Whiteness and Racism

The Color of Violence- Trask’s concept of “peaceful violence” and the tenure case of Prof. Andrea Smith

I really want to address Prof. Andrea Smith’s (author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide) tenure case at the University of Michigan because this is a prime example of contemporary institutional racism, a kind of racism that Haunani-Kay Trask discusses as “peaceful violence”(82). Described by Frantz Fannon in his 1968 book The Wretched of the Earth, “peaceful violence” is the way in which racism and racial inequality persists on a macro-institutional scale, as implicit rather than always explicit and overt, and despite many claims by “progressives” as well as neo-conservatives that racism is a thing of the past, demands to “just get over it” or accusations of “playing the race card”, a very hostile environment is created where if you’re a person of color it is increasingly stigmatizing and silencing to decry racism despite overwhelming evidence of racial inequality (see Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s concept of “colorblind racism in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States).

In this hostile environment, Prof. Andrea Smith’s tenure case cannot be directly discussed by the University of Michigan as an issue of race, as the result of the contemporary environment of what Bonilla-Silva describes as color-blind racism, evidenced in the dismantlement of affirmative action policies (which is increasing across the United States despite racial disparities in academia and other governing institutional structures which still haven’t been solved which was the reason for affirmative action policies in the first place). It is even more telling that U. of Michigan won’t release a public statement as to why they denied Prof. Smith’s tenure case. It is certainly not for lack of credentials, for she has more than earned scholarly respect as one of the greatest indigenous feminists intellectuals of our time. As 1 of 4 Native women professors at the University as well as located as a political and numeric minority as a woman of color in the Women’s Studies Department, her work is ever-important as a voice that needs to be heard.

Trask describes Native women’s leadership as always being formative in resistance to the institutional manifestations of “peaceful violence” despite the odds: “These women leaders [Andrea Smith], and many more unknown, continue to carry the burden of indigenous resistance against imperialism” (87). In addition, Prof. Smith’s rigorous scholarly standards as well as her impressive list of publications and activism should make her claim for tenure even stronger, yet they are “letting her go”? If she is not only qualified, but one of the most qualified tenure cases, why is the Women’s Studies Department bowing to the whims of the University of Michigan, a school predominated by white male professors, when the Women’s Studies Department should be a sanctuary for historically excluded voices, for feminists, and particularly for women of color feminists, and Native American feminists?

What hope can we have for preserving, supporting and fore-fronting the work of women of color feminists and Native feminists when even Women’s Studies departments aren’t working as allies and are allowing the silencing and disinvestment of the work of women of color and Native feminists from academia and from feminist discourse overall? Unless we look at Prof. Smith’s tenure case within the lens of race and inequality in America, seeing the academic institution as one of the institutional structures of “peaceful violence” which perpetuate white supremacy, we will not be able to adequately address the complexity nor implications of this political struggle for Prof. Smith’s earned and well-deserved place at the fore-front of feminist struggle, for if feminism excludes anyone, it cannot liberate us all.

***For more info, check out Campus Lockdown: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex-

http://www.woclockdown.org/

Is whiteness looking outward for the answer to the world’s problems- rather than looking inward and examining our own role, our own complicity, our own oppressive ways? Unless we address our own white privilege as white people, as a racial group, a cultural group, an ethnic group, we will not be useful or instrumental in addressing and fighting against racism. Unless white “progressives” and “liberals” own our whiteness- which means going beyond acknowledging it, but working hard to stop ourselves from often unknowingly oppressing via (white) dominant/normative/hegemonic cultural methods (for greater depth on this look at Maria Lugones’s discussion of racist ethnocentrism in her essay “Hablano cara a cara/Speaking Face to Face: An Exploration of Ethnocentric Racism” published in 1990 in Gloria Anzaldua’s Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras). As part of the dominant oppressive group who benefit from unearned white priviledge (see Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”), whites struggling against oppression (many of whom perhaps wouldn’t choose to be a part of this group if there was a choice) critical self/inner reflection is a necessary component of anti-racist struggle, as well as fighting oppression alongside those who are directly experiencing it.

When whites see the struggle as global and don’t connect it to the local, we neglect the very real issues of racism and racial inequality in our own communities. Silence and inaction is complicity to racism, and this is the most common way in which racism is dealt with by white friends in my experience. My white friends often justify their inaction and apathy to themselves and those around them because if they “aren’t racist”, why should they have to do anything about it. Being white is experiencing a disconnect between cause and effect, in terms of history and how it affects our institutional structures as well as individual attitudes (passed on through culture, norms, and socialization) today. But as whites, we are taught to see ourselves as the norm. We are taught that we are all individuals (especially within (white) American culture), and many are taught that racism and oppression is wrong, yet a thing of the past. Hence, if we have good values, and think we are good people, we believe we aren’t racist and that as long as we aren’t racist individually, we are then off the hook. Why should we spend all of our time angry and upset, with our nose in books, looking at old historical documents? Why can’t we just move on, “get over it”? What is our role as whites in all of this? And for those whites who are committed to anti-racist struggle, there are still many oppressive ways that we act without perhaps realizing and/or addressing them. For example, inclusivity within many progressives circles leave many people out who aren’t “radical” enough, and often those left out at the decision making table are people of color. Look at Pedro Azcarate-Ferbel’s discussion of the green movement in Oregon (below), for example and the utter lack of the voices of people of color at the decision-making table. Think for a moment about who comprises groups of environmental activists, in which communities they live (and who used to live there), as well as for whom are their sustainability efforts benefiting?

