Invisibility in the Color-Blind Era: Examining Legitimized Racism against Indigenous Peoples

Abstract

Invisibility in the Color-Blind EraExamining Legitimized Racism against Indigenous Peoples Dwanna L. Robertson (bio) A few of the whites that I’m around make Indian jokes.… I’ve been called a basket weaver, blanket Indian, blanket ass, skin, breed, which I don’t let bother me, you know. ’Cause I just look at the person that’s doing the talking and the so-called name calling, and a lot of that shows ignorance, the way I look at it. I laugh at it and go on and try not to let it deter me. Will (Chickasaw) Beginning in the mid-1990s, scholarship on the ideology of color-blind racism gained acceptance within the mainstream of the sociology of race in the United States. Scholars contend that after the US civil rights era, overtly racist acts generally gave way to color-blind (covert) racism in the maintenance of white privilege.1 It became socially unacceptable to express blatant antagonism toward people of color.2 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains that this shift allows whites to refute all culpability for the current racial oppression of minorities.3 Indeed, color-blind racism enables whites to justify the current gaps in educational attainment, wages, chronic health disorders, and wealth, between them and everyone else, through the ideologies of individualism and culture without thought to historical context. Thus, the political and economic inequality of people of color becomes their own fault. Marginalized groups still experience inequality, but Bonilla-Silva argues that it is increasingly covert, institutionalized, and “void of direct racial terminology.”4 Yet, this does not hold true for Indigenous Peoples in the United States.5 Like other marginalized groups, Natives certainly experience the [End Page 113] same covert mechanisms of color-blind racism that limit life opportunities. However, Natives still routinely experience overt racism in the form of racial epithets like “redskin,” “injun,” and “squaw” and horribly distorted depictions of Natives as mascots, reminiscent of the propaganda used against black, Irish, and Jewish people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And this overt racism is not confined to hate groups but is visible in everyday discourse and throughout the media. Historically, Native Peoples were portrayed as savages, Native women as sexually permissive, and Native culture as engendering laziness.6 Contemporary American Indians still live under the prevalence of Native misrepresentations in the media, archaic notions of Indianness, and the federal government’s appropriation of “Indian” names and words as code for military purposes. Their oppression also becomes invisible in the very visible mechanism often used to reproduce racial inequality—through informal communication—with statements like being an “Indian-giver,” sitting “Indian-style,” learning to count through the “one little, two little, three little Indians” song, or getting together to “pow wow” over a business idea. This racialization goes beyond words and pictures. While minstrel shows have long been castigated as racist, American children are socialized into playing Indian. Columbus Day celebrations, Halloween costumes, and Thanksgiving reenactments stereotype Indigenous Peoples as a much-distorted, monolithic culture. That is, other groups assert racial power over Indigenous Peoples by relegating indigeneity (complex understandings and representations of Indigenous identity) to racist archetypes and cultural caricatures. Playing Indian is actually an American tradition with its roots in colonial times.7 During the Boston Tea Party, when colonists rebelled against British rule by boarding English ships and throwing the tea into the harbor, they were dressed up in blankets and feathers and had black soot and grease on their faces, pretending to be Indians.8 Playing Indian is racist—in no way different from wearing blackface or participating in minstrel shows—because it collapses distinct cultures into one stereotypical racialized group. Even worse, because playing Indian is deemed socially acceptable (e.g., normal, legitimate), any other racial or ethnic group may now participate—without recognizing the inherent racism in doing so. Historians, philosophers, and Indigenous media document that Indigenous Americans cope daily with overtly racist language, images, and behaviors without social recourse. I argue that racism against [End Page 114] American Indians has been normalized and institutionally legitimized, thereby rendering it invisible. To legitimize is to make legitimate, that is, to justify, reason, or rationalize in accordance with...