What barriers do members of outgroups confront in attempting to be treated as equals and possessing the same ability to access valued resources as members of the ingroup? What prevents such groups from being treated with respect and dignity? Why do some groups confront efforts aimed at marginalizing and excluding them? How does one account for manifestations of intergroup hostility? These and related questions have been a central aspect of race and ethnic studies since the beginning. Of particular interest for sociologists and psychologists are questions concerning the nature and the causes of prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice refers to negative attitudes directed at individuals of groups on account of their membership in those groups, while discrimination refers to actions that have a negative impact on the life circumstances and life chances of individuals or groups (for a similar definition, see Brown 1995). These two distinct but obviously intertwined concepts will be examined in the following pages.
At the outset, we should note a few features of the chapter. First, from the discussion of the classics to contemporary theoretical developments, the focus is on the US. We are aware of the fact that during the second half of the past century, scholars elsewhere, certainly the UK, have also developed similar lines of inquiry. However, we would like to focus on the US because readers will be afforded the opportunity to see how a long tradition of thought has developed over time and in response to changing historical circumstances. Second, the focus of the chapter is on race, or to be even more specific, on black/white relations. In part, this is a reflection of the fact that prejudice and discrimination directed against white, European-origin ethnics in the US has declined considerably in recent decades. It has not disappeared, particularly in the case of anti-Semitic prejudice, but first and foremost in the minds of the theorists who highlight this chapter has been a concern for the situation confronting African Americans, both prior to and in the aftermath of the civil rights movement. Finally, religious groups are often the victims of prejudice and discrimination, and much of what follows in this chapter can be extrapolated to the case of religious minorities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Muslims in Europe today, who are the victims of Islamophobia.
Both sociology and psychology have contributed to our understanding of prejudice and discrimination, and over time there has been a considerable amount of collaboration between the two disciplines in coming to terms with this topic. In this section, we will explore three classic accounts, accounts that in varied ways have had an enduring impact on subsequent work in the field. We will examine the work of one influential psychologist—Gordon W. Allport—and two sociologists—Robert K. Merton and Herbert Blumer.
In 1954, Allport, a professor at Harvard, published what would prove to be a landmark study, The Nature of Prejudice. In this work, he set out to make sense of the types of prejudice that one could readily observe in America in the 1950s. He first tried to understand why people would develop preconceived judgments, or prejudgments, about others. From there, he examined the particular type of prejudgments that he labeled as prejudice and what could distinguish prejudgments, or misconceptions, from prejudices. He begins with the idea that people out of necessity generalize and categorize in attempting to make sense of their society, including generalizing and categorizing people on the basis of their group affiliations or identities.
Generalizations are the product of learning, though in making such assessments people are often equipped with limited actual knowledge of the groups in question. Often people's generalizations amount to misconceptions. Allport did not think that this necessarily meant that a person harbored prejudicial attitudes or beliefs about outgroup members. Key for him was whether or not a person was prepared, on the basis of new, disconfirming evidence, to reject earlier “erroneous judgments in light of new evidence” (Allport 1954: 9). A person who does revise previously held negative evaluations is not prejudiced, while a person who refuses to do so, no matter how much evidence can be brought to bear to discount the initial generalization, is prejudiced.
Why are some people prepared to revise their misconceptions while others resist such revision? Why are some people able to avoid translating prejudgments into prejudice while others aren't? Allport answered these questions by offering a psychological account. In the first place, acquiring prejudicial views is in part learned behavior, and in this regard he devotes considerable space to the role of socialization, both in childhood and later in life. Writing during the 1950s, when there was considerable concern about the loss of individual autonomy due to the impact of mass society in the Cold War, he also focused on the pressures for social conformity.
Allport, like others of his generation of psychologists, was influenced by psychoanalytic thought and sought to incorporate this perspective in an effort to describe what he called the “prejudiced personality.” In this regard, his work paralleled that of others writing around the same time, such as John Dollard (1937), who used frustrationaggression theory to account for the racism he studied first hand in the American South, and Theodor Adorno and colleagues, (1950), whose authoritarian personality study sought to explain the type of character structure that led to support for Nazism. At the other end of the spectrum of personality types, Allport described the tolerant personality. In making his case, it was clear that the prejudiced personality should not simply be seen as the product of learned behavior, for underlying the learned aspect of prejudice is a deeper and far more disturbing psychological dynamic—one that if not strictly pathological, borders on pathology.
Gordon Allport wanted to make clear to his readers what prejudice was, and what it wasn't. He provided two cases from research at the time to highlight the essential qualities of prejudice, as he defined it. The first case is that of an anthropologist who was living with Native Americans on a reservation. The anthropologist would not allow his children to live with him on the reservation. When his children visited the reservation, he would not allow his children to play with the Native American children. When people heard of the anthropologist's actions, they accused him of displaying racial prejudice. However, the anthropologist explained that there were a high number of cases of tuberculosis on the reservation and that he was fearful his children could get infected and die, as he was aware had happened to some children on the reservation. Allport's reason for using this example is that the anthropologist's actions were not based in any dislike or negative feelings toward the Native Americans, and thus this is not an example of prejudice.
In contrast, his second case demonstrates what he believes is prejudice. Allport describes a social scientific experiment carried out by a Canadian researcher. The experiment involved mailing letters to hotels and resorts asking if rooms were available for specific dates. Two different letters were sent to hotels. They were identical in every respect except that one letter was from “Mr. Greenberg” and the other was from “Mr. Lockwood.” Almost all of the hotels replied to Mr. Lockwood (95 percent) and almost as many offered accommodations on the dates requested (93 percent). However, only 52 percent of the hotels even replied to Mr. Greenberg and only 36 percent offered accommodations on the same dates. Allport argues that this is a clear case of prejudice, one in which the managers of the hotels and resorts were prejudiced against Mr. Greenberg because they assumed he was Jewish. According to Allport, the decision to reply or offer accommodations was “obviously not made on the merits of the individual, but on ‘Mr. Greenberg's’ supposed membership in a group. He suffered discourtesy and exclusion solely because of his name, which aroused a prejudgment of his desirability in the eyes of the hotel managers.”
(Source: Allport 1954: 4–5)
In 1949, around the same time that Allport was working on his theory of the psychological roots of prejudice, Columbia University's Robert K. Merton provided one of the first sociological treatments of the varied possible relationships between prejudice and discrimination. In “Discrimination and the American Creed” Merton's central argument was that attitudes (prejudice) and behaviors (discrimination), though often intertwined, can vary independently. Merton developed a typology to better understand the possible relationships between prejudice and discrimination. Within this typology, Merton considered those who are prejudiced and those who are not, as well as those who discriminate and those who do not. His typology can be understood as a 2 x 2 table, which is reflected in Table 2.1.