(from Pedro’s site- http://blackstudieswhitestudies.blog.com/- from post on Focus the Nation Day, Monday, January 28, 200

In Oregon and U.S. , green groups are mostly white

Ethnicity - Environmental leadership across the nation has little diversity, which two Portlanders work to change
Sunday, January 27, 2008
SCOTT LEARN
The Oregonian Staff
In the mainstream green movement, being any color but white can be a little lonely.
Take it from Marcelo Bonta, who’s half Filipino. He got a job with the Portland office of a wildlife nonprofit, then began going to national environmental conferences.
“I’d see only one or two or three people of color out of 100 to 200 people in the room,” he says. “I felt like I’d stepped back a few decades, if not more, in terms of race and ethnicity
Despite decades of hand-wringing by the typically liberal organizations, more than one-third of mainstream green groups and one-fifth of green government agencies in the United States don’t have a single nonwhite person on their staff, according to a 2004-06 University of Michigan survey.
And about 90 percent of the staff and board members for groups belonging to the Natural Resources Council of America are white, according to a 2002 survey for the group.
Oregon is no exception. The 115 staff members for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Oregon Environmental Council, Ecotrust, Oregon Wild and the Audubon Society of Portland include two Latinos, two Asian Americans, one Native American and no African Americans, their leaders say.
Ecotrust has two Native Americans on its board. Of the 56 board members for the four other groups, 55 are white and one is Asian American.
Bonta, 34, now a Portland-based green consultant, is teaming with Charles Jordan, 70, a former Portland city commissioner and parks director, to help mainstream green groups walk their progressive talk.
The two co-wrote the keystone chapter for a just-released Yale School of Forestry book on diversifying the green movement. Bonta advises environmental groups on how to diversify, and he started a center for diversity and a group for young environmental professionals of color in Portland . Jordan, the first African American board chairman of a national group, The Conservation Fund, has emphasized the importance of green diversity for years.
The clubbiness of mainstream environmental groups threatens to leave out the fastest-growing portion of the population. That limits outreach to nonwhites and contributes to a segregated green movement, with more minorities heading to grass-roots environmental justice groups…

Posted by pedro at 11:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Comments

1 - I would like other people’s take on a program I used to work with.
The problem with the Forest Service being a strong majority white is an issue. I once worked for the Forest Service as a Youth Corps Supervisor. The program was made to try and encourage hispanic children to join the forest service when they get older.
I had 8 kids, all low income and hispanic. From what I saw it was a great program. It allowed the children to make some extra money to help their families. The job offered them experiance and opportunities that may have otherwise been available.
I liked the program.
What I wonder is, does it work?
Perhaps the children gain experiance and opportunities, perhaps they gain interest in working for the forest service, however, I do not think it is a matter of these things, but a matter of hiring practice. No matter how experianced some one is, if people not hired because they are a minority, what good are these programs?
(Comment this)

Written by: Syrill at 2008/02/04 - 13:03:34

Written by: Don Mateo A.K.A. Matt Ross at 2008/02/08 - 01:00:42

Thus, unless we as white people (especially those committed to anti-racist struggle) struggle with our own role in oppression (white privilege, racist ethnocentrism), the struggle against racism will fall upon the backs of people of color, and if the work of white people excludes people of color from the decision-making table the work that whites are doing to benefit us all will only benefit a few (whites).

I’m not sure these are the questions that need to be asked in order to really get to the heart of these issues…

1. How might you respond to someone who may claim that Black people are simply better at sports because of their race? Give 3 short answers, imagining how to best convince a person who may make this claim.

2. Why is the system of racial classification, as presented in the U.S. census, incapable of measuring reliable differences in the U.S. population? (See Naomi Zack’s “American Mixed Race” article in coursepack)- I have been thinking a lot about race and ethnicity, about “choosing whiteness”, about interracial marriage, about mixed race, about the history of poor European immigrants and their ability to “choose whiteness” as ethnicity whereas people of color haven’t had this choice, about race defined as a black/white binary where Black people in America are racialized and other peoples of color (particularly Spanish, Hispanic, and Latino/as) are deemed ethnic groups rather than racial groups by the U.S. census. I’m not sure what this means. I know that social science research often follows the demographics of the U.S. census, which means that this issue has a great impact on “progressives” who claim to be attempting to solve societal problems.

