Color-blind Racism Research Articles

All thePuertorriqueñidadthat’s Fit to Print: UnAmerican Racial Citizens inThe New York Times(1948–1958)

While scholars have shown how ‘color-blind racism’ functions as the dominant form of racist discourse in the post-Civil Rights era, few have interrogated how this logic operated before the advent of US Civil Rights, or how ethno-racial groups such as Puerto Ricans exist in an unique and liminal position and have been subject to color-blind racist discourse. The authors explore the construction of Puerto Rican identity during the pre-Civil Rights: a time rife with color-blind American paternalism over the supposed cultural dysfunctions of the Puerto Rican diaspora, an era of mass Puerto Rican emigration to the US, and a moment when Puerto Rico underwent a political change. The authors employ a content analysis of The New York Times (1948 to 1958) in order to investigate the relationship between the discursive construction of Puerto Rican identity and the flagship newspaper’s use of nationalist and racialized cultural schemata.

A Review of Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (4th ed.)

Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (4th ed.). E. Bonilla-Silva, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013, 363 pages, $20.77 (paperback), IS...

Metropolitan Secession and the Space of Color-Blind Racism in Atlanta

ABSTRACT:The Reverend Joseph Lowery and the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus sponsored a 2011 voting rights suit, Lowery v. Deal, that demanded the disincorporation of several majority-white cities in Georgia’s Fulton and DeKalb Counties and preemption against attempts by affluent and majority-white north Fulton to secede from the rest of the county. Secession would have severe consequences for racial equity in the metropolitan area. Lowery’s 2011 dismissal by the District Court reflects ascendant color-blind racial ideology that defends white privilege in metropolitan space by attributing it to culturally and legally legitimate race-neutral processes. Historical analysis challenges this color-blind interpretation, identifying the nominally class-based interests of north Fulton residents with systemic racial discrimination and the politics of secession with historic patterns of spatial politics that have sought not only to exclude but also to manipulate political space to limit the ability of black voters and officials to make decisions affecting whites and their property.

Playing the “Immigrant Card”

Polls measuring attitudes on immigration suggest that Americans generally agree that immigration is good for the United States. However, these same polls suggest that Americans support strict border enforcement and racial profiling to curtail illegal immigration. These same mixed responses about immigration also characterize southern views, particularly in new immigrant destinations. Drawing on 180 in-depth interviews from southern college students, this article uses color-blind racism and racist nativism theories to examine immigration rhetoric. Results suggest that respondents fear immigrants “taking over,” racializing the immigration debate to only focus on Mexican immigrants. They also conflate their views of blacks and Mexican immigrants, suggesting these two groups are essentially the same. However, they deflect being blatantly racist nativist by camouflaging their comments with color-blind frames. Many note that the mistreatment of immigrants is “fair” in comparison with their immigrant ancestors, and because immigrants are here “illegally.” These findings advance color-blind rhetoric research beyond the black-white dichotomy by focusing on non-white immigrants. It also demonstrates that researchers should consider how at least respondents in new southern immigrant destinations intertwine various color-blind and racist nativist devices to shape immigration attitudes.

Paving the Way for Future Race Research

In a day when many are fatigued with discourse on racism, discrimination, and inequality but others face a socially and politically trenchant White backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement, race scholars are faced with the complex scenario in which they must simultaneously articulate (1) what, when, and where racism operates to exercise both deleterious and advantageous effects on differently racialized actors and (2) exactly why and how racism (especially its “color-blind” variant) functions toward the reproduction of the racialized social system. While scholarship on the former is well rehearsed, we see this special issue as a clarion call for new scholarship to interrogate the precise mechanisms by which color-blind racism and the racialized social system operate. New work on mechanisms gestures (at the least) toward the three directions laid out in this issue: the axiological (the study of values), ontological (the study of being), and epistemological (the study of knowledge) dimensions of social life. Race scholars would be well served to illumine how color-blind racism and the racialized social system hold specific properties and processes by which values, being, and knowledge function intimately and integrally.

“American” as a Proxy for “Whiteness”: Racial Color-Blindness in Everyday Life

This article discusses racial color-blindness as it relates to a modern strategy used by both Whites and People of Color (POC) to mask their discussions of race and privilege. People who endorse racial color-blindness tend to believe that race should not matter and currently does not matter in understanding individuals’ lived experiences. Therefore, racially color-blind individuals use strategies to justify their racial privilege and racist beliefs and attitudes. One such strategy is to use the term “American” as a proxy for “White” in describing instances of White privilege as norms and to hide discussions of race more generally. Study 1 findings show that there are many different socially constructed definitions for the term American. Study 2 findings reveal differences in definitions for American depending on an individual’s race and generational status.

