| Last weekend, in the discussion of my diary "More Than Gatesgate", a couple of troubling response patterns emerged. One was quite clearly an example of what's come to be known as "colorblind racism," the other was something more subtle. I want to discuss both those responses in some detail in a followup diary, as well as the much more virulent, in-your-face racism of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and others, which I will look at in a third diary. But before plunging into that discussion, I think it's absolutely necessary to refresh people here on the nature of colorblind racism, since that is the centerpiece of my approach to understanding what was going on, and what was being misunderstood. Of course, what played out here at Open Left clearly pales in comparison to the outright racist attacks now being launched against President Obama, which I also want to address in terms of an integrated framework, where the relationship of colorblind racism to other factors it enables is substantially different. To do this, I'm going to heavily plariarize a diary of my own from earlier this year, "A Three-Ring Circus On Race This Week", while also bringing in additional material and setting up the discussion for the two diaries that follow.
In that earlier diary, I discussed two different theoretical constructs. The first, Social Dominance Theory (SDT), is more general, a theory of group dominance in hierarchically organized societies that is entirely general in nature. The second is Colorblind Racism. SDT was initially developed as a way of describing how hierarchical societies are organized, not how they change, but it does provide ready insight into how change can come about, as various elements are replaced or reprioritized even while overall functional relationships remain largely intact, as I will discuss below. Colorblind Racism should be seen in terms of SDT as a replacement ideology. It took the place of pre-Civil Rights Era racism, which took somewhat different forms in the North and South, but in both places involved assumptions of racial inferiority which were backed up in custom and law.
While it presented itself as a break from the racism of the past-which in some respects it certainly was-it nonetheless continues to function as a means for maintaining the same system of group dominance-blacks over whites, with other races taking on a middling position. This formulation does, however, allow for exceptional individuals to rise above the general condition of their racial group, but (a) this individual success does not translate back into fundamental change in group status, and (b) neither does individual success guarantee that one will be treated commensurate with that success in any given situation-as, for example, when you're a black Harvard professor who has trouble getting into your house, and someone-however innocently--calls the cops on you. |
| Social Dominance Theory
SDT explains the maintenance of group dominance by men over women, elders over youth and arbitrarily defined socially dominant groups over arbitrarily defined socially subordinate groups. Such groups are commonly defined in terms of race, ethnicity, religion and cultural identity more generally. SDT explains the general mechanisms of how institutions, individual attitudes and legitimating social mythology interact with one another to perpetuate and reproduce group dominance. By highlighting general mechanisms, it enables us to see beyond the specifics in any one example.
This chart displays the general structure of the theory:
In the center is the realm of "legitimating myths" (LMs) which include both "hierarchy enhancing legitimating myths" (HE-LMs), which serve to legitimize, promote and intensify the dominance of one group over all others, and "hierarchy attenuating legitimating myths" (HA-LMs), which serve to challenge group dominance and promote equality. It is the persistence of HE-LMs in general, even when new HA-LMs are introduced, and old HE-LMs fall out of favor, that largely account for the persistence of group dominance over time, even when major shifts in attitudes and relative social and power relations. The persistence of HE-LMs in turn justifies and mystifies the persistence of practices--institutional and individual--on the right-hand side of the chart, which perpetuate group-based hierarchy. Although not shown on this chart, this in turn influences socialization and group status on the left-hand side of the chart, feeding into attitudes in the form of SDO (social dominance orientation).
Colorblind Racism
The second theory is colorblind racism, a theory which illuminates those specifics of how white supremacy has reconfigured itself in the post-Civil Rights Era. While it touches on all three realms addressed by SDT-attitudes, practices and legitimating myths, it is the third realm that is central to its explanatory power. What it more, its influence as an integrated set of legitimating myths can be seen as facilitating a range of other sorts of white supremacist practice. In his book, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva identifies four central frames at the core of colorblind racism: "The central component of any dominant racial ideology is its frames or set paths for interpreting information," Bonilla-Silva writes. These four are:
(1) Abstract liberalism.
The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas associated with political liberalism (e.g. "equal opportunity," the idea that force should not be used to achieve social policy) and economic liberalism (e.g., choice, individualism) in an abstract manner to explain racial matters.
(2) Naturalization.
Naturalization is a frame that allows whites to explain away racial phenomena by suggesting they are natural occurrences.
(3) Cultural Racism.
Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based arguments such as "Mexicans do not put much emphasis on education" or "blacks have too many babies" to explain the standing of minorities in society.
(4) Minimization of Racism
Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting minorities' life chances ("It's better now than in the past" or "There is discrimination, but there are plenty of jobs out there).
Colorblind Racism's Sustaining Role Re Other Racial Processes
It's important to understand that color-blind racism encompasses much more than these four central frames, which lie at its conceptual core. It sheds light on a wide range of phenomena, and has generated a variety of different empirical studies, and even new methodologies that get at the particular forms that colorblind racism takes.
