Chapter 1: Race in the Twenty-First Century

Racial progress

Progress towards achieving racial equality.

Individualistic Fallacy

A misconceived notion of racism that assumes one or one’s actions can considered racist in certain situations yet not in others, based on intention (racists vs non-racists).

Legalistic Fallacy

The assumption that abolishing racist laws automatically leads to the abolition of racism in everyday life.

• Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

Tokenistic Fallacy

The assumption that the presence of people of color (i.e. Barack Obama) in influential positions is evidence of the complete eradication of racial obstacles.

Ahistorical Fallacy

The mistaken belief that racist legacies such as slavery and colonialism are inconsequential in shaping present-day society.

Fixed Fallacy

The assumption that racism is fixed and unchangeable across time and space.

Racial Domination

The arrangement of racial life in such a way that its ordinary, everyday workings serve to benefit certain racial groups at the expense of others.

Institutional racism

The systemic oppression of people of color embedded in and operating across legal systems, political bodies, cultural life, and other social collectives.

• prevalence of law enforcement practices that target people of color

Organizational racism

A type of institutional racism carried out in corporations, workplaces, and other organizations and manifested in terms of job placement, hiring discrimination, promotions, and general esteem.

• tendency of schools and universities to support curricula that highlight the accomplishments of European Americans, ignoring the accomplishments of non-Europeans Americans

Interpersonal racism

Racial domination that manifests overtly or covertly in everyday interactions and practices

Symbolic violence

The process by which people of color unknowingly accept and support the terms of their own domination.

• colorism

Intersectionality

A framework for understanding the overlapping systems of advantages and disadvantages between forms of discrimination such as those based on gender, class, sexuality, religion, nationhood, and ability.

Biological Determinism

The idea that social and economic differences between races are the result of inherited genetics.

Race

A symbolic category that preserves systems of domination and oppresion.

Whiteness

The constructed dominant racial category that normalizes racial domination and reproduces advantages for White people while withholding such advantages from nonwhite people. 

White privilege

The collection of unearned cultural, political, economic, and social advantages and privileges possessed by people who are, or appear to be, of Anglo-European descent.

Symbolic category

A category based on ideas, meaning - making, and language, as opposed to a category based on nature or biology; symbolic categories mark differences between grouped people or things and, in doing so, bring those differences into existence.

Ethnicity

A symbolic category that refers to the shared lifestyle informed by cultural, historical, religious, and/or national affiliations.