The article is framed in terms of what Merton refers to as the “American Creed,” which entails the belief that all people, irrespective of their racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, are entitled to full equality, to equal justice, and freedom. The creed operates at three levels: as an ideal, as an individual belief, and in individual conduct. Merton was quite aware of the fact that during this period, shortly before the beginning of the civil rights movement, a majority of white Americans did not actually believe that blacks should be afforded equal opportunities in the acquisition of jobs or in the neighborhoods they lived in. His interest was in exploring the various ways that people could in beliefs and actions respond to the high principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Table 2.1: Merton's typology
| Unprejudiced | Prejudiced | |
| Non-Discriminator | All-Weather Liberal | Fair Weather Illiberal |
| Discriminator | Fair Weather Liberal | All Weather Illiberal |
Merton considered four types. The first is what he refers to as the unprejudiced non-discriminator, or the All-Weather Liberal. This category describes individuals who embrace the ideals of the American creed, do not harbor prejudicial attitudes towards minority groups, and do not discriminate. Such individuals exhibit a consistency between their beliefs and their actions. Some within this group might be civil rights activists, translating their beliefs into actions designed to bring reality into consonance with the ideals of the creed. However, many may simply act out their beliefs in private, non-political ways.
At the other end of the spectrum is the prejudiced discriminator, or the All-Weather Illiberal. Merton (1949: 109) describes this person aptly as “the bigot pure and unashamed, the man of prejudice consistent in his departure from the American creed.” Such a person rejects the ideals of the American creed, limiting the promise of equality and justice only to members of the white race, and consistently behaves in ways that are consistent with such convictions. Members of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nations are explicit—and dangerous—examples of the All-Weather Illiberal. But one doesn't have to be a racist activist to fall into this category. Thus, the person who leaves a church that admits a black member or puts a for sale sign in the front yard of their home the moment a Jew moves into the neighborhood are examples of this type. Like the All-Weather Liberal, people fitting into this type exhibit consistency between beliefs and actions.
Beyond these two types are individuals for whom prejudice and discrimination do, in fact, vary independently of each other. The first of these is the unprejudiced discriminator, whom Merton defines as a Fair Weather Liberal. These individuals believe in the American creed, yet choose to discriminate for reasons of convenience, ease, or profit. While they are not prejudiced in nature, they are prepared to discriminate against others either for their own benefit or in order to conform to the expectations of significant others in their lives. Merton cites as an example the employer who is neither anti-black nor anti-Semitic, but refuses to hire blacks and Jews because of a concern that “it might hurt business” (Merton 1949: 106).
The prejudiced non-discriminator, on the other hand, does not believe in the American creed and holds prejudicial beliefs, yet does not practice discrimination. This type would characterize the employer who harbors prejudicial attitudes towards blacks and Jews, but hires them anyway. What would motivate a person to act in such a fashion? A major factor at play is fear of repercussions or consequences of discriminatory behavior. What might such an employer be afraid of? Since the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, such employers have often had reason to be afraid of the enforcement powers of the Equal Employment Opportunities Office of the Department of Justice and the threat of class-action lawsuits. This is the Fair-Weather Illiberal, a person that can be held to a position of non-discrimination through the enforcement of civil rights laws and social pressure. Similar to the Fair Weather Liberal, the behaviors of these individuals are driven by convenience, ease, and the path of least resistance. The lack of discrimination by the Fair Weather Illiberal is fragile, it goes against their own prejudicial beliefs, yet can be maintained through practice if it is clear that forces in the larger society stress that they are opposed to discriminatory conduct.
These last two types were important for Merton as he considered what the most effective social policies aimed at combating discrimination might be. He was writing just as the impact of the civil rights movement was about to be felt. Merton (1949: 111) asked where it would be possible to most effectively enact policies aimed at progressive social change, that is, “positive action for the reduction of ethnic discrimination.” The typology allowed Merton to realize that these intermediate groups were the places where the greatest potential for change through the implementation of social policies was possible. Rather than trying to change the All-Weather Illiberal, who holds strong prejudicial beliefs and discriminates in practice, Merton suggests ways that social policy could be used to shift the types in the middle to reduce racial and ethnic discrimination. The Fair-Weather Liberal would benefit by refusing to discriminate because such a person would no longer feel the guilt and shame that often accompanies acts of discrimination. The Fair-Weather Illiberal, meanwhile, presents a more complicated case. Here policies aimed at reducing discrimination, if sufficiently strict and efficient, could reasonably be assumed to reduce levels of discrimination. Whether it would change the hearts-and-minds of such illiberals is another question. It might, Merton realized (1949: 118), actually result, at least in the short term, in increasing levels of prejudice.
In what was an effort to offer a sharp contrast to Allport's social psychological work on prejudice, Herbert Blumer, who taught at both the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley, offered a counterargument that claimed that prejudice could be better understood if it was treated in terms of what he describes as a sense of group position. In making this claim, he was asserting that sociology could offer insights about the nature of prejudice that were not possible by remaining rooted in psychological accounts. Although his specific focus is on race, his argument is applicable to intergroup relations for all ethnic groups.
“Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position” was published in 1958 in the inaugural issue of The Pacific Sociological Review. This brief article, amounting to only five pages of text, outlines Blumer's approach to the study of race prejudice as a sense of group position, or group position theory. Blumer (1958: 3) lays out his case in the following passage:
In this paper I am proposing an approach to the study of race prejudice different from that which dominates contemporary scholarly thought on this topic. My thesis is that race prejudice exists basically in a sense of group position rather than in a set of feelings which members of one racial group have toward the members of another racial group. This different way of viewing race prejudice shifts study and analysis from a preoccupation with feelings lodged in individuals to a concern with the relationship of racial groups. It also shifts scholarly treatment away from individual lines of experience and focuses interest on the collective process by which a racial group comes to define and redefine another racial group. Such shifts, I believe, will yield a more realistic and penetrating understanding of race prejudice.
Blumer's approach was a direct response to work on prejudice at the time which focused on the individual. He insisted that we must look beyond the individual and explore the role of groups, institutions, and social structures if we are to succeed in understanding the nature of prejudice or, more broadly, race relations. As Blumer (1958: 3) stated in reaction to the individualistic approach characteristic of psychological theories, “Unfortunately, this customary way of viewing race prejudice overlooks and obscures the fact that race prejudice is fundamentally a matter of relationship between racial groups.”
An underlying assumption that informs Blumer's thesis is that wherever one finds societies characterized by racial divisions, you will also find a racial hierarchy that is the product of historical forces, the outcome of which leads to racial domination of one group and the subordination of the other. The term “racial domination” is widely used in contemporary critical race theories, and in this regard Blumer can be appropriately seen as a precursor to such approaches.
Blumer (1958: 4) proceeded to describe four basic and interrelated types of feelings that he argues are always present in the racial prejudices of the dominant group: (1) feelings of superiority; (2) feeling that the subordinate race is intrinsically different and alien; (3) feelings of proprietary claims to certain areas of privilege and advantage; and (4) fear and suspicion that the subordinate race harbors designs on the prerogatives of the dominant race.
