The
United States is the only major Western European nation-state “that was
explicitly founded on racial oppression[1]."
For the first 350 years of American history (from 1619 when the first African
slaves were purchased in Jamestown, Virginia until the last piece of Civil
Rights legislation in 1968) racial oppression, in the forms of slavery and legal
segregation, was legally protected. Stated in another way, explicit racial
oppression has only been “illegal” for roughly 10% of our nation’s history.
The
racist American system was created by powerful white men and continues to exist
“because of the recurring actions of a great array of human actors, but
especially those of powerful white decisionmakers.”[2]
The ideologies of white supremacy and black inferiority were imbedded in the
political, economic, and legal institutions. Throughout history, these
institutions and their legitimating ideologies have served to protect the
system of racial oppression and the wealth and privilege of the elite white
males that created them and continue to benefit from them.
"Historically, most whites have not been content to exploit African Americans and other Americans of color and then to just admit candidly that such action is crass exploitation for their own individual or group advantage. Instead, white Americans have developed a strong racial frame that interprets and defends white privileges and advantaged conditions as meritorious and accents white virtues as well as the alleged inferiority and deficiencies of those people of color who are oppressed.[3]"
Racial oppression and the governing racist ideologies were
rationalized according the enlightenment philosophy of natural law and justified
by the philosophy, science, and theology that governed the beliefs of elite and
ordinary whites.
In
the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement
(in which the Civil Rights Act of
1968 officially and legally prohibited overt racial discrimination)
white
political elites, such as Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, developed new forms
of coded racial rhetoric (promising to protect traditional family values,
enforce law and order, get tough on crime) designed to explicitly communicate
their commitment to white Americans but, that also, provided a discursive
canopy of denial to deflect accusations of discrimination and institutional
racism.
Racism remains systemically imbedded in the basic beliefs,
routines, and operations of all major American institutions. Although much of
the explicit and overt forms of racism have become taboo, they continue to be
performed in explicit and coded forms in public frontstages and in the safety
of all white social backstages. Some public acts of racism are condemned by
elite and ordinary whites but are excused as isolated incidents of individual
actors and aberrations to an otherwise “post-racial” or “color-blind” society[4].
Today, the persistence of institutional forms of racism[5]
are explained, justified, and addressed in economic terms and as the result of
the moral failure of black culture and individual black Americans, rather than
as systemic problems.
Mainstream Approaches to Contemporary Racism
Systemic
racism counters mainstream approaches to contemporary racism that use a limited
prejudice/stereotyping or individual/small-group discrimination theoretical framework[6].
Mainstream analysts conceptualize American society a relatively healthy
democratic and open society and analyze whites as one ethnic group competing
amongst a complex mix of other racial and ethnic groups[7].
Mainstream approaches downplay “the centrality and injustice of white wealth,
power, and privilege” and “do not assess how deep, foundational, and systemic
this racial oppression has been historically and remains today.”[8]
Further, mainstream approaches do not account for the institutionalized
hierarchy of wealth and power that benefit whites and the “centuries-old social
reproduction processes of unjust [white] enrichment and [black] impoverishment
that lie just beneath the surface of the recognized disharmonies.”[9]
Finally, mainstream approaches fail to place the powerful elite white men that
dominate the key decision making positions in the political, economic, legal,
and cultural institutions and whose decision reinforce and reproduce racial
inequality and protect white privilege.
One
such approach to contemporary racism is the concept of symbolic racism.
Symbolic race theorists, relying on survey data in which whites self-report
their racial attitudes, focus on how individual whites have adjusted to the
structural and cultural changes of the post-Civil Rights era by moving from old
forms of overt racial prejudice based on “negative feelings toward blacks
and a belief that blacks are inherently inferior to whites,” to new covert
racial prejudice “conveyed through white opposition to black demands and
resentment at their special treatment.”[10]
Symbolic race theory, Feagin argues, is incomplete because it plays “down
old-fashioned blatant racism” that continues to exist “among many whites and is
directly connected to negative views of substantial government programs to
eradicate racial discrimination.”[11]
Further, the self-reporting survey methods, used by many symbolic race
scholars, fail to uncover “[c]ertain common racial ideals and images” that
“become part of a collective white consciousness and unconsciousness – the
‘collection of widely shared individual memories, beliefs, and understandings
that exist in the mind at the nonreporting level.’”[12]
According
to Feagin (2010), “the apparent decrease in certain anti-black images,
prejudices, and stereotypes among whites from the 1930s to the present,” that
symbolic race scholars reference to argue the decline in overt “old-fashioned”
racism, “likely reflects to a significant degree increased concern for social
acceptability.”