Beyond Prejudice? Young Whites’ Racial Attitudes in Post–Civil Rights America, 1976 to 2000

A key finding from previous research on trends in Whites’ racial attitudes is that much of the decline in the expression of racial prejudice over the past seven decades can be attributed to the replacement of older, less tolerant White cohorts by younger, more tolerant cohorts of Whites in the U.S. population (i.e., cohort replacement). An implicit assumption of much of this work is that cohort replacement will continue to produce unidirectional liberalizing trends in Whites’ racial attitudes because of the more tolerant attitudes of each younger cohort. In this article, we reexamine the cohort replacement hypothesis focusing on young Whites’ racial attitudes and whether change is in substance or form. We develop a theoretical argument about the shifting nature of young Whites’ racial attitudes and understandings in the post–civil rights era by building on Forman’s concept of racial apathy and the expanding literature on color-blind racism, which posits that during the post–civil rights era, subtle forms of racial prejudice have become more prevalent than overt forms. We empirically test this argument by investigating trends in, and determinants of, young Whites’ racial attitudes from 1976 to 2000, using nationally representative samples of White high school seniors. Although we find a liberalizing trend for some racial attitudes, we do not find a similar pattern for contemporary forms of prejudice, particularly racial apathy. In addition, we find that the social determinants of young Whites’ social distance attitudes (traditional prejudice) and expressions of racial apathy (contemporary prejudice) have been remarkably consistent over time. Collectively, these results indicate the need for greater attention to the expression of subtle forms of prejudice among young Whites generally, and to the potentially destructive force of rising levels of racial apathy specifically.

Why the Nonexistence of Biological Races Does Not Mean the Nonexistence of Racism

Color-blind racism is an ideology that allows persons of the dominant socially defined race (European Americans) to claim that racism is no longer the central factor determining the life chances of persons of non-European descent (particularly dark-skinned individuals of African descent). They argue that instead of the ongoing institutional and individual racism of American society, nonracial factors such as market dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and the cultural attitudes of minorities themselves are the main causal factors of their social subordination. Concurrent with the rise of this ideology has been the scientific determination that the human species does not really contain biological races. Thus, many color-blind racists have co-opted this fact to further argue that racism can no longer exist, since we have no biological races. This article will not only outline the nature of human biological variation, why that variation does not justify the classification of biological races within the species, but also why this fact has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing racial discrimination faced by persons with dark skins in the United States. Furthermore, it will explain why membership in a socially defined race has real biological consequences including reducing the mental and physical well-being of the socially subordinated.

The meaning of a game: Stereotypes, video game commentary and color-blind racism

Scholars have begun to explore how conversations occurring in entertainment publics often extend into discussions on broader social issues. Media sociologists have described entertainment publics that engage in such discussions as aesthetic public spheres. This article is among the first to adopt this framework to study video game commentary. To do so, I examine the debate over Resident Evil 5’s (RE5) racially problematic imagery on the popular Internet discussion forum NeoGAF. Forum posters participating in this debate present multiple understandings of racism and video games’ social significance. Posters also construct two competing narratives about what they describe as America’s problematic racial hypersensitivity and racism’s enduring presence. My analysis indicates that video game publics are clearly capable of functioning as an aesthetic public sphere, but such discussions predominantly rely on prevailing racial discourses in civil society. Posters primarily incorporate principles from color-blind racism to reject the idea that RE5’s imagery is troubling and to characterize the game’s critics as racists themselves. In doing so, these posters ignore contemporary forms of inequality and marginalize those looking to discuss these issues. Consequently, my findings highlight how the particular discourses adopted by aesthetic public spheres promote society’s existing power dynamics.

The Structure of Racism in Color-Blind, “Post-Racial” America

In this article, I describe the racial order of America in the post–Civil Rights era. First, I discuss what racism is all about and emphasize the centrality of conceiving the phenomenon in a structural way. Second, I argue that the “new racism,” or the set of mostly subtle, institutional, and seemingly nonracial mechanisms and practices that comprise the racial regime of “post-racial” America, has all but replaced the old Jim Crow order. Third, I describe the racial ideology of color-blind racism and its component parts (i.e., frames, style, and racial stories) and contend that, like the racial order, this new ideology is slippery and has a “beyond race” character. Fourth, I explain that the Obama moment is part of the new racism, color-blind period and justify my claim empirically. I conclude this essay pondering if people of color will wake up and realize that the new, more “civil” way of maintaining and justifying racial things is a more formidable way of maintaining racial domination.

