12 17 2012 3 In march 2001 the food and drug administration gave permission for clinical trials to be conducted for the drug BiDil BiDil was designed to be marketed specifically for blacks with heart disease and was called the first ethnic drug A Using both Racial Formations and The difference between us explain what it means to say race is a social construction and why developing a medicine specifically for a racial group is controversial Medicines specifically for a racial group is extremely controversial because race is not concrete but socially constructed and therefore is not biologically real Instead race is socially real based on the current Racial Formations of the era According to Omi definitions of race are not fixed but socially constructed and are therefore subject to racial formation In Racial Formations Omi claims that race is a social construction meaning that the definitions of things are not fixed but are developed by the social and historical processes of the era And are therefore subject to racial formation which is the Process by which social economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings highlighting the idea that labels and definitions of races are subject to change Historically this is true because racial meanings have varied over time and place In The difference Between Us an experiment between students of different ethnicities proves that race is not biological In the experiment students of both similar and varying races to the one of their one tested the similarities between DNA They had all assumed to find their DNA be the most similar to others of their respected racial group but found that their DNA varied just as much between different racial categories as it did with individuals of the same race This highlights the truth being that race is not biological but instead defined by the individuals in the community and is subject to change If the medicine were to work for blacks with heart disease it should work for all people with heart disease 4 You are talking to a white friend about class and mentioned that you learned white privilege is the flip side of racism Your friend replies There is no point in talking about white privilege because it doesn t exist and its jut a way for people of color to blame white people for their problems A Using both Gallagher Color Blind Privilege and the Tim Wise film Pathology of Privilege reply to your friend s statement Explain to your friend what white privilege is and how color blindness masks white privilege I would respond to my friend saying that White privilege does exist And it is because of color blindness that whites do not see the truth of the situation White privilege is a set of unearned advantages whites receive solely based on their race The reason because you fail to see the white privilege you have is due to the color blindness that has been prevalent in our society since the 1960 s Color blindness An ideology that explains contemporary racial outcomes as the product of non racial dynamics or in other words the belief that race plays no factor in a person s condition makes it so that both racism and white privilege still persists In Color Blind Privilege Gallagher explains that people want to be colorblind in order to feel better about themselves It highlights how whites with the color blind perspective explain their position as one that has been worked for and earned Although most take note of the unfair advantages that whites had over blacks in the past they claim that in this modern day both have the same amount of opportunities available Because whites believe that racism is dead more prejudice results because of white s own failure to acknowledge their privilege in society because it gives whites the sense that their achievements are due to their to their hard work and efforts and not their white ness After the 1960 s after slavery jim crow laws and legal segregation was abolished whites believed that that racism was abolished and that everybody started on a new clean slate Because of color blindness whites are able to blame a minorities inability to keep up to a lack of motivation or intelligence rather than to the system of white privilege that has historically been put in place However this clean slate idea is not valid because whites did not factor in the importance that history plays when determining an individual s own chance of attaining achievement The accumulated impact of generational racial privilege and disadvantage shapes life chances Cannot all start on a clean slate because of the generational privilege that has been given to whites while minorities have been suppressed Allowing a white born after 1960 s to still benefit from privilege having parents that attended college living in a nice neighborhood etc etc all predispose white to achievement Tim Wise states that color blindness persists and is what keeps individuals from recognizing the truth It allows us to not have conversations about privilege Therefore it is what is giving whites the false notion of entitlement because they are not educated enough on the matter 5 While watching a news program about a city that wants to implement a school busing program in order to make their public schools more diverse a commentator says they disagree with this program because people pick where they want to live so it s up to them to work hard to live in a good neighborhood with good schools A Using both The House We Live In and Orfield and Lee Why Segregation Matters reply to this person s statement Explain the connection between housing segregation and the school s segregation and why this segregation is not solely a result of individual choice 1 all are related 2 Housing segregation directly impacts educational segregation Because of the correlation between race and class inequality high minority schools are often high poverty schools 3 As long as youth have vastly unequal educational opportunities education will continue to contribute to inequality rather than cure it I would reply to the commentator saying that the kind of education a person receives has very little to do with how hard the family works and that often times individual choice on where to live is given to the privileged high class group all related I would reply to the commentator stating that both good schools and good neighborhoods are segregated not by individual choice but