"Clearly, it is less socially acceptable to publicly
avow strong racist attitudes today, so many whites reserve their more blatantly
racist comments for the privated spheres of home, locker room, club, or bar.
Indeed, social science researchers have found that many white respondents alter
comments on racial issues in order to appear unprejudiced.[13]"
In reaction to the decreasing social acceptability of explicit
public racism, Feagin argues, the racist beliefs, language, and inclinations to
act have not necessarily become covert as much as they have moved from the
public frontstage to the safety of the white backstage. Picca and Feagin (2007)
refer to this explicit but hidden racism as “backstage racism.” Picca and
Feagin argue:
Once many blatantly racist performances moved to the
backstage, and many whites’ frontstage performances became more racially
polite, it became much harder to argue that U.S. society was still deeply
racist. Today this society often, but certainly not always, appears to be
‘colorblind’ in its everyday contours and operations. Frontstage politeness by
whites, many commentators argue, indicates that racial matters have improved
greatly, that discrimination is no longer serious, and that racial groups
mostly get along fine. At least, this is how a majority of whites seem to read
the contemporary situation[14].
Symbolic racism and backstage racism theories provide
important explanations of contemporary racism because they represent the white
reactions to the hard fought victories of black Americans prior to and during
the civil rights movement.
However, to gain a more complete understanding of
how racial oppression operates in the United States today, we must develop a
fuller understanding of how racist ideologies and practices are imbedded in the
basic fabric of our political, economic, legal, education, labor, and law
enforcement institutions.
Further, we must understand how these institutions
form an interlocking system of racial oppression that is dialectically
dependent on and independent of the racist actions of individuals.
"A striking feature of systemic racism in the United
States is how long it has persisted with a strikingly inegalitarian hierarchy
firmly in place. A useful concept here is that of the social reproduction of
racial hierarchy. The perpetuation of this hierarchical system has required a
constant reproducing of major inegalitarian institutions and their
discriminatory arrangements and processes. For systemic racism to persist
across so many generations, white individuals and small groups have had to participate
actively in the ongoing collective and discriminatory reproduction of the
family, community, legal, political, economic, educational, and religious
institutions that undergird this inegalitarian system.[15]"
Systemic Racism Theory
Systemic racism is not simply a system of racial oppression but, more importantly, Feagin and O’Brien (2003) explain: “the material and ideological construction of the dominant white group.”[16]
The ideologies of white supremacy and black inferiority “were built into the
foundation of this society in the 17th century and have been
manifested for centuries in its basic institutions – including the legal and
political system, the mass media, the educational institutions, the labor
market, and other economic institutions.”[17]
Racial prejudices, stereotypes, emotions, acts of discrimination, and
ideologies embedded in the fabric of American institutions continue to protect
and reproduce an inegalitarian system of white social privileges and unjust
enrichment.[18]
Thus, white racism is “endemic and foundational,” not simply an incidental,
“undesirable component of an otherwise healthy” American society[19].
Historically,
racist ideologies and institutions have been justified through science
(biology, psychology, mathematics, economics, social science), anti-black
stereotypes (blacks as inherently violent, criminal, dangerous, hypersexual,
lazy, uncontrolled, immoral), and liberalism (individualism, free-markets, work
ethic, thrift, morality). Further, the racist system has been reinforced by violence,
elite rhetoric, every-day discourse, family, religion, and entertainment[20].
The economic effect of systemic racism, according to Feagin
(2000), is the unjust enrichment of white Americans and impoverishment of black
Americans.
As the benefactors of unjust enrichment, “white are strong
stakeholders in a centuries-old hierarchical structure of opportunities,
wealth, and privileges that stems from a long history of racial exploitation
and oppression.”[21]
The racial hierarchy created and maintained by the white
ruling class also provides economic and social benefits to ordinary whites.
