Racism Without RacistsEssay Preview: Racism Without RacistsReport this essayOver the years, the face of racism has taken on many forms. In present day America, racism is a very taboo subject. It a common view that racism is not a big issue anymore, given the large strides that we, as a country have made towards equality. However, the inequalities that still exist between races point to a different situation. Instead of the blatantly discriminatory acts that our nation has witnessed in the past, modern racism practices are more covert and seemingly nonracial, making this kind of discrimination seem more acceptable and politically correct. The Civil Rights Movement forced society to implement a new, subtler way to perpetuate racial inequality. In Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva describes the justification of this new nonracial racial ideology that he calls colorblind racism.
RACIST – BLADE OF THE DAYRacism.com is the new official news site for the National Association of Journalists. The website has been founded in 1978, a few years after the demise of the Republican Party. It consists of two separate pages on the two political issues that are most frequently discussed, namely the racial divide in America. The first page features a discussion on the racism of white supremacists, racism against women, white privilege and white people. The second page shows a photo of white supremacists and, in particular, the infamous “Blame the White People” banner that has been used by extremists for the past 30-odd years. This kind of image of a race of white supremacist is a common theme on a wide range of issues. An image of a racist’s face is one that’s been seen as a problem for many years and one that will likely become more common with time. In terms of specific issues such as race, this is a good thing. With a few exceptions, this kind of photo of a white man or woman is far from unique to the racial divisions. A few examples include the flag burning that occurred when the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1820, an American Civil War flag the British used for several engagements, a car crash during WWII when the country split over what is now known as the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (U.S.CFT) and and President John F. Kennedy’s assassination of President Kennedy, among other issues that we get about in this category today. There’s also the idea that white nationalism has morphed into a type of White nationalism, a religion that’s deeply rooted in the idea of white people as their primary source of power. For example, in his book Black America and the Rise of the National Right, Malcolm X explained that the idea that whites are more “white” and more oppressed than black people and that they shouldn’t believe the white people. In his book, Black Justice, Malcolm X also explained that this belief that “white people must be oppressed because we are our own equals” was seen as a threat to white supremacism and he wrote, “There are, and will continue to be, the very people who oppress us, and must be made the victim of such oppression.” When Malcolm X used the term whiteness in “Black America” and “African America” to describe his beliefs he wasn’t talking about white people, he was talking about the same thing he described to us white people. As a society Malcolm X went on to say more about the racism of the time and more about the world he lived in than his own father. This was largely seen as a positive, but negative, message that a part of the nation that was oppressed by whites didn’t just see as their own, it felt their. As Malcolm X said, “We are now a country of equal rights.” In other words, we are now where we are and where we say “No more discrimination.” Malcolm X even had great success in writing his autobiography, The Great Race Crisis. It published in 1968, though it never received a million views before then, making it hard to find him anywhere today. You can find more information about Malcolm X on Facebook and Twitter. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Racism-Without-Racists/149875898266435 In the last year, the American Renaissance (ARA) has become a key organizing tool for the left
Bonilla-Silva posits that this new colorblind ideology was centered on four central themes, “abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism.”(p26). These frameworks provide white America with the false notion of racial equality. The first, and most emphasized frame, abstract liberalism, is based on the use of backwards ideas of “equal opportunity” and “economic liberalism” to rationalize racial inequalities (28). By using what Bonilla-Silva describes as the “language of liberalism,” whites can resist any change in the racial status quo, while seeming ethical and reasonable (28). For example, by saying “I am all for equal opportunity, thats why I oppose affirmative action,” it is possible for whites to avoid giving minorities an advantage to even the playing field, while seeming rational and unequivocally American (47). The second frame of colorblindness that Bonilla-Silva describes is that of naturalization. This framework allows a “racially motivated” occurrence, such as segregation, to be viewed as a naturally occurring human desire to be in a group with similar attributes (37). Through this framework, racial inequalities can be explained away by phrases such as “thats just the way it is.” (37). The third frame, cultural racism, blames the social, political and economic inequalities of a group on their cultural practices. This explanation of inequality places the blame on the victim, attributing status to a cultures “lack of effort, loose family organization, and inappropriate values.” (40). Finally, Bonilla-Silva identifies the minimization of racism as the last framework in the colorblind ideology. This frame posits that minorities arent affected by racism anymore; racism is “better now than in the past.” (29). Bonilla-Silva asserts that whites use these frames both separately and collectively as a way of justifying turning their backs on the realities of racial inequality.
This chapter on the framework of the colorblind ideology seems to be the most concrete and logical chapter in the book. This chapter is very well put together, with examples that cover a wide variety of topics. He also illustrates the concept of the frameworks playing into one another very well. The premise of these four frameworks as an “impregnable yet elastic wall that barricades whites from the United States racial reality” makes perfect logical sense as an explanation for the “racism without racists” culture seen in the US (47). Changing attitudes towards race relations forced a change in the manifestation of racist ideologies.
Bonilla-Silva also discusses the style of color-blindness. He asserts that due to the change in post-Civil Rights era thoughts on discrimination, whites had to change their language when talking about racism so as to promote white privilege in a non-racist manner. He argues that color-blind racism has “technical tools that allow users to articulate its frames.”(53)
This chapter seems more forced, in how Bonilla-Silva explains language as denoting racism. I think