Chapter 7: White Supremacy, Racism, and Formations Vocabulary

Racial Formation

The process by which social, economic, and political forces shape racial categories and their meanings over time.

Racial Projects

Efforts to organize and distribute resources along racial lines, which can create structures of domination.

White Supremacy

A system that promotes the privilege and power of whiteness for white people through institutional entities.

Possessive Investment in Whiteness (PIW)

A concept explaining how white people maintain racial hierarchy and structural advantages, including generational wealth.

Redlining

The discriminatory labeling of communities of color as inferior, denying them home loans to maintain white wealth.

Colorblind Racism

Using colorblindness to mask historical oppression and normalize whiteness as the standard.

Institutional Oppression

Oppression embedded within societal organizations and institutions, seen through laws, policies, and protocols.

Interpersonal Oppression

Oppression that occurs directly between individuals.

Internalized Oppression

When a person internalizes negative messages and stereotypes associated with their identity.

Ideology

A set of shared beliefs within a specific group.

Hegemony

The dominance of one group's beliefs as the standard, establishing power and shaping laws and policies.

"Culture of Power" in Schools

School norms that socialize students to perpetuate White middle-class standards.

Cultivating Multiple Epistemologies

Recognizing and valuing students' histories and cultures in schools to counter misrecognition and dehumanization.

Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)

Interrelated institutions (like media and family) that socialize people to maintain the ruling class's power.

Structures of Dominance

Systems where dominant ideologies drive institutional, interpersonal, internalized, and societal oppression.

Racial Innocence

The societal perception that white children are more racially innocent than Black children.

The Doll Test

A 1950s study showing children associated negative traits with Black dolls and positive traits with white dolls.

Racialization

The process of assigning a racial category to a group that previously lacked such a designation.

Metanarrative

A dominant narrative used to determine who qualifies as an "insider" or "outsider" in a nation.

"Perpetual Foreigners"

A racist stereotype viewing Asian Americans as permanently foreign regardless of how long they have lived in the U.S.

Normalization of Whiteness

Holding whiteness with high esteem so it becomes the societal standard that everyone must strive toward.