Racism is a significant social issue the US that has continued to deter an equal access to opportunities among different racial groups for centuries. Specifically, racism has contributed to the idea of White privilege, which is a system, which accrues to greater resources, wealth, better access, and higher quality access to capital, services, and justice among the Whites compared to other groups. As one would expect, the idea of White privilege has led to injustice and impoverishment to most of the people who belong to the minority groups. It should be noted that White privilege goes beyond a collection of attitudes and personal opinions. Instead, the issue is an overarching and comprehensive system of cultural norms, institutions, practices, and policies, which undergird the entire US society.
In line with the idea of White privilege, this essay elaborates the existence of institutional racism against African Americans—they belong to the minority groups from the lens of Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian . While the book addresses discrimination against Native Americans, the ideas that it presents apply to the rest of the minority groups, and they are useful in constructing the notion of White privilege. The essay focuses on three issues, which are disproportionate representation of the interests of African Americans in healthcare, education, and the criminal justice system.
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Institutional Racism against African Americans
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian begins with the depiction of the American healthcare system as one that does not care for the interests of minority groups. For example, the author indicates that doctors did not want to do much to improve the health of Junior since they had predicted that he could succumb to a brain complication. Presently, minority groups, especially African Americans, continue to be disproportionately maltreated by healthcare workers (Nelson, 2002). For example, the cited study suggests the existence of discriminative policies in the access to care, and that socioeconomic factors influence the reported disparities. In this line of thought, it should be understood that African Americans from low income households and neighborhoods have lower access to health care than do those from better backgrounds (Andrulis, 1998). Some risk factors, most of which have a relation with racial attributes of individuals, such as being Black or White, are considered risk factors for the contraction of some infections. According to Sheets et al. (2011), African Americans are disproportionately affected by sexual transmitted infections than do their White counterparts because of a higher prevalence of risky behavior among them compared to the Whites. While most health care workers may be aware of the trend, most healthcare policies do not appear to focus on the populations that are at the risk of contracting infections (Nelson, 2002). Consequently, it is plausible arguing that African Americans are treated discriminatively relative to the Whites in healthcare.
Apart from the analysis in the preceding paragraph, the illustration from the Alexie’s text coincides with a historical event that depicted racial discrimination against African Americans in healthcare research. Precisely, the Tuskegee syphilis study that was conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the American Public Health Service suggested blatant discrimination against African Americans in Alabama in healthcare. As did the doctors who were caring for Junior in Alexie’s book, the patients in the study were never informed of the fact that they were living with syphilis and the fact that the disease could be a serious complication (Gamble, 1997). It is noted that the doctors who conducted the study were disinterested in treating their subjects as they were with the collection of information that market the transition of one stage of syphilis to the next. Consequently, it means that the doctors left the patients to die from advanced syphilis, as those in charge of Junior did.
Alexie further advances the idea that African Americans are discriminated against by the system of education. The author indicates the absence of mechanisms that hinder the harassment of students from minority backgrounds by the majority group, which strengths the argument of the existence of White privilege in the American society. Harassment in American schools is not a new issue, since it has historical roots. According to Fitzpatrick, Dulin, & Piko (2007), it has taken consistency in the efforts of African Americans to improve their access to education starting from the era of the Civil Rights movement. As much as the efforts succeeded in eliminating blatant racism in education, institutionalized racism remains the primary factor hindering the access to educational opportunities by African Americans. Literature reports confusing statistics on the discrimination of African Americans by the education system, different authors are consistent in suggesting disproportionate discrimination of Blacks. For example, Seaton and Douglass (2014), note that ninety-seven percent of adolescents report experiencing at least one act of discrimination, including harassment and bullying during their first two weeks of schooling. The incidences of bullying, such as the one that Junior experienced, cause some students from minority racial backgrounds to give up their efforts to learn, which strengths the argument of White privilege.