Since social science research often follows the demographics of the U.S. census, this means that you are asked if you are Spanish, Hispanic or Latino/a- as an ethnicity question- and even if you answer yes, you are then asked to choose a racial group- White or Caucasian, Black or African-American, Asian or Asian-Indian, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Pacific Islander, or other/refused. We are still trying to figure out race and ethnicity in this country. But we have such a multiracial history, some argue that we should put other, or mixed race, and that would disprupt the binary. But others believe that would take away power from Black Americans as a racial group which has been historically as well as presently marginalized and disenfranchised socially, economically, and politically. According to Bonilla-Silva, if given the choice of one or more category, many will choose white on the U.S. census. Does this refect “honesty” in the American populations, the belief that most people can trace their race/ethnicity to white people, or is this reflective of the fact that people want to identify with the more powerful group? If this reflected “honestly”, why don’t white people acknowledge their multiracial ancestory- Native American, African-American, Spanish/Hispanic/Latino, etc? If we don’t pick a race on the U.S. census, will this increase or diminish racial inequality? [This is a topic I will write about further in another essay...]

-In chapter 8 of “Racism Without Racists”(177-205), Bonilla-Silva discusses this further.

3. What is the origin of white privilege in U.S. history, as related to human labor?

-Slavery.

-White Europeans created the system of slavery, maintained and perpetuated it despite human cost in order to make profit; set up American institutions to protect profit and privilege, as well as creating psychological justifications in order to feel okay about it (racism as pathology, whiteness as pathology); and are now in denial because the historical and present weight of it is so apparent and horrendous (cognitive dissonance, denial, white complicity). In short, slavery connects to institutional/structural white power and privilege connects to racism connects to the “new racism”/colorblindness = racial inequality, denial, isolation, segregation, loneliness, dehumanization, fear, ignorance, sadness, and pain as well as power, priviledge, pathology, desentitization, murder, genocide, violence, hatred, fear, apathy- Racism affects the oppressed as well as the oppressor. It dehumanizes.

-Capitalism perpetuates racism and racial inequality because it relies on inequality for its profits. Globalization is neocolonialism, and militarism/Homeland Security/The Patriot Act/The Real ID Act/criminalization of immigrants and people of color as “illegal” and/or terrorists, as well as police brutality/racial profiling/criminalization of poverty and people of color in the U.S. is the enforcing arm.

4. Define and explain the four frames of “colorblind racism” as outlined by the author of [Eduardo Bonilla-Silva] of “Racism Without Racists”?

-Discussed in great deal in 2 of my other essays- “racism without racists, an analysis” and in “white habitus”…

5. How useful is the distinction between racial prejudice and racism, i.e. can only white be racist be definition?

-Bonilla-Silva answers this one best. He says that the question needs to be redefined, as prejudice and not as racism when asking the question, “are blacks as ‘prejudiced’ as whites.” This is because the concept of “racism” as used by most social scientists and commentators is grounded in methodological individualism and pathology, and this needs be be changed. In contrast, Bonilla-Silva seeks to “conceptualize racism as a sociopolitical concept that refers exclusively to racial ideology that glues a particular racial order”.

In other words, racism is a structure that isn’t just constructed of individual actions but of institutionally-sanctioned advantage and disadvantage. Hence, Black people cannot be racist because they aren’t part of the white privilege system which benefits from Black and Brown people’s oppression. They can be prejudiced against people, but not racist, because they don’t benefit structurally from being racist against white people. White people benefit from racism structurally so they can be racist- the larger institutional dynamics- and prejudiced- individual and personal interactions. White privilege is also the privilege of being blind to racism and the institutional advantage that being white gives you.

Thus, Bonilla-Silva describes color-blind racism as the ideology of the “new racism” era, so the answer to the re-defined question is that anyone can be prejudiced against any other race or races, but only white people can be racist. Yet, Bonilla-Silva’s research indicated that blacks are less likely to be antiwhite than whites are to be antiblack (Bonilla-Silva 172-173).

This was a final class evaluation-

1. Are you a Black Studies major or did you have a similarily strong background in the topics of this class?

2. Which best describes your overall experience in this class?

3. Which of the following activities led to the MOST and LEAST engagement and learning on the topics of this class?

4. For any of the above categories, please comment on specific examples of what went well, what went poorly, and what you would recommend to make things go better. Explain with detailed examples.

5. In what ways did the professor help you and other students in making this class an engaging and educational environment and in what ways could the professor make this class a more engaging and educational experience?

6. Did the professor’s race have an impact on your personal learing in this class? Explain with detailed examples.

7. Leaving this class, do you think you have gained a greater understanding of racism, power, and white privilege?

8. Leaving this class, do you think you have gained a greater understanding of what YOU CAN DO about racism, power, and white privilege?

The answers below may or not reflect an exact response to these questions. A lot of my responses were a free-write based on ideas brought up by these questions. However, I plan to directly respond to these questions during the coming weeks as I absorb what happened in this class more fully, as well as the usefulness, and implications for these questions, and what different questions need to be asked in order to really get to the heart of these issues…

I am not a Black Studies major and didn’t have a strong background in the topics of this class, but I am working towards a Black studies minor that I will complete next term.