Today, as throughout the history of the United States, most ordinary whites are
invested in the identity of whiteness “bought into the identity of whiteness,
thereby binding themselves collectively to the white racial group.”[22]
Thus, the collective “interests of the white racial group” include a material
interest in maintaining the economic and social privileges “inherited from
white ancestors.”[23]
The White Racial Frame
Central to the persistence of systemic racism is the white racial frame. The white racial frame is an organized set “sincere fictions, stereotypes, images, emotions, interpretations, and discriminatory inclinations that legitimize systemic racism and incline or allow whites to participate in the routine exploitation of people of color” – consciously and unconsciously[24].
By “sincere,” Feagin means, “these racial fictions are generally thought to be
faithful representations of societal realities by those who adopt them.”[25]
The white racial frame operates as the cognitive filter by which whites
organize and interpret everyday experiences, information, and facts[26],
and, as Feagin (2006) explains: “If facts do not fit in a person’s frame, that
person typically ignores or rejects the facts, not the frame.”[27]
The
white racial frame includes pro-white and anti-black (and anti- other
racialized “others”) subframes.
The pro-white frame contains "assertively
positive views of whites and white institutions”[28]
and positive images and feelings about the “white self and white society.”[29]
In contrast, the anti-black frame includes negative stereotypes, images, metaphors,
and emotions about black Americans that often prevent whites “from seeing, or
seeing clearly, that their society is pervaded by widespread racial prejudice
and discrimination.” [30]
According to Feagin, the “anti-black subframe of the dominant white racial
frame was fully in place by 1700” and white elites “are the ones, most
centrally, who polished, established, proclaimed, and circulated this white
frame to the larger population, which in turn used the ideas in their own
ways.”[31]
Early commentaries focused on at least 10 “major emotion-laden stereotypes and
images of black Americans, who are alleged:
1. to
have distinctive color, hair, and lips;
2. to
be bestial and apelike;
3. to
be unintelligent;
4. to
have a disagreeable smell;
5. to
be uncivilized, alien, and foreign;
6. to
be immoral, criminal, and dangerous;
7. to
be lazy;
8. to
be oversexed;
9. to
be ungrateful and rebellious;
Black Resistance and the Evolution of the White Racial Frame
Continual resistance to racial oppression, by black Americans (and other Americans of color) is a constitutive element of systemic racism. As Feagin explains:
Oppression in each historical epoch has dialectically triggered distinctive anti-oppression efforts” and “The omnipresent resistance of oppressed African Americans has shaped the character of white oppressors’ retaliatory actions and thus the social contours of the larger society itself.[33]
In the four major epochs of American racial history (slavery,
Jim Crown, Civil Rights, and post-Civil Rights), in response to black
resistance, the dominant white racial frame has “been added to, subtracted
from, or rearranged in its emphases” to deal black resistance movements and
pressures for change, “particularly in regard to government remedial and
antidiscrimination policies.”[34]
In
each epoch, the adaptive racial frame has had a cyclical affect: it has
legitimated and shaped “societal institutions and individual actions” and in
turn has been shaped by those institutions and individuals[35].
Elite whites justified the enslavement of African Americans with
pseudo-scientific theories of biological inferiority. For example, in Notes
on the State of Virginia,
Thomas Jefferson (1785) speculated:
Whether the black
of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and the
scarf-skin… whether it proceeds from the colour of the blood, the colour of the
bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature….[36]
During Jim Crow, elite whites justified the legal segregation
and violence against black Americans with a mix of cultural and biological
explanations of black inferiority.
In this period, more anti-black stereotypes
and prejudices were integrated into the white racial frame, including
assumptions and characterizations of blacks as: hypersexual, mentally inferior,
culturally inferior, child-like, carefree, disease ridden, susceptible to
vagrancy, crime, and prostitution.
Alabama Governor George Wallace asserted
that blacks were naturally prone to the “most atrocious acts of rape, assault,
and murder.”[37]
The Civil Rights act of 1964 “formally dismantled the Jim Crow
system of discrimination in public accommodations, employment, voting,
education, and federally financed activities.”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
“rendered illegal numerous discriminatory barriers to effective political
participation by African Americans and mandated federal review of all new
voting regulations so that it would be possible to determine whether or use
would perpetuate voting discrimination.”[38]
And, for a short period, “some influential members of the white elite” strongly
supported civil rights laws and “their interpretive discourse abandoned the
blaming of black Americans for racial problems, and some even adopted” civil
rights terms such as white racism and institutional racism[39].