Laid out in a simple and straightforward fashion, these four aspects of prejudice have offered subsequent scholars with a toolkit that has helped us to better understand how race relations operate in any society. As will be seen later in this chapter, the feeling of superiority is related to work in the race and ethnicity literature that focuses on the belief that blacks violate core American values (present in symbolic racism and laissez-faire racism) and are associated with negative stereotypes such as laziness and a lack of morals.
The feeling that the subordinate race is different and alien ties to work that has examined boundaries and otherness. In recent years a number of scholars have turned their attention to the topic of boundaries, including Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar (2002), Andreas Wimmer (2008), and Richard Alba (2010). It can also be seen in such studies as Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest by Anne McClintock (1995) and Orientalism Edward Said's (1979) now classic work.
A concern with the third feeling Blumer describes, having a proprietary claim to certain areas of privilege and advantage, is evident in recent work on whiteness and white privilege. This is a topic we'll discuss later in this chapter.
After describing these first three feelings, he points out that these three feelings either separately or in tandem cannot explain race prejudice. As Blumer (1958: 4) put it:
These three feelings are present frequently in societies showing no prejudice, as in certain forms of feudalism, in caste relations, in societies of chiefs and commoners, and under many settled relations of conquerors and conquered. Where claims are solidified into a structure which is accepted or respected by all, there seems to be no group prejudice. The remaining feeling essential to race prejudice is a fear or apprehension that the subordinate racial group is threatening, or will threaten, the position of the dominant group.
With the addition of this fourth type of feeling, Blumer has foreshadowed work on group threat and contact theory (Blalock 1967; Quillian 1995, 1996). It is here especially that one finds a focus on the potential for conflict and violence, for when subordinates are viewed as a threat to the established racial hierarchy, the superordinate group's typical emotions are intensely negative, as apprehension mixes with covert or overt hostility.
In describing the typical feelings that can be expected to be present in the dominant group, Blumer is careful to point out that this is not to say the feelings and beliefs of the dominant group are homogenous and uniform across the group, for there can be considerable individual variation. In stressing this fact, he attempts to establish the idea that independent of individual beliefs or attitudes, the dominant group can maintain its position and privilege, even when individual members do not subscribe to these beliefs.
In studying issues of prejudice and racism, a considerable amount of time is often spent attempting to identify if individuals are racist or not, or harbor negative attitudes about other racial groups. Blumer's thesis about the privileged position of the dominant racial group mirrors more recent arguments that suggest that racial domination can continue to sustain itself even without individual racists, in the traditional sense (see Bonilla-Silva 2001 for an example of this same idea).
While we believe that Blumer has in retrospect played a major role in informing and providing insights that inform contemporary theories of prejudice, we do not think it necessary to attempt to separate psychology and sociology the way he set out to do. In fact, he didn't actually succeed in divorcing his position from psychology insofar as feelings, though socially constructed, inevitably can be viewed as psychological phenomena. In short, we would contend that the most productive way forward builds on the insights derived both from psychology and from sociology, and moreover that the most promising way to proceed is to encourage an interdisciplinary approach.
In recent years, a major component of research on prejudice and discrimination has focused on racial attitudes and beliefs, as well as a concern with public opinion, especially about policies designed to combat prejudice and discrimination. Much of this work can be seen as representing either sociopsychological theories or political theories. In both instances, the imprint of earlier scholars, be it implicit or explicit, is evident. One additional branch of research can be classified as social structural theories (e.g., Sears, et al. 2000), which rather clearly can trace their origins to the work of Herbert Blumer. The following sections will examine these three theoretical approaches. It should be noted that whereas the classic statements were articulated before or during the early phase of the US civil rights movement, the theories we now turn to were formulated in the post-civil rights era, when the nation had entered into a new and uncertain race relations future. The final sections of this chapter discuss possibilities for the future of racial attitudes research, suggesting that a turn to whiteness and critical race theory may allow this research to build upon previous work and advance the field in new and productive directions.
At the core of sociopsychological models one finds the centrality of the concept known as symbolic racism, a concept that views racism today as different from “traditional racism” but still sees the role of individual racist attitudes as central in explaining racial attitudes and support (or lack thereof) for various public policies intended to combat prejudice and discrimination. Symbolic racism is based in approaches rooted in sociocultural learning and early-learned prejudice theories. The psychological underpinning of this concept is heavily influenced by the work of Allport.
While there are some elements of broader social and structural components contained in the theory, the role of individual beliefs at a psychological level is central. The seminal work in setting the parameters of what symbolic racism means is Donald Kinder and David Sears’ article “Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life” (1981). Kinder and Sears define symbolic racism as the combination of anti-black affect plus traditional American moral values. They describe these moral values as the Protestant ethic, which constitutes a misunderstanding of what Weber meant by that term. A better term would be the work ethic, which is in fact a term they also use.
Symbolic racism is rooted in deep-seated belief that blacks are hostile to basic American values, particularly those rooted in the Protestant or work ethic that stress individual self-reliance, hard work, self-restraint, and conformity to existing norms and laws (Kinder and Sears 1981: 416). The concept contains two key components. While a sense that blacks violate core American values is important, the concept of symbolic racism also requires a substantial level of antiblack affect. Kinder and Sears see these two components in combination as adding up to a persuasive explanation for contemporary racial attitudes. They used this theoretical framework to explain voting behavior in mayoral elections in Los Angeles in 1969 and 1973, which were elections where Tom Bradley, an African American politician, ran for office. Bradley's defeat in the 1969 Los Angeles mayoral election resulted in the widespread use of the term “the Bradley Effect” by political pundits and journalists. The idea of the Bradley Effect has been discussed frequently ever since, including during the 2008 Presidential election, which led to Barack Obama's electoral victory.
Back in 1969 many polls showed Bradley with a considerable lead as the election was approaching. However, his white opponent, Sam Yorty, won the election. Some analysts concluded that white voters told pollsters they would vote for Bradley before the election, but then voted instead for the white candidate when they entered the privacy of the voting booth. Why would they do so? One possibility was that anti-black attitudes remained common among a large segment of white voters, but they were hesitant to make those views public. Thus, their answer to pollsters was designed to indicate that they were not racist, while their voting behavior revealed that race did, indeed, play a large role in their decision. Four years later Bradley actually won the mayoral race. These two racially charged mayoral races served as a strategic research site for the initial development of the idea of symbolic racism.
Over the next three decades, the concept was revised on several occasions in response to challenges posed by critics. In 1996, Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders published Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals, which is at once a continuation of the earlier work produced within the symbolic racism framework and an abandonment of the term. Instead of symbolic racism, they suggested that a more useful term is “racial resentment.” Part of the reason for the introduction of the new term was a conscious decision to remove the word “racism” from the term since it had led to misinterpretations (Kinder and Sanders 1996: 292–293). So what is racial resentment and how is it different from the original concept?