Colorblindness in Black and White

The concept of colorblind racism has been developed in recent years to explain racial attitudes held by white Americans in the post–civil rights era. The authors use data from a new nationally representative survey with an oversample of black Americans to investigate the prevalence of core elements of colorblind ideology and to see the extent to which both black and white Americans adhere to three core dimensions of colorblindness theory: (1) abstract liberalism, (2) minimization of racism, and (3) cultural racism. They find that there are differences between black and white Americans with regard to their awareness of systemic dimensions of racial inequality. Yet they also find that the differences are not always large and that there is more awareness of racial inequality among whites than existing theories might suggest. Additionally, although blacks are much more likely than whites to reject some elements of colorblindness, the ideals of one element, abstract liberalism, are widely adopted by black and white Americans alike. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings and the underlying tensions and variations for existing theories of colorblindness.

Finding Meaning in a Rough Country

Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Baumer, Eric P. 2013. ‘‘Reassessing and Redirecting Research on Race and Sentencing.’’ Justice Quarterly 30(2):231–261. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2013. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Bushway, Shawn and Brian Forst. 2013. ‘‘Studying Discretion in the Processes that Generate Criminal Justice Sanctions.’’ Justice Quarterly 30(2):199–222. Frase, Richard. 2013. ‘‘Research on Race and Sentencing: Goals, Methods, and Topics.’’ Justice Quarterly 30(2):262–269. Platt, Anthony. 1969. The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Savelsberg, Joachim. 1992. ‘‘Law That Does Not Fit Society: Sentencing Guidelines as a Neoclassical Reaction to the Dilemmas of Substantivized Law.’’ American Journal of Sociology 97(5):1346–81. Ulmer, Jeffery T. 1997. Social Worlds of Sentencing: Court Communities under Sentencing Guidelines. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ulmer, Jeffery T. 2012. ‘‘Recent Developments and New Directions in Sentencing Research.’’ Justice Quarterly 29(1):1–40.

Color-Blindness and Commonality

Although overt racism still adversely affects the well-being and advancement of Black Americans, subtle racism also has a pervasive influence. Color-blind racism, a form of subtle racism, rationalizes the current disadvantaged status of Black Americans and institutionalizes practices that perpetuate the disadvantage. The present article, adopting a psychological perspective, reviews the evidence on the existence and dynamics of contemporary forms of color-blind racism. It documents how racial biases that unconsciously and uncontrollably strategically shape the behavior of White Americans, even among seemingly well-meaning people. The article further examines how White Americans emphasizing color-blindness and common connection between members of different groups can improve intergroup attitudes but reinforce hierarchical relations between groups, which benefit Whites. Understanding the nature of subtle bias and the automatic processes that may underlie it can help illuminate how seemingly well-meaning interventions can obscure its effects, creating a veneer of tolerance while deflecting attention away from unfair treatment (and thus undermining motivation for action toward equality) among members of both dominant and disadvantaged groups.

Color-Blind Racism in Television News and Commentary: The Redemption of Shirley Sherrod

When Andrew Breitbart released a video of Shirley Sherrod seemingly confessing to racism, journalists quickly turned the story into one of transformation in which a purportedly racist African American is redeemed by her embrace of a color-blind society. Guided by the concept of color-blind racism, this analysis of television news and commentary shows that U.S. television network news and commentary constructed a narrative arc involving accusation, rebuttal and redemption. And the moral of the story was that rational actors might overcome racial problems by focusing on personal prejudice rather than institutional racism. Some journalists and commentators advanced alternative themes but they failed to gain much traction. The study is based on a textual analysis of 36 shows broadcast on CNN, FOX News, FOX Business, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS on July 19 and 20, 2010 during the height of the controversy.

Racially Charged Cookies and White Scholarships: Anti-Affirmative Action Protests on American College Campuses

Between 2001 and 2012, students at colleges throughout the United States protested affirmative action policies using various tactics, most notably anti-affirmative action “bake sales,” where the price of the goods was based on the race of the purchaser: white males were charged the most; blacks and Latinos, the least. Other means of protest included “whites-only” or equal opportunity scholarships, an “equal opportunity carnival,” and other satirical productions. Through qualitative content analysis of print and online materials about each protest, I found that the motivations of these protesters can be understood using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s theories of color-blind racism, particularly the concepts of “abstract liberalism” and “minimization of racism.” I also contend that a secondary goal of these demonstrations is to establish white racial identity as a public identity upon which claims of “reverse discrimination” and oppression can be built.

Examining the Significance of “Race” in College Students’ Identity Within a “Postracial” Era

This qualitative study examines the significance of “race” within the identities of a diverse sample of traditionally aged college students (N = 59) across 2 institutions. Our findings demonstrate that more than half of the participants felt race mattered to their sense of identity, since it was either descriptive of a sense of self provided order within differing contexts, or highlighted inequities. Why race did not seem to matter to the remaining students was explored with 3 resulting frameworks: race-salience and beliefs in a postracial society having the most explanatory value, while racial colorblindness the least. Methodological and theoretical innovations provide the foundation for implications toward complicating notions of race and identity within higher education research and practice.