However, the change in some elite white rhetoric and “apparent support for
dramatic antidiscrimination intervention in society soon evaporated” as a
majority of elite and ordinary whites never fully accepted such rhetoric or
intervention[40].
In
the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, in which the Civil Rights Act of
1968 officially and legally prohibited overt racial discrimination, white
political elites, such as Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, developed new
forms of coded racial rhetoric (promising to protect traditional family values,
enforce law and order, get tough on crime) designed to explicitly communicate
their commitment to white Americans but, that also, provided a discursive
canopy of denial to deflect accusations of discrimination and institutional
racism.
Racism remains systemically embedded in the basic beliefs,
routines, and operations of all major American institutions. Although much of
the explicit and overt forms of racism have become taboo, they continue to be
performed in explicit and coded forms in public frontstages and in the safety
of all white social backstages. Some public acts of racism are condemned by
elite and ordinary whites but are excused as isolated incidents of individual
actors and aberrations to an otherwise “post-racial” or “color-blind” society[41].
The persistence of institutional forms of racism[42]
are explained, justified, and addressed in economic terms and as the result of
the moral failure of black culture and individual black Americans, rather than
as systemic problems.
Today, as in the past, elite whites react to the black
resistance, social movements, and legal victories with new laws and public
policies, new forms of racial rhetoric, and violence to protect their
privileged position in American society[43].
Further, the elite white males that dominate the decision-making positions of
media and entertainment corporations continue to produce content that
perpetuates anti-black stereotypes, reproduces notions of black inferiority and
white superiority, and protects the economic and social privilege of white
Americans.
This reproduction of white supremacy is legitimized, consciously and
unconsciously, according to the positivist, market based, profit maximization
principles of the white culture industry.
[1]
Feagin 2006, 2
[2]
Feagin 2013, 36 “Our racist system
exists because of the recurring actions of a great array of human actors, but
especially those of powerful white decisionmakers.”
[3]
Feagin 2010, 25
[4]
Picca and Feagin 2007; Bonilla-Silva 2003
[5]
(the continuation of economic, political, legal, educational, employment and
income, and social inequalities, residential segregation, health disparities,
and disproportionate incarceration rates)
[6]
Feagin 2006, 4, 5; Feagin 2000, 27
“This mainstream approach tends to view persisting
racial-ethnic tensions and conflicts today as being matters of prejudice and
stereotyping or of individual and small-group discrimination mainly directed
against Americans of color. Racial-ethnic inequality is periodically discussed,
but it is typically presented as something that is not fundamental, but rather
an unfortunate socioeconomic condition tacked onto an otherwise healthy
society.” Feagin 2006, 4, 5
[9]
Feagin 2006, 5
[12]
Feagin and O’Brien 2003, 23
[13]
Feagin 2010, 101,102
[14]
Picca and Feagin 2007, xii
“Indeed, the omnipresent white pretense of
colorblindness increases the difficulty of protesting whites’ racist behavior
in many societal settings.” Picca and Feagin 2007, xii
[15]
Feagin 2013, 35, 36
[21]
Feagin 2000, 12
“Understanding how this unjust impoverishment and
enrichment gets transmitted and institutionalized over generations of white and
black Americans is an important step in developing an adequate conceptual
framework for U.S. racism. Black labor was widely and unjustly used for
building up the wealth of this white-dominated country from the 1600s to at
least the 1960s – the slavery and Jim Crow segregation periods. Black Americans
as a group were proletarianized to build up white prosperity. Racial classes
(groups) are the rungs on the racist ladder and have divergent group
interests.” Feagin 2000, 12
[22]
Feagin 2000, 12
[23]
“The interests of the white racial group have included not only a concrete
interest in labor and other exploitation during the slavery and segregation
periods, but also a concrete interest later on in the maintaining the
substantial economic and other social privileges inherited from white
ancestors.” Feagin 2000, 12
[27]
Feagin 2006, 26
[28]
Feagin 2006, 26
[29]
Feagin and O’Brien 2003, 96
[30]
Feagin 2006, 26; Feagin and O’Brien 2003, 96
[31]
Feagin 2013, 55
[32]
Feagin 2013, 55
[33]
Feagin 2006, 31, 32
[41]
Picca and Feagin 2007; Bonilla-Silva 2003
[42]
(the continuation of economic, political, legal, educational, employment and
income, and social inequalities, residential segregation, health disparities,
and disproportionate incarceration rates)
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