Kinder and Sanders (1996: 36) began by listing what they believe are the three primary ingredients for understanding American public opinion on any issue: (1) the material interests at stake; (2) sympathy or resentment toward social groups in dispute; and (3) political principles. The material interests at stake are those systems and structures involved in political initiatives and votes on such racially sensitive topics as affirmative action, admissions in education, welfare, etc. What Kinder and Sanders found is that the role of material interests operates largely at a group-level, that of a perceived advantage or disadvantage to whites as a group, for example, rather than to one's own personal interests. They also see material interests in these cases being more about perceived threat than realistic threat or group conflict (Kinder and Sanders 1996: 88–91).
The other two ingredients in their recipe for understanding public opinion, sympathy or resentment toward social groups in dispute and political principles align with the original concept of symbolic racism very closely. Racial resentment is “a combination of racial anger and indignation, on the one hand, and a secularized version of the Protestant Ethic, on the other.” (Kinder and Sanders 1996: 294). As we can see here, the central role of traditional American values is the same for symbolic racism and racial resentment. The largest difference between the two theoretical frameworks is the emotional, or attitudinal, element of the frames. Symbolic racism includes “antiblack affect” whereas racial resentment includes “racial anger and indignation.” For symbolic racism, anti-black affect is the component of the term based in early-learning and prejudice, whereas for racial resentment, the anti-black component shifts from negative feelings against blacks stemming from early life phases to a more direct indignation, a feeling that “blacks do not try hard enough to overcome the difficulties they face and that they take what they have not earned” (Kinder and Sanders 1996: 106). In other words, whereas the cause in the older frame is rooted in the psychological imprint of the past, the new frame emphasizes the causal role of the contemporary context of race relations.
These two concepts have been widely used by race relations scholars. But these are not the only terms that have gained currency. There are several other social psychological frameworks that fall within the sociopsychological category, including aversive racism, modern racism, and subtle racism. Aversive racism was developed conceptually by social psychologists and is based in the idea that whites avoid (are averse to) any awareness or recognition of their own negative attitudes toward African Americans. In fact, whites may overly emphasize the ways in which they feel they are exhibiting positive racial behaviors to minimize any potential perceived negative racial prejudices (Gaertner and Dovidio 1986). Modern racism is similar to symbolic racism in many ways but is distinctive insofar as it also pays particular attention to affective and cognitive components of racism as well as individual dynamics and behaviors (McConahay 1986). Subtle racism was a concept developed by Thomas Pettigrew and Roel Meertens to explain the prejudice they saw in Europe— prejudice that they concluded was different from blatant, overt, or traditional prejudice. While subtle racism also overlaps significantly with other social psychological theories of racial attitudes, it is unique in that it is primarily focused on prejudice in Western Europe, which is often the product of religious differences rather than racial differences. Pettigrew and Meertens used the Eurobarometer as their main data source. The notion of subtle racism is based on the assumption that prejudice is directed against outgroups in general, rather than against one particular group. It thus offers a broader scope than similar theories in the United States, which are primarily focused on white prejudice against blacks. (Pettigrew and Meertens 1995).
Critics of symbolic racism have raised concerns about its theoretical approach, concentrating their critiques in two main areas. First, some have argued that it is not substantially different from traditional, overt forms of racism and prejudice and that there may be some inconsistency in how the concept has been operationalized (e.g., Sniderman and Tetlock 1986). The second main area of criticism has focused on symbolic racism's treatment of group conflict. Some scholars argue that continued negative racial beliefs and actions can be better understood as based in self-interest and group conflict rather than prejudice.
Political theories of racial attitudes have not proven to be as central and prominent in much of the racial attitudes literature as other frameworks, although this work has garnered a large amount of attention in recent years. Indeed, as shall become evident, the work has proven to be quite controversial and has elicited polemical claims and counterclaims.
In this section, the discussion of political theories of racial attitudes research focuses on research conducted by Paul Sniderman and various colleagues. This is not to say that there are not other significant theoretical contributions to the intersections of race and politics, but that these other works are beyond the scope of the general discussion here about racial attitudes research. Two books, The Scar of Race (1993), coauthored with Thomas Piazza, and Reaching beyond Race (1997), coauthored with Edward Carmines, are the most well-known works produced by Sniderman and his coauthors. In them, the authors offer critiques of much of the research on racial attitudes and provide an alternative way to think about racial attitudes and their impact on public policy. At its core, this work taken as a whole argues that views concerning social policies are not really about race. This is a sentiment that resonates with many people in America (and elsewhere) today who want to believe we have become a color-blind society that has at long last gotten past race.
Specifically, Sniderman and associates argue that opposition to US public policies designed to aid minorities and promote racial equality is not racist. Rather, the opposition stems from beliefs that these public policies violate traditional American values. Recall that the combination of racist beliefs and commitment to traditional American values is a core component of much of the recent work discussed previously. In contrast, Sniderman and his colleagues remove the racist beliefs component and argue that it is simply an issue of perceived violations of egalitarian beliefs and values, without racist foundations or implications.
The position of Sniderman and his colleagues is clear in the opening pages of Reaching beyond Race. Sniderman and Carmines (1997: 7) write that,
Judged by the objective evidence, the overall impact of racial prejudice on the political choices that white Americans make turns out to be surprisingly modest … The conclusion to draw is now clear: racial prejudice is not the dominant reason for the resistance of white Americans to current policies intended to help black Americans.
This assertion represents a major shift in thinking about the nature of racial attitudes. These authors argue that racial prejudice no longer plays a major role in explaining white Americans’ resistance to race-based policies.
The empirical evidence the authors provide supports this position. In both books, data from telephone surveys are central to their argument. The research is tied to the “Race and Politics Studies” completed by the Survey Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. These national studies were completed using CATI (computer assisted telephone interviewing). The studies took full advantage of the capabilities of CATI. A key feature of this research that made it distinctive was that it included several experiments in each survey. Sniderman and his colleagues argued that these experiments make a strong case that they are correct in their claim that racial prejudice and racial attitudes are not the main causes of white opposition to race-targeted public policies in America. In fact, these authors believe that whites would support policies designed to help and aid minorities if politicians would approach these issues in a new way. There is no need to change what people think and believe. Rather it's necessary to change the language used in framing policies. Specifically, they endorse the idea of replacing the particularistic language of race-specific policies with an argument based on “universal principles that reach beyond race” (Sniderman and Carmines 1997: 8).
Critics of this research have argued that the experiments are not as powerful and conclusive as they believe. For example, Howard Schuman and coauthors (1997: 369–370) contend that,
Sniderman and his colleagues tend to treat randomized experiments as more definitive than they can ever be, for example, claiming in one case that a single experiment of theirs produced results that “exploded the notion that whites will say what they believe they are supposed to say about matters of race.”
