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Faults of a
Colorblind Society A Study in Infant Mortality |
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There is a disparity in infant mortality between
African-Americans and Whites
In 2004, the infant
mortality rate (IMR) for blacks was almost 2.5 times the IMR for whites:
Black:
13.79 per 1,000
White:
5.66 per 1,000
So
why is this happening?
It
may come as no surprise, but this is not a new development.
In 1985, the black IMR
was about twice the white IMR:
Black:
18.2
White:
9.3
Policymakers understood
the problem, and proposed solutions.
Programming
centered on prenatal care and healthy habits.
A
matrix of factors related to high IMR was created to help apply the program.
Not
a single one was race-specific, however, per capita income made the list.
Amartya
Sen argued
against the use of per capita income as a variable to understand how well
people live.
What
happens when you use class to solve a race problem?
There is a set of
underlying assumptions here about the black community, including that they are
poor, prone to teen pregnancy and having children out of wedlock. The fact that
these measures were taken and the African-American IMR remains extremely high
comparatively to the white IMR suggests that these are poor indicators.
But
perhaps it did do something:
Chart from National Center for Health Statistics
Often, our
assumptions about African-Americans spill over into other minority groups. If
the problem really is based on class, we might expect that the Latino IMR would
be higher, but this chart shows it as comparable to whites between 1989-1991
and again in 2002-2004.
Clearly,
the disparity has not gone away. Why donÕt we work on that directly through
policy directed through race?
America has a ÒColorblind Ideal.Ó This
ideal shows up strongly in Reagan-era American Politics, through the late 1990s
when Washington State and California both voted to no longer use affirmative
action practices. However, the Òcolorblind idealÓ puts African-Americans at
risk in AmericaÕs politics, just as they had been following the Fourteenth
Amendment. Sharecropping exploited African-AmericansÕ new freedom, and
Colorblind methodologies exploit equality rhetoric, reinforcing systems of
inequality.
Through
the use of equality rhetoric and by providing services to class groups instead
of race groups, it constructs black problems as somehow self-inflicted.
This creates ÒSelf-Help
Ideology,Ó often characterized as African-Americans telling other
African-Americans to get on the ball and effectively follow the values and
norms of society, without taking into account political systems that may
disadvantage them such as poorly funded schools, lack of commercial services,
and others.
Two
examples of Self-Help Ideology