I was engaged because of the commitment and knowledge that fellow students brought to the class, but the facilitation was severely lacking.

Activities that led to the most engagement and learning were the guest lecture by Heidi Tolentino at Cleveland High School whose work as an anti-racist teacher can be used as a model, the reflective blog, whole group discussions (small groups would have worked better with a smaller class and/or a longer time period for the class), and mostly from discussion and connections with other students outside of class to discuss what was lacking in the classroom.

The least engaging aspects of the class were lectures by the professor, books and readings (except for Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists- a must read!- and Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me), but I was mostly familiar with the other readings. In addition, small group discussions didn’t work because the size of the class was too large, time was short, and it often got so loud in there, you couldn’t hear what people were saying. The final action project should have begun at the beginning of the term to make connections and help alliance-building (allies) between white students and students of color.

Specific examples of changes I would recommend:

-Curriculum should acknowledge and reflect the significance of the origin of white studies, which is in critical white studies which originated from critical race theory (both by Black people) so that white priviledge doesn’t co-opt knowledge

-Curriculum should incorporate specific framework of critical white studies done by Richard Delgado

- If “fishbowl” exercise is going to happen, students of color as well as white students should have the opportunity to express their voices without the interference and often domineering voices of white students; If the point is to create allies, we need to know what people of color need from white people

-Professor needs to consciously work harder towards counteracting socialized patterns of privileging the white students which means better facilitation, i.e., not letting white students “dumb down” the curriculum, as well as giving equal voice to students of color so white students don’t dominate class time

-Co-teacher needed who is a woman of color. Female as well as person of color perspective is needed. This would dramatically improve the dynamics of the class (Yes, the race of the teacher does matter! Look at learning gaps, test score, drop-out rates, and the disproportionate number of white teachers vs. teachers of color- this can all by measured by race)

- Spending a week or two on white privilege should be sufficient. If white students don’t “get” the theories, the class shouldn’t be “dumbed down”, and final action projects should be initiated at the beginning of the term for ally-building. If white students don’t “get it” through theorizing maybe action will help.

Professor didn’t really help to make class engaging and educational- he was open to changing the syllabus and listening (this was appreciated) but the changes he made reflected that he didn’t “get it” either. With a white male teacher, it becomes even more apparent why a course about whiteness and privilege (what we may all know as white male privilege) needs a co-teacher, a female and a woman of color might help to reveal the other perspective of white male privilege. This course has shown how difficult it is for white students to even admit or understand the implications of their white privilege, hence the need to push us even further. In addition, by not telling us his background at the beginning of the class, the professor negated potential for a trusting and safe-space environment that the class really needed, as a necessary ingredient to address the traumatic and personal as well as structural dynamics of racism and white privilege. The lack of good facilitation by the professor created a fragmented class environment (which is why so many students started connecting outside of class) and made it difficult to come up with solutions to the racial problems which we were all there to discuss.

The professor could make the course more engaging and education by having a co-teacher (as discussed above), revising the syllabus (with suggestions I added above- make changes specific to Delgado’s critical white studies research and publications), and making a very concerted effort not to privilege the white students in the class.

Finally, YES, the race of the professor matters! (as described above) For example, the changes the professor made during the course due to the intervention by frustrated students of color as well as a few white students, still did not address his white male privilege until the 8th or 9th week of class where he gave us a family history that still didn’t break down his white privilege, nor suggest any way to deconstruct it and/or use it for change in the racial hierarchy of which white privilege maintains and perpetuates. His teaching style also did not address or make changes to counter the normative way in which the learning and experiential gap between white students and students of color occurs. To clarify, the white students in the class were for the most not ahead, but way behind.

However, because of the knowledge brought to the class mostly by the students of color as well as a few white students, in addition to their patience, compassion, and commitment to helping us white students “get it”, I gained a greater understanding of racism, power, and privilege. As far as what to do about it, I plan to follow through on some of the budding friendships and connections made with students of color as well as a few white students, in taking action.

White privilege is about the ability to choose whether or not to be in the fight in the first place, to what extend, and if and when to quit- and although I can’t do much to disinvest from my own white privilege, I can use it to do good things- hence I must use it.

In Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, research professor of sociology Eduardo Bonilla-Silva discusses the social and spatial isolation of whites from people of color as rooted in American history and continuing today. He describes the “white habitus” of most whites in America as a “racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates whites’ racial taste, perceptions, feelings, and emotions and their views on racial matters” (104). In addition, one of the most central consequences of the white habitus is that “it promotes a sense of group belonging (a white culture of solidarity) and negative views about nonwhites” (Bonilla-Silva 104). This “separate residential and culture life” (Bonilla-Silva 103) has consequences which shape many whites ignorance of or obliviousness to racial matters. Colorblind racism is a direct result of the segregation and isolation of whites from communities of color. Through its ideology, white culture as the dominant culture affects society on a macro-level scale. This is because racial ideology is the way in which as Bonilla-Silva states, “the frameworks of the dominant race tend to become the master frameworks upon which all racial actors ground (for or against) their ideological positions” (9). Bonilla-Silva reiterates Karl Marx in The German Ideology who stated that “the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (9).

