The Strange Enigma of Race in Contemporary America
Enigma of Race in Contemporary America
Racism persists despite almost no one wanting to be seen as racist.
Albert Memmi: "Racism persists, real and tenacious."
Racism Without "Racists"
Nowadays, most whites:
Claim they "don't see any color, just people".
Assert discrimination is no longer a central factor.
Aspire to a society where people are judged by character, not skin color (like MLK Jr.).
Insist minorities (especially blacks) are responsible for the "race problem".
Denounce blacks for "playing the race card" and demanding race-based programs.
Believe Americans of all hues could "all get along" if blacks stop dwelling on the past, work hard, and complain less.
Racial Considerations Persist
Racial considerations shade almost everything in America, despite whites' claims.
Blacks and dark-skinned minorities lag behind whites in social life:
More likely to be poor (three times).
Earn less (40 percent).
Have lower net worth (one-eighth).
Receive inferior education.
Black-owned housing units are valued less (35 percent).
Less access to housing market due to exclusionary practices.
Receive impolite treatment in stores and restaurants.
Pay more for goods like cars and houses.
Targets of racial profiling by police, leading to over-representation in arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration.
Driving While Black: Racial profiling on highways is prevalent.
Racial inequality persists despite claims of color blindness.
Whites have developed justifications for racial inequality that exculpate them.
New racial ideology: Color-blind racism.
Explains racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics.
Jim Crow racism: Explained blacks' social standing as biological and moral inferiority.
Color-blind racism: Attributes minorities' status to market dynamics, natural phenomena, and cultural limitations.
Latinos' high poverty rate: Attributed to a relaxed work ethic ("mañana, mañana, mañana").
Residential segregation: Seen as a result of natural tendencies among groups ("Does a cat and a dog mix?").
Mechanisms of Racial Inequality
Color-blind racism became dominant as mechanisms for keeping minorities "at the bottom of the well" changed.
Contemporary racial inequality: Reproduced through subtle, institutional, and apparently nonracial "new racism" practices.
Jim Crow era: Racial inequality enforced through overt means.
Today: Racial practices operate subtly.
Residential segregation: Maintained through covert behaviors like not showing all available units or steering minorities into certain neighborhoods.
Economic field: "Smiling face" discrimination and steering minorities into poorly remunerated jobs.
Political field: "Racial gerrymandering" and other practices disenfranchise people of color.
Maintenance of white privilege: Done in ways that defy facile racial readings.
Color-blind racism fits America's new racism.
Color-Blind Racism vs. Jim Crow Racism
Color-blind racism: "Racism lite".
Instead of name-calling: Otherizes softly ("these people are human, too").
Instead of proclaiming God's will: Suggests minorities don't work hard enough.
Instead of straight racial basis: Regards interracial marriage as "problematic" due to concerns over children, etc.
Serves as ideological armor for a covert and institutionalized system.
Aids in maintaining white privilege without fanfare.
Allows for statements that safeguard racial interests without sounding "racist".
Shields whites from being labelled as racists.
Whites can express resentment, criticize morality/values, and claim "reverse racism".
Explains the enigma of "racism without racists".
Whites' Racial Attitudes in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Surveys since the late 1950s: Fewer whites subscribe to Jim Crow views.
Majority supported segregation in the 1940s; less than a quarter in the 1970s.
Fewer whites hold stereotypical views of blacks.
Changes in whites' racial attitudes: Explained in four ways:
Racial optimists.
Racial pesoptimists.
Symbolic racism.
Sense of group position.
Racial Optimists
Believe changes symbolize a profound transition in the US.
Early representatives: Herbert Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley.
Sheatsley: Changes in white attitudes were "revolutionary”.
Believe white Americans will not follow racist leaders and are committed to an integrated society.
Recent proponents: Glenn Firebaugh and Kenneth Davis, Seymour Lipset, and Paul Sniderman.
Advocated color-blind politics to settle racial dilemmas.
Sniderman and Carmines: Call for a politics centered on the needs of those most in need, organized around moral principles regardless of race.
Problems with Optimistic Interpretation
Relying on questions framed in the Jim Crow era produces an artificial image of progress.
Analytical focus should be on new racial issues.
Caution needed when interpreting attitudinal data due to normative climate changes.
Mixed research designs (surveys with interviews, etc.) are more appropriate.
Racial Pesoptimists
Attempt to strike a "balanced" view.
Suggest whites' attitudes reflect both progress and resistance.
Example: Howard Schuman.
Argues whites' attitudes involve tolerance and intolerance.
Acceptance of racial liberalism principles but rejection of policies that would make those principles a reality.
Racial pesoptimists are essentially closet optimists.
Normative change in the US is real; issue is translating norms into personal preferences.
Symbolic Racism
Changes in whites' attitudes represent the emergence of symbolic racism.
Associated with David Sears and Donald Kinder.
Defined as a blend of anti-black affect and traditional American moral values (Protestant Ethic).
Symbolic racism has replaced biological racism.
Prejudice is expressed in the language of American individualism.
Claims blacks don't try hard enough and take what they haven't earned.
Critiques of Symbolic Racism
Slipperiness of "symbolic racism" concept.
Claiming blend of antiblack affect and individualism is new.
Not explaining why symbolic racism came about.
Indexes of symbolic racism are different from old-fashioned racism and predict opposition to affirmative action.