For example, this presentation, by Todd Rudd, Senior Researcher at the Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University speaks of "Identifying conditions, processes, practices, policies, ideologies, and interactions that lead to racial inequality" and identifies five of them:
- Individual racial animus
- Implicit Bias ("symbolic racism")
- Colorblind racism
- Institutional racism
- Structural Racialization
From the perspective of SDT, the first two manifest predominately as attitudes related to SDO, colorblind racism manifests predominately in the realm of legitimating myths, and the last two manifest predominately in the realm of social/institutional practices. The first two categories can generally be distinguished by identifying the first as conscious, the second as subconscious, however this first approximation generally fails to account for people whose behavior clearly indicates both animus and denial. I would argue that figures such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Jeff Sessions cross the line from implicit bias to racial animus regardless of how much they may deny any conscious racial hostility. Persistent refusal to acknowledge their own bias, and projection of their biases onto the racial other are two unmistakable signs of outright animus, rather than implicit bias.
The second two categories are distinguished by whether the focus is intra-institutional, focusing on the history, practices and outcomes of a single institution (institutional racism), or if the focus is inter-institutional (structural racialization). The first is much more widely recognized, and can be combated, to a certain extent, by instituting specific institutional practices, many of which are now under attack under the color-blind racist rubric of "reverse racism". The second is less focused on by white people, but needs no introduction to people of color, who experience it on a daily basis. I've done a couple of diaries this year dealing with reports that studied multiple factors in geographical areas -- this one on the racial geography of opportunity in the New York City region and this one on health factors in South LA vs. West LA. These reports exemplify how one can identify the impacts of structural racialization in order to begin formulating means of combating it.
To sum up: colorblind racism directly involves symbolic racism as one of its components, while serving to minimize all racial processes and to also naturalize the effects of institutional racism and structural racialization. Colorblind racism not only minimizes the significance of racial animus by observing how much less prevalent and prominent its overt expressions are compared to 40 or 50 years ago, but also by not considering how even minimal expressions of animus can interact with other racial processes. What's more, the overall minimalization of racial problems serves to set up minorities for the accusation that they are the ones who are actually racist-seeing racial bias where it doesn't exist, being obsessed about race, and unable to "transcend" it (unlike white folks like them), refusing to be judged by a "colorblind" standard, etc.
Projecting Racism
This is the most pernicious aspect of colorbind racism: it provides the foundations for routinely labeling minorities as "racist" and while routinely absolving white people of actually racist attitudes, activities or rationales. Not all those who buy into colorblind racist ideology go this far, of course. But the potential is clearly there for a complete flipping of who is racist and who is not. And this has clearly been one of the long-term goals of conservative hegemonic struggle, even if very few people have been conscious of it. With the election of Barack Obama, heightened by the nomination of Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, this potential has clearly been activated both by outspoken racists such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan, and by more coded racists, such as Jeff Sessions.
Abstract Liberalism
Of the above four frames, abstract liberalism deserves special attention, because it is particularly distinctive of this kind of racism-appealing both to those with malignant and relatively benevolent attitudes on race. In discussing it, Bonilla-Silva describes liberalism in historical terms, as the ideology of a rising bourgeoisie, which only got around to extending its "universal" principles to the general populace within European-based liberal democracies rather late in the game, and never even considered that it applied to people living in the countries it turned to for raw materials and slave (or very low-wage) labor.
The idea of treating individuals "equally" when they are born into communities that have been subject to centuries of wildly disparate treatment derives a great deal of plausibility from the fact that liberal ideals have a great deal of appeal for those who benefit from them--as is always the case with HE-LMs. But the myth of meritocracy is particularly appealing because it tells us that we are the masters of our own destiny, as well as telling us that those who don't succeed are just "losers" who deserve their fate.
And yet, history tells us this is clearly not the case. People's life-chances are largely determined by cultural and historical events over which they have no control. Those born in a war-ravaged country do not have the same life-chances as those born into peace and prosperity. Those raised in a rich cultural environment, with a top-flight educational system, and social networks going back three, four, five generations are much better prepared to succeed than those deprived of such advantages.
One can readily embrace the ideal of moving toward a world in which abstract liberal ideals are realized, a world in which equal opportunity is a reality for all, and yet fully recognize that that world can never be self-sustaining in and of itself. It will always be dependent on the past that it has emerged from, and it must take honest account of that past, settling its centuries-old debts to the best of its ability--an ongoing process that will never be done, because the present is inherently always indebted to the past.
In the diary that follows, I am going to look closely at the dynamics of colorblind racism here at Open Left, both for their own sake, and to lay a foundation for better appreciating the more complex and extreme dynamics seen in the actions of conservative/GOP racists attacking Obama and Sotomayor. |