“My Brain Database Doesn’t See Skin Color”

In this article, I examine three interconnected notions about color-blind racism and the Internet. The first is the fantasy that the Internet as a technology is color-blind with regard to race; the second is the reality that color-blind racism operates in the tech industry. The third notion is the way color-blind racism shapes Internet studies of race and racism, in which race is contained as a “variable” or as an “identity” that inhere exclusively in people of color, but that leaves the way race is embedded in structures, industry, and the very idea of the Internet unexamined. To explore these facets of color-blind racism, the article offers a theoretical meta-analysis of scholarly literature, the cultural artifacts of technoculture, and popular accounts of the tech industry.

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

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...

Immigration in the Era of Color-Blind Racism

For most of the history of the United States, race played an explicit role in immigration laws that designated only Whites (and later Blacks) as eligible for U.S. citizenship. Today, however, we are in a new era in race relations—one that Eduardo Bonilla-Silva refers to as “colorblind racism.” Color-blind racism provides a critical perspective for understanding the enduring role of race in immigration practices in the post–Civil Rights era. This article illustrates this enduring reality within immigration policies and practices utilizing the color-blind perspective. We begin by summarizing the key tenets of Bonilla-Silva’s color-blind racism. We then overview immigration policies and practices in effect during the era of explicit racialization. Next, we contrast policies and practices with the more subtle employment of racialization today. The bulk of our article is devoted to illustrating how the racialized impact of immigration policies and procedures serves as a mechanism for the reproduction of color blindness and a racially unequal social order. We conclude with a discussion on the difficulties of grappling with this reality in a racially stratified society that is reluctant to acknowledge it.

Colorblindness & Diversity in U.S. Communications Policy

Telecommunications, whether in the form of television, radio, cable, satellite or the Internet is inherently an important infrastructure because it provides the vehicle by which citizenry receive and convey information, contributing to the forming knowledge and perceptions of the world around them. Because it is a vital link for social, cultural, economic and political participation, it is necessary to critically assess diversity in terms of those who participate and are represented structurally within telecommunications especially among marginalized groups and voices. One critical approach to examine diversity lies in colorblind racism. As developed by Bonilla-Silva, colorblind racism allows people to utilize race neutral notions, so that skin color or other racial markers are claimed to be ignored or dismissed as not relevant, emphasizing that what matters is merit, ignoring the fact that often the merits of a person are ignored or diminished because of the color of his or her skin. Bonilla-Silva’s concept of colorblind racism argues that modern day racism is present in these practices that appear nonracial. It is a racial ideology that attempts to explain racial inequality in non-racists ways through the use of specific types of frames present in discourse. Collectively these discursive practices contribute to notions that we live and operate in a “post-racial society” where color, race and ethnicity no longer matter. For decades the “public, interest, convenience and necessity” has been the overlying mantra of telecommunications regulation under the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended). To help govern what is in the public interest an, the FCC has crafted regulatory policies to best promote diversity often balancing them with the interests of localism and competition. With respect furthering diversity, the FCC has created specific regulations to address three specific types of diversity: 1) source (e.g. ownership, workforce) 2) content (e.g. program, viewpoint) and 3) exposure (horizontal, vertical). Within the area of source diversity, this paper will address the following main research question: How does critical race theory, namely Bonilla-Silva’s theory of colorblind racism, help us better understand diversity regulation in U.S. communications policy? This paper will use legal research to locate relevant rulemakings and legal opinions that address media and minority ownership rules as well as equal employment opportunity rules and analyze them through the critical lens of colorblind racism. The theoretical framework of colorblind racism is an established method for studying the post-racial society. Racial ideology is embedded in everyday discourse about contemporary social issues. Discourse creates meaning; meaning arises out of discourse through the complexity of socio-historical and cultural processes. Discourse in this study are the official FCC regulatory documents and associated court opinions of selected documents that govern diversity in communication policy. Preliminary results indicate that many of these specific rules within diversity regulations invoke colorblindness that is void of specific mention of marginalized groups in terms of race and ethnicity and instead are written in race-neutral terms. In addition, while some of these steps are a necessary “legal” outgrowth of the judicial review process that requires the FCC to be within constitutional parameters not to violate the First Amendment with content-specific language or use affirmative action criteria in fostering a diverse work force. Nevertheless, as evidenced within official rules and legal opinions, both the FCC and courts have arguably invoked colorblind terms when addressing source diversity within U.S. communications policy. As a result, while legal, the use of colorblind discourse has perpetuated structural inequalities that exist within the telecommunications landscape and unfortunately contributes to systemic racism.