Interminority Racism - Post-1964: New Racism

Post-1964: New Racism

Racism did not end with the civil rights movement. It merely took on a more covert character. The current multiculturalist attitude is to keep every culture within its square. This is called pluralism.

Current US policy advocates a multiculturalist discourse to acknowledge multiracial difference. Multiculturalist theorists like Claire Jean Kim criticizes that this contemporary policy because it still refuses to acknowledge the interminority inequalities and antagonisms generated by this new diversity. Another expert on the subject is Angela Davis:

"Multiculturalism can become a polite and euphemistic way of affirming and persisting unequal power relationships by representing them as equal differences."

This kind of color-blind racism ignores how racial differences have occurred through dominance. It causes minorities to enter into conflict with each other since the U.S. policy is to let things be. African Americans believe they are at the bottom of the American racial hierarchy and therefore deserving of special consideration. Asian and Latino Americans think blacks dominate civil rights circles and local electoral politics. Steven Holmes reposts the finding of a national poll commissioned by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. The results suggest strongly that blacks, Asians, and Hispanics generally hold even more negative views of one another than do whites. Forty-six percent of Hispanics and 42 percent of blacks saw Asians as "unscrupulous, crafty and devious in business." Sixty-eight percent of Asians and 49 percent of blacks agreed that Hispanics "tend to have bigger families than they are able to support." Thirty-one percent of Asians and 28 percent of Hispanics believed that blacks "want to live on welfare."