Kinder and Sanders explain the transition from old-fashioned to symbolic racism, influenced by changes in blacks' tactics and controversies over welfare, crime, etc.
Explanation lacks a materially based analysis and is instead rooted in socialization and psychological processes.
Symbolic Racism's Contribution
Brought attention to key elements of how whites explain racial inequality today.
Focus is on how whites explain inequality, not on testing for the unconscious.
Group Position
Whites' racial views represent a sense of group position.
Advocated by Lawrence Bobo and James Kluegel.
Similar to Jim Sidanius's "social dominance" and Mary Jackman's "group interests" arguments.
White prejudice is an ideology to defend white privilege.
Laissez-faire racism blames blacks for poorer economic standing, seeing it as function of perceived cultural inferiority.
Compatibility with Color-Blind Racism
Authors in symbolic and modern racism traditions and laissez-faire racism view all align with color-blind racism.
Rearticulate traditional liberalism for racially illiberal goals.
Rely on cultural rather than biological tropes.
Do not perceive discrimination to be a central factor in shaping blacks' life chances.
Theoretical Disagreement
Most authors snarled in the prejudice problematic and interpret racial views as individual psychological dispositions.
Bobo et al. come closer but still retain prejudice notion with interracial hostility.
My model is not anchored in affective dispositions.
Based on a materialist interpretation and sees the views of actors as corresponding to their systemic location, regardless of resentment or hostility toward minorities.
David Wellman: "Prejudiced people are not the only racists in America."
Key Terms: Race, Racial Structure, and Racial Ideology
Whites and people of color often disagree on racial matters due to different conceptions of terms like "racism”.
Whites: Racism is prejudice.
People of color: Racism is systemic or institutionalized.
Examination of color-blind racism is influenced by a "regime of truth”.
Notion of Race
General agreement among social scientists that race is socially constructed.
Racial difference notions are human creations rather than eternal categories.
Agreement ends here; three variations on constructionist perspective:
Because race is socially constructed, it is not a fundamental category of analysis and praxis.
Give lip service to constructionist view but discuss "racial" differences as if they were truly racial.
Acknowledge race is constructed but has a social reality that produces real effects.
Racial Structure
Socially constructed category produces real race effects.
When race emerged, it formed a social structure that awarded systemic privileges to Europeans (“white”) over non-Europeans (“nonwhite”).
Racialized social systems or white supremacy became global and affected societies where Europeans extended their reach.
A society's racial structure is the totality of social relations and practices that reinforce white privilege.
Analysts' task: Uncover mechanisms responsible for the reproduction of racial privilege.
Reasons for Reproduction
Racial structures remain in place for the same reasons as other structures; benefiting dominant race members.
Actors racialized as “white” receive material benefits and struggle to maintain their privileges, while subordinate races struggle to change the status quo or become resigned.
Racial structures and inequality exist because they benefit members of the dominant race.
Racial Ideology
Dominant race develops rationalizations to account for various races' status.
Racially based frameworks used by actors to explain and justify (dominant race) or challenge (subordinate race or races) the racial status quo.
Frameworks of the dominant race tend to become master frameworks.
Marx: "The ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force."
Ideological rule is always partial; subordinate groups develop oppositional views.
Those who rule a society have the power to at least color the views of the ruled.
Elements of Racial Ideology
Comprises common frames, style, and racial stories.
Frames rooted in the group-based conditions and experiences of the races.
Symbolic level: Representations developed by groups to explain how the world is or ought to be.
Ruling ideology expresses interests of the dominant race as "common sense".
Oppositional ideologies challenge that common sense by providing alternative frames based on the experiences of subordinated races.
Employment of Elements
Individual actors employ elements as "building blocks … for manufacturing versions on actions, self, and social structures" in communicative situations.
The looseness of the elements allows users to maneuver within various contexts and produce various accounts and presentations of self.
Accommodation of contradictions, exceptions, and new information enhances the legitimating role of racial ideology.
Jackman: "Indeed, the strength of an ideology lies in its loose-jointed, flexible application. An ideology is a political instrument, not an exercise in personal logic: consistency is rigidity, the only pragmatic effect of which is to box oneself in.'"
Caveats
Whites are fractured along class, gender, sexual orientation, etc., having multiple/contradictory interests.
Most whites, regardless of structural locations, benefit from the "racial contract” according to Mills and historically endorse ideas that justify the racial status quo.
Most members of the dominant race defend the racial status quo or spout color-blind racism.
Some exceptions exist, analogous to capitalists who don't defend capitalism or men who don't defend patriarchy.
How to Study Color-Blind Racism
Rely mostly on interview data to make my case.
Focus is on examining whites' racial ideology, which is produced and reproduced in communicative interaction.
Surveys are limited tools for examining how people explain, justify, rationalize, and articulate racial viewpoints.
Surveys restrict the free flow of ideas and unnecessarily constrain the range of possible answers for respondents.
Methodological Considerations
Post-civil rights era's normative climate made illegitimate the public expression of racially based feelings and viewpoints.
Surveys on racial attitudes became like multiple-choice exams in which respondents choose the "right" answers.
Strategy of using questions developed in the 1950s/1960s misses most of whites' contemporary nightmares.
The Central Frames of Color-Blind Racism
Replacement of Jim Crow's racial structure by a "new racism”.
Decline of beliefs about blacks' mental, moral, and intellectual inferiority.
New powerful ideology: Color-blind racism.
This new ideology defends the contemporary racial order.
It