Hence, the racial ideology of dominant culture allows whites in America as a culture and as a race who have the (unearned) privilege of “whiteness” to ignore the historically-rooted structures of inequality which continue to shape society today. For example, well-documented racialized residential patterns set up by white America from the institutions set up and legitimated to protect the interests of slaveholders, to the Donation Land Act of 1850, to the white backlash (in the North as well as the South) against the upward mobility of people of color from the 1890’s through the 1940’s, as well as throughout the 1960’s which fueled the Civil Rights Movement, to the backlash against affirmative action which continues today.

As discussed by professor emeritus of sociology and regular contributer to the History Channel’s History magazine James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Teacher Got Wrong. Black Americans and disenfranchised minority groups who didn’t have the choice of benefiting from the unearned priviledge of “whiteness” were denied land and other major means of economic equality(163) long after “the nadir of American race relations (1890-1940)” where African Americans were put back into second-class citizenship (161). The legacy of this period in American history continues today in addition to other forms of disinvestment and dispossession structures of whiteness on the basis of race, such as racialized lending practices justified by “credit risk”, racist and exclusionary real estate practices such as redlining and housing covenants, as well as institutionally-sanctioned “urban renewal projects” evidenced in gentrification’s effect upon communities of color. White America has segregated, separated, and isolated Americans by race (see Loewen 168 and Lake Oswego housing covenant document dated in the 1950’s), and the disproportionate effects of this unequal distribution of wealth, access, and resources has shaped the dynamics of poverty and un-equal opportunity to this day. Racial disparities are well-documented today, for example, Loewen documents that in 2000 African American and Native American median family incomes averaged only 62 percent of white family income; while Hispanic families averaged about 64 percent as much as whites. Further, Loewen documents that African Americans still have worse housing, higher percentages of young men in jail, disproportionate nutritional deficiencies, less access to health care, even a lower median life expectancy at birth which was six years shorter than whites, and other indicators of the fact that “money buys life itself [...] in the form of the freedom from danger and stress” (170,171).

However, if we don’t look at the causal relationship between history and the present, many of us (particularly whites who are isolated from people of color socially and spatially) might find it easier to “blame the victim”, but if we understand how historically-rooted racism and the depth at which it is imbedded into our institutions, we might connect slavery, to lynchings, to civil rights, to affirmative action, to redlining, to gentrification, to lending practices based on “credit risk” and see the ways in which racism and racial disparities still strongly exist today albeit it in different forms (Loewen 170, 171).

We are not living on an equal playing field, yet colorblind racism is a convenient way for many white Americans to ignore race, and the “wages of whiteness” as what Bonilla-Silva deems the “multiplier effect” which have been passed on down through the generations.

Bonilla-Silva argues that the white habitus is not natural, it is not how some white people would choose to live today (even though many might choose to live this way). Social and spatial segregation and racial isolation is not a natural process because minorities “do it too”, or “choose” to live together by race in racial/social/spacial segregation. It is historically-rooted, and continues to be structurally and institutionally-sanctioned by white America. Denial of equal access to land, resources, business and property ownership and other signs of “equal opportunity” was strategically planned out why whites in power to maintain their hold on power, pass it on to their children, and this was accomplished by keeping Black Americans, people of color, and disenfranchised minority groups from power at a macro-level, not just through micro-scale individual acts of “mere prejudice and discrimination”. Racial inequality persists because racism is deeply imbedded in our institutions.

Aspects of white habitus that Bonilla-Silva has studied and documented include whites’ levels of residential segregation and personal association with Blacks; how whites interpret their racial segregation and isolation from Blacks; and some of the potential consequences of whites’ limited level of interaction with Blacks (104). Bonilla-Silva found that there is a “paradox” between whites’ commitment to the principle of interracialism and the mostly white pattern of association (105).

In fact, Bonilla-Silva found that most whites he researched OVER-REPORT friendships with people of color, as superficial friendships were found be predominant rather than long-term relationships based on trust, confidentiality, and interactions beyond formal contact (111). The research showed that less than 10% of whites have Black friends, for even when the demographics provide opportunities for interracial friendships, whites didn’t cross the “color line” (109). Why? Bonilla-Silva explained this by the white experience in schools where emotional attachment to whites as primary social group teaches kids stereotypes and skills of colorblindness (109-110), finding that this pattern of white habitus as social segregation, even if spacial segregation is lessened by “desegregated” schools and if whites live in diverse neighborhoods, continues into college. Bonilla-Silva found that whites interpreted their own racial segregation within the rhetoric of colorblindness, i.e., via abstract liberalism, minimization, denial, and naturalization (all mentioned in detail in essay, Racism Without Racists: my analysis).