Additionally, the explanatory power of the experiments presented by Sniderman and others is often subject to interpretation of the results of the experiments themselves. The evidence Sniderman and his colleagues provide is based on their understanding of the data from the experiments, not simply based on the data themselves. For example, Sniderman and Carmines’ use the “Mere Mention” experiment to show that “the mere mention of affirmative action turns out to sharpen hostility to blacks.” (1997: 40). They argue that white Americans’ dislike for affirmative action is so strong that it actually increases negative feelings towards those who benefit from their program. Essentially, they have reversed the more typical causal argument. Instead of arguing that negative feelings toward blacks causes whites to oppose affirmative action, Sniderman and Carmines argue the opposite, that negative feelings toward affirmative action causes whites to have negative feelings about blacks. Their claim is “proven” by the “Mere Mention” experiment. In this experiment, half of the respondents are first asked to describe what blacks are like and then are asked their views of affirmative action. The other half of respondents are first asked their views of affirmative action and then are asked to describe what blacks are like. The data from this experiment showed that, “Whites who have just been asked to give an opinion about affirmative action are significantly more likely to describe ‘most blacks’ as ‘lazy’ than are whites to whom affirmative action has not been mentioned” (Sniderman and Carmines 1997: 39).
This is the empirical data from their experiment. However, the power of this data comes from their interpretation of the experiment, not from the data. Sniderman and Carmines claim that this experiment shows that whites have a problem with affirmative action, not blacks. However, it is just as plausible that whites have negative attitudes about blacks and that mentioning affirmative action first merely brings these negative attitudes about blacks to the forefront, so that they respond more negatively to the following question when asked to describe blacks. Given that affirmative action is generally associated with blacks, people may not be able to distinguish the policy from the intended recipient. Who is right? There is no way to know which interpretation is correct by simply looking at the data. Both explanations are plausible and possible. Yet Sniderman and Carmines’ thesis rests on their interpretation of this experiment, even though they provide no compelling reason to believe their interpretation is more accurate than alternatives.
It is interesting to note that Sniderman has, with Dutch colleague Louk Hagendoorn, produced a parallel argument about multi-culturalism and Muslims in the Netherlands, arguing that Dutch citizens were opposed to multiculturalism because of its presumed lack of congruence with cherished liberal values of individualism and tolerance, but were not hostile to Muslims as people or to Islam. Not surprisingly, the same criticisms of the work noted above is applicable here (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2009).
Throughout The Scar of Race and Reaching beyond Race, experiment after experiment is presented. Each experiment and the empirical results are described in great detail, yet their interpretations and conclusions are simply stated, with little backing or reason to believe their conclusions above all others. This is arguably a case of strong empirical evidence coupled with weak interpretations.
The weak interpretations offered by Sniderman and his colleagues may also be the result of a lack of a theoretical framework underpinning their research. In contrast to much of the other work in racial attitudes research, there is a not an underlying theoretical framework within which their work is situated. The work does not begin with a theory or a set of assumptions about the world they study. This lack of theory is noted by Pettigrew and Meertens (2001: 299) in their critique of this approach and simultaneous defense of their own research:
[Sniderman et al.] demonstrate that, if (a) you have no theory, (b) use different methods, and (c) make different assumptions, you can produce an analysis of prejudice different from ours … We do not find this surprising. Nor do we see any reason to withdraw our claims for both the concept and measurement of subtle prejudice.
The importance of describing the criticisms of this particular brand of political theory about racial attitudes here is based in the fact that these theories are very appealing to many people today, especially in an era that some would like to call a new “post-racial era.” The conclusion that derives from Sniderman and his colleagues is that whites in America are no longer racist, that the “race problem” should be viewed as a thing of the past. It is becoming more and more common to hear claims of living in a post-racial, color-blind society. While this work supports these claims in many ways, it is important to recognize that many scholars see flaws and fundamental shortcomings with research produced by this approach.
A final criticism is that it appears to many that the motivation for this line of research may be primarily to prove that whites are not racist, and more specifically that white conservatives are not more racist than other groups of whites. It is true that no social scientist comes at their research with a purely objective mind without any preconceived notions about what they may find. However, critics contend that Sniderman and his colleagues’ motivations and intent seem arguably more transparent than others in the field of racial attitudes research.
Sniderman and Tetlock (1986) have responded to criticisms with a critique of their own, placing particular focus on symbolic racism. They find the use of this influential concept troubling because, they contend, it suffers from a number of serious problems, including methodological issues, empirical shortcomings, and theoretical imprecision. They present a very vigorous attack on the idea of symbolic racism. More specifically, they claim that proponents of symbolic racism have unnecessarily politicized research agendas by treating opposition to race-based governmental programs as inherently racist. One of the results of this approach is to view conservatives as more racist than the rest of the population due to their hostility to a range of race-specific governmental programs.
Critics characterized this assessment as a misguided interpretation: to say that a major function of symbolic racism is to identify people who dislike blacks as primarily conservative. What is clear is that Sniderman and his associates are preoccupied with the idea that someone will be mistakenly called a racist. They suspect that symbolic racism is designed to be a tool that can “out” racists and that it might “out” people who are not really racists. From their perspective, there are fewer people who are racist than symbolic racism theorists claim and, moreover, the relationship between racism and conservatism is weaker than they claim as well. It is true that a central argument advanced by practitioners of the symbolic racism model is that contemporary racial prejudice is linked to conservative political values (Kinder and Sears 1981). It is similarly true that a driving force behind the entire line of research developed and forwarded by Sniderman and his colleagues represents a sustained attempt to dissolve this link between conservatism and racism.
Supporters of this line of research see this work as an important voice added to the dialogue about race in America. There is a feeling that Sniderman and others are finally saying what regular Americans have known for some time. It is perceived as a backlash against academic liberals and elites who overemphasize race. The back cover of The Scar of Race includes a quote from neoconservative intellectual Abigail Thernstrom, which reads:
Lots of ordinary folks know it, but it's not the sort of thing social scientists tend to say: When it comes to questions of public policy, few whites are racists. Whites may oppose particular items on the standard civil rights agenda, but they're not bigots. That's the main point in The Scar of Race and it's a stinging rebuke to the cultural elite that generally thinks otherwise.
The appeal of this argument for many is that it claims that whites are increasingly free from racist bias and that prejudice and discrimination are not the primary causes of the existing racial inequality in America. In Reaching beyond Race, Sniderman and Carmines argue for universal, color-blind policies designed to help all who need assistance instead of racially targeted programs. They believe the only way to redress existing inequalities is to create a coalition of Americans, white and black, that is based on moral principles beyond race.
This call for universalistic programs parallels to some extent the argument advanced by William Julius Wilson (1987) on behalf of “Universal Programs of Reform.” Both believe that a genuinely equal opportunity society will only be possible when the nation promotes programs designed to help all those in need, regardless of race. However, the differences are also significant. Wilson, advocating a social democratic vision, was explicit that class differences were playing an increasing role in shaping black life chances, and it was his focus on the intersection of class and race and his sense that class was becoming more significant for blacks led to his embrace of universal entitlement programs. However, it is worth noting that he later concluded that such programs needed to exist side-by-side with race-targeted programs, not as an alternative to them (Wilson 1999).
