Color Blind Ideology Summary

This article focuses on the color-blind ideology that allows white people to participate in and appropriate hip-hop culture. Rodriquez notes that they do so by using the guise of inclusivity of all races to justify their participation in hip hop and to adapt characteristics of the culture without respecting Black identity. He uses his own interviews of several white audience members of hip hop concerts who identified as participants of hip hop culture. Rodriquez identifies two groups resulting from social collectivity to reinforce his argument: consciously collective white groups, who actively reinforce racial segregation and passively collective white groups, who unknowingly unite and reinforce systematic racism through their adherence to color-blind ideology. The participants of his research are part of the latter, who unconsciously reinforce systematic racism through treating cultural objects, namely aspects of hip hop culture, as shareable products and experiences. Rodriquez’s interviews demonstrate that color-blind ideology enables white people to

His studies reveal how color-blind ideology is used by white people to justify their ability to steal characteristics from other cultures, rather than promote the inclusivity that color-blind ideology seems to imply. This justification also allows them to treat cultural objects as objective items that can be taken by anyone, rather than acknowledging the racial background that cultural objects may come from. Furthermore, it reveals the obliviousness of white people who participate in hip hop culture to wider social issues, as they choose to ignore their own involvement in reinforcing systematic racism. As a result of this ignorance, white people become involved in cultural theft without conscious