Sadly, he found that few whites recognized racial isolation from minorities as a problem, but as normal and natural. Bonilla-Silva attributed this lack of reflexivity to whiteness, where whites can reach adulthood never having to think of themselves as a culture or a race (112), hence the unquestioned norm. Thus, whites viewed “racial problems” as something that happens to “other” people, in other neighborhoods, i.e., in “nonwhite neighborhoods”. This demographic excuse was often used to justify lack of interaction with minorities (114). Thus, we can see how spatial and social segregation creates a white culture of solidarity and distorts whites’ views of nowhites (Bonilla-Silva 104).

In this way, whiteness is viewed as “normal” and therefore “nonracial” (Bonilla-Silva 115). This dynamic is the primary mechanism that whites use (whether conscious or not) in the rhetoric of colorblindness, for if the white race doesn’t exist, how can it matter? Thus, the white habitus creates and conditions views; fosters racial solidarity; de-racializes whites while racializing people of color; naturalizes and justifies racial segregation; produces whites’ positive view of self (social psychology); perpetuates a social and residential distance between whites and communities of color; results in a disconnect between whites’ racial claims of colorblindness and actual racial practices; and finally, the lack of interracial contact produces lack of empathy by whites as the “universe of whiteness” has dangerous attitudinal, emotional, and political implications (Bonilla-Silva 123-125).

The term white habitus made me think about my own life, where I go to school, where I live, where I go for entertainment, to relax, and I realized how WHITE my world is and will remain unless I do something about it. I don’t even have to try to live in a white world, but it is business as usual unless I remove this white habitus from my sub-conscious and analyze its very real impact. Is this lack of reflexivity on race how whiteness as “common sense” is so normalized/naturalized? Because as whites, we don’t have to think about race, we have a choice to leave race in our subconscious if we don’t want to deal with it. We can choose whether or not to be involved in struggles against racism, because we think it doesn’t affect. We miss the fact that racism degrades us all. We are degraded by not speaking and acting out against racism. I have asked white friends about the white habitus before I learned Bonilla-Silva’s terminology, and like the participants in his research, they most often naturalized it, talking about “self-segregation by saying things like: “but Portland is so white”. But, Portland isn’t so white; its segregated but it isn’t just full of white people. Portland has a lot of diversity. It is where I go in Portland, that is so white. To what extend this is really a choice depends on white skin privilege. I want to start making some different choices. I don’t want to live in a white world. I do not want to be surrounded by whiteness, by white people who are oblivious to their white choices, who may not even realize they live in a/as a white habitus. Yet, at what point is my search for diversity, for a nonwhite world just aiding gentrification?

As a work in progress, I am constantly reviewing and revising my work to avoid speaking for someone else or taking someone else’s ideas, to remain accountable and responsible for what I say, to update sources used, to clarify connections made based on the fact that the more I learn, the more I understand the cliche that the more I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know, each and every day. Hence, any and all feedback/critique is much appreciated…

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2nd edition). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. , 2006.

Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2nd edition). New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007.

Black Studies 410: Topics: White Studies course packet/PSU Winter 2008, Prof. Pedro Ferbel-Azcarate, Ph. D (listed in same order as in course packet):

Daniels Tatum, Beverley. “Defining Racism: ‘Can We Talk?’”pp 100-107.

Fennimore, Beatrice S. “Addressing Prejudiced Statements: A Four-Step Method That Works!”. pp 202-204.

“How to Interrupt Racist Comments: Principles for Eliminating Racism”, Things To Say To Interrupt A Racist Comment”, “Action Steps” from Tools for Diversity/Portland, Oregon.

“American Anthropological Association- Statement on ‘Race’” (1996). pp 1-3

Harris. “Race, Human Variation, and the Forces of Evolution”. Cultural Anthropology. American Anthropological Association, 1991. pp 82-100.

Vigilant, Linda. “Race and Biology”. pp 49-60.

Gould, Stephen Jay. “The Mismeasure of Man”. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. pp 50-75 and 350-364.

Hegel, G.W. “The natural context or the geographical basis of world history”. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. pp 152-197.

“The Enduring Inequalities of Race”. Race. ed Stephen Gregory and Roger Sanjek. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp 1-17.

Zack, Naomi. “American Mixed Race: The United States 2000 Census and Related Issues”. pp 13-29.

“The Beginning of the Oregon Black American Experience: The Death of Markus Lopeus as recorded in Haswell’s Log of Sloop Washington, 1788 August Saturday 16th”. Oregon Historical Quarterly (OHQ), V XXIX, No. 2, June-March 1928, pp 174-177.