Can race-neutral, color-blind policies truly overcome the racial inequality that is present in our society today? Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tyrone Foreman don't think so. They conducted interviews with college students and did not find support for color-blind policies. In fact, they found that “virtually no policy alternatives were envisioned as feasible for addressing the profound inequality existing between Blacks and Whites. This casts serious doubt on arguments that suggest class-based or color-blind policies can unite whites and racial minorities” (Bonilla-Silva and Foreman 2000: 77). In his book, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Bonilla-Silva (2001: 137) argues that color-blind racism, his term for racism in the post-civil rights era, “has emerged to support and reproduce the new racial structure of the United States.” Universalistic policies, purporting to be race-neutral, can be conceived of as variations of color-blind racism. The danger is that by removing race from the discussion, claiming we now live in a post-race era, and removing racial aspects from policies designed to help disadvantaged people in our society, it becomes nearly impossible to continue to talk about race or continued racial inequality. In this approach, race itself is removed from the conversation. Bonilla-Silva argues that this approach can be a tool for whites, in a collective position of power, to maintain their position.
Increasingly, whites object to those who “always bringing race” into the discussion and get frustrated that minorities are too ready to “play the race card.” Bonilla-Silva argues that the ideology (and power) of a post-race, color-blind ideology is clear in these situations, contending that a focus on universal policies for equality and opportunity for all may sound good in theory, but in reality, it may simply silence discussions about race and hide existing racial inequalities.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, social structural theories of racial attitudes primarily build upon Blumer's group position theory rather than traditional work on prejudice and discrimination associated with the psychological approach of Allport. This difference in underlying theoretical foundations results in a very different trajectory and focus in the research—both in terms of the nature and significance of racial attitudes as well as assessments of the enduring legacy of prejudice and discrimination. The major ideas within social structural theories of racial attitudes are discussed below.
Laissez-faire racism represents an alternative theoretical framework to social psychological theoretical explanations of racial attitudes, including symbolic racism. It has proven to be another influential attempt to understand racial attitudes in the post-civil rights era. In a seminal article, Larry Bobo and Ryan Smith (1998) mapped out the characteristics and origins of laissez-faire racism, which they see as a replacement for Jim Crow racism—the racism characteristic of the period from the end of Reconstruction to the civil right movement. Whereas Jim Crow racism was based in a belief in black biological inferiority, laissez-faire racism is predicated on notions of black cultural inferiority. Bobo, the key spokesperson for this position, and his colleagues, contend that ideological justifications of racial inequalities based on biological inferiority have largely faded away in recent decades. They have been replaced by cultural justifications. While it is no longer acceptable in most social settings to assert that blacks are biologically inferior, cultural explanations bringing in factors such as family-upbringing and values are quite commonplace today.
Also central to the theory of laissez-faire racism is an active resistance to change in the racial order. As Bobo and Smith (1998: 186) put it, “Laissez-faire racism blames blacks themselves for the black-white gap in socioeconomic standing and actively resists meaningful efforts to ameliorate America's racist social conditions and institutions.” This second part of the definition of laissez-faire racism is important insofar as it takes the concept further than simply being a set of explanations and justifications for racial inequality. It posits that laissez-faire racism is implicated in actively maintaining the current racial order and hierarchy. This theory suggests that continued racial prejudice and inequality is not simply an unfortunate consequence of psychological traits, but rather that there are structural forces at play that reinforce racial both racial attitudes and patterns of durable inequality.
Laissez-faire racism is very explicitly based on Blumer's notion of group position. It is an attempt to shift the focus from individual attitudes to group position, relative status, and the racial hierarchy. Prejudice, thus, is defined as a sense of group position. The hierarchical relationship between groups in society is part of the basis for prejudice, rather than being solely based on individual feelings and beliefs. This focus on group position offers laissez-faire racism a more structural understanding than one finds in sociopsychological theories. Bobo and Smith (1998: 187) are clear that this was their intent when they wrote that, “The framework takes seriously the imperatives deriving from the institutionalized structural social conditions of social life.” The authors go on to emphasize their different level of focus compared to social psychological theories by writing:
The theory of Laissez-Faire Racism, as we develop it here, focuses principally on predominant social patterns. These patterns are an aggregation of individual views, to be sure. Yet our main concern is not with variation in the attitudes of individuals but with the common or general pattern of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about blacks. In that sense, we seek to characterize the current historical epoch, not simply or mainly to explain the distribution and effects of the attitudes of individuals
(Bobo and Smith 1998: 187)
Another distinctive feature of laissez-faire racism is that it contains a historical dimension. Rather than assuming that racism is an ahistorical phenomenon, such that racism in the nineteenth century is the same as that in the twentieth, the concept is predicated on the notion that the shift from one epoch to another spells changes in the nature and dynamics of racism. The shift from Jim Crow racism to laissez-faire racism recognizes that the society after the civil rights movement is different from the society before the movement. Scholars agree that there have been significant positive shifts in racial attitudes, as reflected in public opinion survey questions asked repeatedly over the past several decades, such as the changing attitudes regarding black/white intermarriage reported in Figure Figure 2.1. The positive shifts in attitudes are largely the reason for concluding that traditional, blatant, Jim Crow racism has indeed declined.
Figure 2.1: Approval of black/white marriages.
Bobo and Smith take this a step further by actually showing how Jim Crow racism declined and then showing how laissez-faire racism emerged. They do this by examining significant events that occurred in American society throughout much of the twentieth century. Of particular salience were political and economic changes that undercut the tradition form of tenant farming in the South. They also took into account the system of legal segregation during the Jim Crow era, the impact of the civil rights movement in ending that system, the growing resources available for blacks as they engaged in collective action, and the decline in the importance of cotton in the country's evolving economy.
The concept of dominant ideology is most often associated with James Kluegel and Eliot Smith, especially as it was developed in Beliefs about Inequality: Americans’ Views of What Is and What Ought to Be (1986). This book contains a theoretical framework that is very similar to other social structural theories, yet unfortunately this book rarely gets more than a citation in recent articles on racial attitudes. The authors discuss two key concepts that they use to explain current attitudes about economic inequality and policies. They are “dominant ideology” and “social liberalism.” The dominant ideology is similar to the concepts of American individualism, the Protestant Ethic, traditional American values, etc. Kluegel and Smith (1986: 5) describe the dominant ideology as the idea that,
opportunity for economic advancement based on hard work is plentiful … [and] Individuals are personally responsible for their own economic fate … As a consequence, since individual outcomes are proportional to individual inputs (talent and effort), the resulting unequal distribution of economic rewards is, in the aggregate, equitable and fair.
This concept resonates with other theoretical frameworks. If opportunities abound and anyone who tries hard enough can succeed, then those that have not succeeded are clearly personally responsible. It is generally known that at the societal level, African Americans and other minorities are not as economically successful as whites. What Kluegel and Smith tell us by using the concept of dominant ideology is that a common rationalization for these inequalities is adherence to traditional American values of individualism and hard work. Those that do not succeed have not taken advantage of the opportunities they have been given. This rationalization entirely overlooks structural forces working against groups of people in the United States. It also ignores the continuing impact of history. However, as all these authors point out, these core values of individual effort and achievement are so central, deep, and long-standing in American society that they can easily play a critical role in justifying, explaining, and defending the stark inequalities that persist.