Alexie’s book also depicts the existence of discriminative policies in criminal justice, which would be useful in furthering the argument around White privilege. An illustration from the reading in line with this argument concerns the careless killing of minority characters, such as Junior’s grandmother who was run over by a drunk motorist. There are further illustrations of mysterious deaths in the text, which the author does not elaborate the manner in which the police and other concerned authorities handled. The illustration from the reading is critical in understanding the racial implications for criminal justice, especially at the investigating and prosecuting stages. It is widely acknowledged that the US Criminal Justice System discriminates against minority groups (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2012). For the most part of the 1900s, crime and the penal system have offered some of the most important symbols of racism and the American racial divide. For instance, according to, chain-gang, lynching style penal practices, and judicial bigotry and were prevalent in the early 20th century, especially in the criminal justice systems of the south (Rosich, 2007). Racial minority groups were tried in all-White courtrooms and before all-White juries throughout the US, as was the case, for instance, of the Scottsboro rape of 1931 to 1932, the latter cited authors indicate. Because of the nature of the criminal justice system of the time, Blacks, who were only about 11% of the population, were disproportionately presented in the criminal justice system—they constituted 31% of the prison population by 1910 (Rosich, 2007). The cited author notes further that Blacks constituted 405 out of 455 executions because of rape from 1930 to 1972, and that sentencing standards were discriminatory since harsh judgments were delivered against African Americans who victimized Whites.
Even in the post-Civil Rights movement, discriminatory policies continue to define the criminal justice system of the nation. The labeling theory of crime has been adopted over the years to explain why the police consider that some groups of people are prone to crime compared to others. According to the theory,—although it does not mention African Americans directly—Blacks are more likely to commit crime than other racial groups, and Whites are more likely to be victims of crime (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2012). The reason why African Americans are over-presented in the criminal justice system at all stages, for example, could be because of the perception that they are more prone to breaking the law than the rest of the racial groups. Presently, the stop and check laws support the idea of discrimination since there has been a public outcry of police harassment and targeting of Black juveniles. The police, as it is perceived, act swiftly to investigate and prosecute Blacks when they offend Whites, but they are sluggish on reversed cases, as it was the case with the deaths illustrated in Alexie’s book. Consequently, almost each institutionalized system in the US has contributed to White privilege.
Conclusion
Racism in the US remains a significant social problem that needs to be addressed. While there is no blatant racism expressed widely, subtle racism, such as institutionalized racism, is the primary issue presently. Minority groups in the country do not have the same privilege in accessing opportunities for self advancement and resources as do the majority. This essay has illustrated using The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian that African Americans are almost neglected by health care, educational, and criminal justice policies. Policymakers are challenged to ensure that they advance mechanisms that would attain equality and reduce the effects of White privilege.
References
Andrulis, D. P. (1998). Access to care is the centerpiece in the elimination of socioeconomic disparities in health. Annals of Internal Medicine, 129 (5), 412-416.
Fitzpatrick, K. M., Dulin, A. J., & Piko, B. F. (2007). Not just pushing and shoving: School bullying among African American adolescents. Journal of School Health, 77(1), 16-22.
Gamble, V. N. (1997). Under the shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and health care. American Journal of Public Health, 87 (11), 1773-1778.
Nelson, A. (2002). Unequal treatment: confronting racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Journal of the National Medical Association, 94 (8), 666.
Rosich, K. J. (2007). Race, ethnicity, and the criminal justice system . ASA.
Seaton, E. K., & Douglass, S. (2014). School diversity and racial discrimination among African-American adolescents. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20 (2), 156.
Sheets, L., Johnson, J., Todd, T., Perkins, T., Gu, C., & Rau, M. (2011). Unsupported labeling of race as a risk factor for certain diseases in a widely used medical textbook. Academic Medicine, 86 (10), 1300-1303.
Walker, S., Spohn, C., & DeLone, M. (2012). The color of justice: Race, ethnicity, and crime in America . Cengage Learning.
