Abstract
The intent of this essay is to unearth certain less than obvious but nevertheless important subjective meanings involved in what is currently referred to as "racism" in the United States. Attention will not be given to the overt aspects of "racism," or what AllportI called "racial discrimination," but rather, to the covert dimension, what Allport termed "racial prejudice." I will try to avoid certain problems whlich have plagued those who have "explained" racial prejudice in terms of "racist attitudes" or "racist beliefs." Many, if not most, of the studies on racist attitudes rush headlong into an explanatory "dead end," for they tend to explain away the phenomenon by positing a "black box" mechanism within the human mind, a set of "predispositions" which "motivate" discriminatory action once the proper stimulus is applied.2 A good many studies of racist beliefs are to be avoided as well, for they are often reducible to events of invidious name-calling where one is "racist" or. "prejudiced" if one espouses a belief about a racial group of which another person disapproves.3
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