Kluegel and Smith also employ the concept of social liberalism to explain current attitudes about inequalities. Social liberalism goes hand in hand with the dominant ideology thesis in explaining modern racial attitudes. Social liberalism entails the “acceptance of social and political equity with groups such as blacks and women, without the bases of economic inequality being called into question” (Kluegel and Smith 1986: 5–6). People (especially whites) at present generally believe in the virtue of social and political equality. The subtle, covert, modern forms of racism and prejudice become more complicated and ambiguous because of this. In theory and in abstract ways, there is a basic consensus that everyone should be treated as equals. Kluegel and Smith's use of social liberalism shows how this can be the case while commitment to the dominant ideology allows economic and material inequalities to continue to exist.
Social dominance theory begins with the claim that all human societies throughout time have been shaped by group-based hierarchies. All social systems consist of at least two unequal groups, a hegemonic group at the top and a negative reference group at the bottom (Sidanius, et al. 1992). According to this theory, dominance is a common element of all human cultures. There is always a dominant group and an oppressed group. These claims define the foundation of social dominance theory. Like laissez-faire racism, group position plays a key role here as well. However, social dominance theory starts from a much stronger position. The theory posits that social dominance is present and central to all societies—in other words, it is a universal given rather than a historically contingent fact. Racism in modern American society is just one case study of a larger trans-societal phenomenon.
Jim Sidanius is most often seen as the key spokesperson for this stance, having developed it in association with Felicia Pratto, Eric Devereux, and other coauthors. It is interesting to note that psychologists, and not sociologists, developed this theory. In some ways, social dominance theory contains elements of both social psychological theory and structural theory. Its psychological character is evident in its attention to individual behaviors. But its emphasis on hierarchy reflects a more sociological and structural approach, reminiscent of Blumer's group position theory.
It is important to understand that this theory does not simply end with the claim that all societies are defined by hierarchical systems. It goes further by describing how social hierarchies are actively maintained, reinforced, and reproduced. This emphasis on action and on the mechanisms of social construction and preservation strengthens the theory and its explanatory power in understanding societal-level discrimination and oppression. Its advocates focus on institutional discrimination and individual discrimination, but also include behavioral traits, bringing both the sociological and the psychological into their theoretical framework. The basic psychological assumption is that it is a natural, human tendency to view the group that one is a member of as in fundamental ways superior to other groups and as such deserving of higher status and various indicators of privilege. A problem with this approach is that it tends to essentialize group differences, and insofar as this is true, to view hierarchies as permanent and thus not amenable to change.
Sociopsychological theories of racial attitudes look at individual's attitudes and beliefs about minority groups and their presumed values. More macro-level concepts regarding culture and social structural factors only come in to play insofar as they influence individual attributes and help explain personal behaviors. Social structural theories begin to bring into their frameworks an interest in culture, social systems, and institutions. By incorporating these concepts, it becomes easier to be critical of the existing system of racial inequality. Social Dominance Theory challenged the racial status quo and explicitly discussed racialized positions of domination and subordination in our society. However, while the theory began to incorporate power and domination into its framework, it still did not adequately discuss privilege itself and the life experiences of whites, the privileged or dominant group in the US. Social Dominance Theory overlooked important aspects of whites’ own agency. In other words, while whites are in a dominant position, little attention is actually devoted to whites themselves, particularly the activities that they engage in that serve to maintain the existing racial hierarchy
This is the perspective that can be uncovered and subsequently incorporated into racial attitudes when the starting point is whiteness. Whites’ material reality and life experiences need to be included in the analysis if we are to arrive at a comprehensive picture of race and racial attitudes in America. The vast majority of whites do not directly, explicitly, and with malice engage in conduct aimed at oppressing members of minority groups. Rather, they are ordinary, basically decent people who happen to enjoy lives of racial advantage and privilege, and thus confront far few barriers to success than their minority counterparts. They have a tendency to see their successes in terms of hard work, combined sometimes with a bit of luck, managing to be at the right place at the right time. This privilege is understood as a fortunate set of circumstances and events, not as a societal system of privilege designed to benefit whites.
Paul Croll describes his own encounter with white privilege in the following example:
I am white. A couple years ago, I got into a small automobile accident in my community in the Midwest United States. There was little damage to either car, but the police came to the scene. When the police arrived, I realized I did not have my current insurance card with me. According to state law, you have to have current insurance information in your vehicle at all times. I exchanged contact information with the other driver and then told the officer that I must have forgotten to put my new insurance card in my car. The officer told me not to worry about my lack of current insurance and sent me on my way.
Around the same time, a Latino student of mine was home over break. He had just bought a new car and was nervous he would get pulled over by the police. So he kept all the paperwork from the dealer on the front seat next to him and made sure he drove within the speed limit and did not break any traffic laws. Nonetheless, a police officer did pull him over. The officer did not say why he pulled him over, but asked why he only had one license plate on his car. State law requires all cars to have license plates on the front and back of the vehicles. The student explained it was a new car and that the dealer only gave him one temporary license plate. He showed the officer the paperwork and receipts from the dealer. The officer said, “Son, it is state law to have two plates on your car.” The student tried to explain again that it was not his fault and that the dealer only gave him one plate. The officer responded by saying “Boy, are you trying to cause some trouble?” With that, the officer wrote him a ticket for only having one plate and left.
I broke the law. I was driving without insurance. My student was only given one temporary plate from the dealer. He did nothing wrong. Yet I walked away and my student got a ticket.
Whiteness studies constitute a specific type of critical race theory. Central to whiteness theory is the idea that racialized systems of power and domination have been normalized and hidden. Whiteness is also a cultural phenomenon wherein whites are not particularly cognizant of their own race, or of the racialized nature of their position in society. This work has been profoundly interdisciplinary in nature. The major works in whiteness studies come from academic fields as diverse as history, sociology, legal studies, literature, women's studies, and education.
Key works in history and critical race theory launched an awareness of whiteness in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Arguments from historians and historical sociologists led the way in showing the changing boundaries of white status with an emphasis on how European ethnics, chiefly from eastern and southern Europe “became” white over time, rather than being treated by the receiving society as “white on arrival.” Historians such as David Roediger (2005) have contributed considerably to our understanding of the costs and consequences of these transformations for various groups, beginning with the Irish who were sometimes depicted as European counterparts to blacks. By the last decades of the century, recently arrived groups such as Poles, Italians, and Jews discovered that they were seen as “in-between peoples,” not really black, but not quite white, either (Barrett and Roediger 1997; see also Jacobson 1998). In a broader sense, this historically oriented scholarship sought to make the point that whiteness is in fact part of a broader field of racial formation (Omi and Winant 1994).
More broadly, critical race theorists provided a lens by which to examine American institutions and values in a way that sheds light on their role in maintaining and reproducing racial inequality. Critical race theorists challenged the idea that principles such as liberalism and equal opportunity, both in the legal system and in broader society, necessarily and inevitably lead to racial justice and equality.
