The Potential of Promoting Racial Healing In this paper, I need to use research and anecdote that shows the potential of promoting racial healing through challenging white ‘normativity’ and white superiority.
The goal is to provide research and a term paper that cites historical context of anti-blackness, identifying how and why whiteness is the standard, how whiteness is defined in our society through an attempt at ethnic cleansing, and how respectability politics is the language of oppression so that people subscribe to whiteness.
Some themes I’d like to include are: linguistic difference, whether it be slang or difference in language based on region, attire (what is considered professional and why), socio-economic status and its privileges, and educational level (who gets admitted into certain schools, jobs, interviews etc) based on ability to conform to whiteness as the standard of professionalism. I would go further into how we can dismantle these systems so that we can grow as a society, using examples like diversifying spaces in the workplace, having more representation in our elected representatives, educating ourselves with literature and research, and challenging the white normative. How do we shift the culture and to encourage difference and lean towards acceptance instead of tolerance? How do we transition to equity instead of equality?
I have started with this bit: “In today’s political climate, we often base our respect of and towards each other on the first appearance, with markers of worth being attire, linguistic speech patterns, educational achievements, and socioeconomic status. When any of these four categories are solely prioritized over the lived and shared experiences, adversities, and historical context of how many systems disparately impact certain individuals, society is created where no one progresses and divisiveness festers as the inevitable. In relation to the prime years of civil rights era in the 1960s and dating further back to the Civil War, this nation has always been divided and has been built upon the oppression of other groups.”