“Key Statements About Blacks in Early Oregon Legal Documents”- 1843 Organic Law of Provisional Government, 1843 Rules of The Great Wagon Train Going to Oregon, and 1844 Ammendment to The Organic Law (Black Exclusion Laws)

“Donation Land Act of 1850″- original vs “presentation” vary histories (shows a comparison between the precise wording written into the law vs. its presentation in a high school history textbook)

“Subsidies OK’d for apple growers”- Oregonian article 10/20/00

Original Oregon Constitution, adopted Sept 18, 1857 (with 3rd Black Exclusion Law adopted into Article 1- Section 35)

“Prohibition of Intermarriage”. The Organic and other Laws of Oregon (1843-1872). Eugene Semple, State Printer, 1874; A.L. Bancroft & Co, San Francisco, Oregon Historical Society. (evidence of anti-miscegenation laws)

Lynching episode in Marshfield, Oregon (1902). Oregon Journal. September 18, 1902.

The Oregonian editorial against equal public accommodations in response to case of Oliver Taylor, Black pullman porter against Supreme Court. May 20, 1905. (evidence of unfair public accommodations practices based on racialized laws protecting white supremacy/privilege)

Photo of KKK with rep from National Safety Council, Portland Police Chief, Sheriff, D.A., U.S. Attorney, Justice Dept Special Agent, Mayor of Portland, and a few others in Portland. Portland Telegram, August 2, 1921. Oregon Historical Society.

“Code of Ethics, National Association of Real Estate Boards, Relations to Customers and the Public, article 34″. The Real Estate Handbook. 1948. (evidence of unfair housing practices based on race)

The Lake Oswego Development Co. document, January 5, 1952 (evidence of housing covenants based on race)

Ignatiev, Noel. “Immigrants and Whites”. pp 15-23.

Dyer, Richard. “The Matter of Whiteness”. Whiteness: The Power of Invisibility. pp 11-13.

Dalton, Harlon. “Failing To See”. Whiteness: The Power of Invisibility. pp 15-18.

hooks, bell. “Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination”. Whiteness: The Power of Invisibility. pp 19-23.

Wildman, Stephanie M. with Adrienne D. Davis. “Making Systems of Privilege Visible”. Whiteness: The Power of Privilege . pp 89-95.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. Whiteness: The Power of Privilege. pp 97-101.

Frankenberg, Ruth. “White Women, Race Matters: The social construction of whiteness”. pp 447-461.

Williams, Patricia J. “Race and Rights”. pp 421-429.

Churchill, Ward. “White Studies: The Intellectual Imperialism of U.S. Higher Education”. pp 334-355.

Ignatiev, Noel. Race Traitor: Abolitionism and “White Studies”. <http://www.postfun.com/racetraitor/features/whitestudies.html> 4/11/2001 pp 1-6.

Wise, Tim. “Honky Wanna Cracker? A Look at the Myth of Reverse Racism”. June 24, 2002. 7/25/2002 pp. 1- 6.

Willie, Sarah. “Playing the Devil’s Advocate: Defending a Multiracial Identity in Fractured Community”. pp 275-281.

Tolentino, Heidi. “Race: Some Teachable- and Uncomfortable-Moments”. Rethinking Schools. Fall 2007. pp 46-50.

Sanjek, Roger. “Intermarriage and the Future of Races in the United States”. pp 104-130.

*It is important to note that it was very difficult to compile this list in an appropriate bibliographical format, because there was so much missing information. For the titles in quotes, they are supposed to be the names of articles yet due to the lack of table of contents in the course packet, missing information here is because of missing info in the course packet. Hence, titles in quotes may also by the names of books. I am just not sure.

*In addition, MANY conversations with fellow students have connected and clarified ideas, and I must draw attention to this because without corrections, connections, clarification, and re-education, I might still be an oblivious white girl living in my white habitus. I am still that girl but I am aware of this now, and this is the first step…

I am still feeling really frustrated about how much difficulty we are having as a class with looking at racism as disadvantage but also as advantage. Taking responsibility and being accountable as white people must be done in order to understand what we can do to challenge racism. I believe that I must see how my own ignorance and inaction perpetuates systemic racism and oppression, by allowing business to go on as usual. Disrupting this process for me and for other white people means looking at white privilege, but this MUST not be about reconfirming to ourselves and to each other how lucky we are to be white, but by really making a personal commitment to looking inward at why we think the way we do, why we behave the way we do, how we see other people, and the lifestyles we lead (look at my essay on Bonilla-Silva’s white habitus).

As white people, we have to take responsibility as the oppressor group, for if we aren’t actively anti-racist, we resign ourselves to racism through passivity and inaction. We can no longer operate as if we have no race, no culture, for this normalizes white culture to continue being the unquestioned norm by deeming everything else different from hence “other than”. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s white habitus is so key, for I feel the the invisibility of the white culture we live in must be discussed and broken down in order to deconstruct it as the norm that everyone should/must/want to aspire to.

Whiteness and white culture has been naturalized and legitimated that white people think “that’s just the way it is”, making invisible the very intentional, planned, and historically-rooted policies that were put in place by white people to maintain and perpetuate white supremacy and privilege.

