segregate ourselves via blood type. So why do we do it via skin color? It just seems so petty.

What do I mean by Biological Myth? There is human variation, but not races. see above!!
Race as Biological Myth

Skin color origins:
natural selection. Genes get passed on or they don’t.
Even 2% difference can make complete change in less than 3000 years.

Clines:
incline/decline. Traits vary. But they don’t bunch together into nice bundles of races.

Caucasian:
Blumenbach’s five races – Other race scientists created 300 races. All arbitrary.
But what about real differences we see between “Blacks” and “Whites” for example? What about sports – basketball?

Sports & Race
83 players from 37 countries and territories. This past season, Dirk Nowitzki (Germany) was the league’s MVP and Andrea Bargnani (Italy) was its top overall selection in the Draft. Over ½ of the starters in the NBA finals were foreign born.


Tongue-rolling ... Does that mean they belong to different races? If tongue-rollers could recognize non tongue-rollers, would they make fun of them and refuse to let them into their neighborhoods or schools? (see Harris 108)

Blue-Eyes/Brown-Eyes VIDEO
Jane Elliot, Iowa school teacher – day after Martin Luther King Jr. is killed. 1968

So the answer, in short, is that race IS a social reality, but not a biological reality. AND A VERY POWERFUL SOCIAL REALITY FOR SURE. Here’s a look at it’s power in US History and Kansas City in particular.

Race as Social Reality

In Kansas City, racism played key roles in ensuring that blacks would one day occupy the ghettos, completely segregated from Whites. This would further ensure that they would be poorer, with lesser educations and less opportunities.


Racial Restrictive Covenants between owners and neighborhood associations.
Nichols Deeds

“The Germans, for example, are a clean and thrifty people. ... Unfortunately, this cannot be said of all the other nations which have sent their immigrants to our country ... Like termites, they undermine the structure of any neighborhood in which they creep. (1939, 1946)

Redlining

96% of Johnson County subdivisions had racial covenants prior to 1948 when Supreme Court struck them down as unconstitutional – yet continued to 1962 (by community builders like JC Nichols Company and Homeowners Associations)

Nichols REQUIRED racially discriminating homeowners associations
But covenants outlawed in 1948 – so what was going on?
The ad. White Flight.

The wealthier white families are going to the suburbs. Negroes are in the South. In the suburbs, sales increased by 53%, whereas in the South, they decreased by 5%.

"Blockbusting" is a term referring to whites turning their property over to blacks, via the real-estate agency.

Downward Spiral
When plaintiffs' attorney Arthur Benson took mature men, presidents of corporations, into those schools in the 1980s, they came out with tears in their eyes. Years later Judge Clark, an unpretentious man who wore cowboy boots on the bench, would remark that in all his years as a judge he had never seen a prison in as bad shape as the Kansas City schools.
Structural Racism: the cumulative effect of policies, systems and processes that may not have been designed with racism in mind, but which have the effect of disadvantaging certain racial groups