The late Ruth Frankenberg (1994: 1), one of the sociologists who pioneered work in the area of whiteness studies, described whiteness as a set of three linked dimensions.
First, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. Second, it is a “standpoint,” a place from which white people look at themselves and others, and at society. Third, “whiteness” refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed.
Frankenburg's claims—that whiteness relates to both privilege and identity, and that it becomes normalized and invisible—summarize the main insights of this field of inquiry. Peggy McIntosh (1989: 10) reinforced this line of thinking in a widely cited description of white privilege as the “invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.”
In short, the structural question of white privilege—its construction, its reproduction, indeed its very existence—is at the core of whiteness studies’ contribution to sociological theories of race relations and racial inequalities.
One of the clearest examples of a critique of the role of race in American society during the post-civil rights era is found in the concept of institutional racism which covers similar terrain as work in whiteness studies, although it has evolved from a different theoretical origin. The idea of institutional racism came out of the 1960s’ Black Power Movement. The term “institutional racism” was first developed by Stokley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their book, Black Power (1967: 4), which they explain in the following way:
Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which causes death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, and less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing these acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type.
A small number of race scholars have continued work within the framework of institutional racism. In Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (2006) Joe Feagin developed these ideas further in his articulation of a theory of systemic racism. Barbara Trepagnier's recent book, Silent Racism: How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide (2010) similarly builds upon earlier formulations of institutional racism. It can be argued that institutional racism offers a way to conceive of racial inequality as a consequence of institutional factors in combination with individual factors. While it covers very similar terrain to whiteness studies, the two approaches to race relations have typically not been brought together for common purpose, although this has begun to change in recent years with work by Feagin (2001), Bonilla-Silva (2001, 2010), and Trepagnier (2010).
Michael Omi and Howard Winant offer yet another critical examination of the racialized system in America. In Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (1994), they developed the theory of racial formations (influenced by the Italian Marxist theorist, Antonio Gramsci), a theory which provides a way to think about the ongoing and contested social, economic and political processes that determine the meaning and content of racial categories and systems in society. Omi and Winant's focus on mechanisms and evolving racialized systems helps to uncover the often hidden processes at work that continue to maintain and reproduce racial inequality.
Winant uses the concept of racial formations in his later work to examine racial projects in the post-civil rights era. He argued that in the post-civil rights era
monolithic white supremacy is over, yet in a more concealed way, white power and privilege live on… Whites are no longer the official “ruling race” yet they still enjoy many of the privileges descended from the time when they were
(Winant 1997: 76)
While white power and privilege continue for Winant, he also explains how the ideology of color-blindness has also developed for many whites. While real gains in racial justice were achieved as a consequence of the civil rights movement, Winant argued that substantive equality did not emerge. He believes that real equality would have entailed a substantial redistribution of income and wealth, and associated structural change. As such, these changes would have constituted a threat to the interests of the capitalist class, and for this reason societal elites never sought to advance and were not prepared to permit substantive equality. However, a large enough number of whites believed that a reasonable level of equality had been achieved, so that race targeted social policies such as affirmative action were to be rejected in favor of what were seen as color-blind policies (Winant 1997).
The sociologist best known for continuing work on color-blind racism is Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. In his books, White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era (2001) and Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2010), he expands and develops the idea of color-blind racism and uses it to provide a critique of what he sees as American liberalism's failure to adequately address racism and racial inequality. Bonilla-Silva uses a combination of survey data and in-depth interviews—including the excerpt contained in Box 2.3—to explore empirically manifestations of color-blind racism and its implications for racial attitudes.
When thinking about contemporary racial inequality in the United States, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva asks the following questions:
How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant? More important, how do whites explain the apparent contradiction between their professed color blindness and the United States’ color-coded inequality? … I contend that whites have developed powerful explanations - which have ultimately become justifications - for contemporary racial inequality that exculpate them from any responsibility for the status of people of color. These explanations emanate from a new racial ideology that I label color-blind racism.
(Bonilla Silva 2010: 2)
Bonilla-Silva conducted in-depth interviews with respondents to study the ideology of color-blind racism. Below are several examples of color-blind racism from his research:
I don't think that they (minority students) should be provided with unique opportunities. I think that they should have the same opportunities as everyone else. You know, it's up to them to meet the standards and whatever that's required for entrance into universities or whatever, I don't think that just because they're a minority that they should, you know, not meet the requirements, you know.
(Bonilla-Silva 2010: 31)
Again, I don't think that we can make retribution for things that happened in the past. I don't think it serves any purpose today to try to fix something that happened a long time ago that doesn't affect anyone today. All it does is bring up to the surface that there was a problem.
(Bonilla-Silva 2010: 78)
No, and I, you know, I have to say that I'm pretty supportive of anything to help people, but I don't know why that slavery thing has a - I've got a chip on my shoulder about that. It's like it happened so long ago and you've got these sixteen year-old kids saying, “Well, I deserve because great, great granddaddy was a slave.” Well, you know what, it doesn't affect you. Me, as a white person, I had nothing to do with slavery. You, as a black person, you never experienced it. It was so long ago I just don't see how that pertains to what's happening to the race today so, you know, that's one thing that I'm just like, “God shut up!”
(Bonilla-Silva 2010: 80–81)
Bonilla-Silva argues that color-blind racism promotes “the idea that race has all but disappeared as a factor shaping the life chances of all Americans.” (Bonilla-Silva 2010: 262). In a country where stark racial inequalities continue to persist, color-blind racism allows whites to claim that racism is a thing of the past and that opportunities are now open and equal for all.
Bonilla-Silva treats color-blind racism as consisting of four dominant frames: (1) abstract liberalism (a somewhat confusing term that refers to beliefs that merge extreme individualism with hostility to government intervention); (2) biologization of culture; (3) naturalization of racial matters; and (4) minimization of racism (Bonilla-Silva 2001: 141–142). Bonilla-Silva's use of abstract liberalism as a dominant frame of color-blind racism explicitly ties liberalism to color-blindness and shows how liberalism itself can play a role in maintaining and reproducing racial inequality. Bonilla-Silva combines many elements of whiteness, critical race theory, and institutional racism in his own theoretical formations. He has sought to explain how racial inequality and racial oppression can continue to exist without individual racists acting in acting in overtly discriminatory and exploitive ways.
This chapter surveyed the ways that sociologists and psychologists have sought to understand prejudice and discrimination. It set the stage by providing an overview of three classic figures in the field, two sociologists and one psychologist, who in various ways influenced subsequent work. The bulk of the chapter focused on contemporary approaches to racial attitudes, which we divided into three categories: social-psychological, political, and social structural. Two concepts that were created in order to understand the nature of racism in the postcivil rights era stood out insofar as they have proven to be widely accepted and used by a significant number of scholars in the field: symbolic racism and laissez-faire racism. The chapter concluded with a discussion of recent developments that have sought to refocus attention by examining white privilege and the way it is perpetuated today in a racial formation that has been characterized as being shaped by color-blind racism.