While it is intrinsic to look at racism and its effects on the oppressed, white people are still missing the point. The strategies that so many whites used to challenge racism often look outside of whiteness and white culture,  instead of looking within at how white culture/identity/structures/whiteness is in each of us as white people. In addition, even though we may not even realize it, white people and even those who may not be white but who identify with whiteness and white culture perpetuate whiteness as hierarchy and oppression. Yet, why is it that even when we realize what we are doing, we find it so difficult to find other ways of being, of knowing each other, and of re-navigating our lives and our world?

Therefore, strategies utilized by white people in challenging and fighting racism are often to speak for others, to help others, to save others, instead of looking at ourselves and those around us in our “white habitus”(Bonilla-Silva, 103-129). We cannot silence people of color and think that this will fight racism. People of color have been saying these things for a long time. Yet, as white people, our social change strategies are so infiltrated with the structure of whiteness, that we can’t see beyond our blinders, our socialized patterns. We are having such difficulty “thinking outside of the box”, the (white) social world that surrounds us. Unless we locate ourselves in the social world, as white people, with white skin unearned privilege, as oppressors in our very white strategies and methods, as want-to-be “saviors of the world”, we will perpetuate the white habitus.

If we are going to challenge racism and fight for racial equality, we need people of color at the decision-making table.  Without dealing with whiteness and taking responsibility, we will move ourselves past race, past modernity (post-modernism) into this “post-white identity”, where race doesn’t exist, where history is erased, and where we don’t have to take responsibility for our actions, nor acknowledge our pasts!

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States is so important for understanding the new form that racism has taken, “colorblind racism”. This is the racism that I have been observing for quite some time but couldn’t put my finger on. I have heard the 4 frames that he breaks down for us used by so many whites who claim not to be racist, but could never figure out why a clarifier was needed by someone claiming not to be racist, if they were indeed not racist. I couldn’t figure out why (white) people could say its not race but class that’s a deciding factor, how (white people) making racist jokes with the clarification that they’re not racist was socially acceptable, and how so many people of all “races” (but especially white people) navigate social life without a comprehensive understanding of history and causality. I feel that Bonilla-Silva’s framework has given me invaluable tools in challenging (white) dominant group racial ideology. I would like to continue focusing on some of the major points of his book, “Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States” (2nd edition), in order to learn how to utilize these tools that sociologists such as Bonilla-Silva have created for us to better understand social structure and how it shapes our lives. As a white person, I feel responsible for understanding the dominant racial group whose power and privilege is very much invested in the normalcy and invisibility of how it gained, maintains, and perpetuates white supremacy/privilege, in order to challenge racism and hierarchical oppression.

Bonilla-Silva’s analysis of colorblind racism continues with 4 central frames, the first of which I believe to be central- and this is abstract liberalism. These frames are ways in which the dominant racial group (whites in America) understand and articulate our social world as if race is no longer a factor. Bonilla-Silva states that “these ideologies of the powerful [acted out via the four central frames of colorblind racism] are central in the production and reinforcement of the status quo” (26), for the ruling group must somehow convince itself that its place in the social hierarchy is just and earned.

Informed by racial ideologies guiding the “American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, and ‘the leading American liberal thinker of this period, Thomas Jefferson’”(an unrepentant slave owner and white supremacist), the history behind American liberalism and how this ideology allowed so many atrocities to be committed in order to form our great American nation-state is obscurred (Bonilla-Silva 27). As the underlying philosophy behind what it means to be an American, a patriot, a capitalist, many Americans don’t know how deeply imbedded the principles of liberalism are and how powerful they are in justifying racism/racial inequality. Liberalism should be stripped of its glorification, for in its name terrible things were done: “And in the United States as in Europe, the exclusion of the majority of white men and all white women from the rights of citizenship and the classification of Native Americans and African Americans as sub-persons accompanied the development of the new liberal nation-state. Specifically, racially based policies such as slavery, the removal of Native Americans from their lands and their banishment to reservations [even after the genocide of many and extinction of whole tribes altogether], the super-exploitation and degrading utilization of Mexicans and various Asian groups as contract laborers, Jim Crow [and the violence and exclusion of post-Reconstruction era, from the 1890's to the 1960's], and many other policies were part of the United States’ ‘liberal’ history from 1776 to the 1960’s” (Bonilla-Silva 27). Thus, abstract liberalism is akin the the “bootstrap theory” where we are told that there are equal opportunities, that equality is now possible because gains made by the struggles of the Civil Rights Movements has now completely leveled out the playing field, that we are all individuals with choices, that we must be colorblind and that discrimination is just a matter of individual prejudice if it happens. Abstract liberalism obscurs the institutional/structural policies put in place by a country founded upon slavery and racialized social, political, and economic inequality as if power and privilege is not still in the hands of those generations of the white, propertied, upper-class who aren’t so far removed from our very recent past of blatant racial violence (lynchings), economic disinvestment (exclusion of Blacks from land-ownership, public accommodations, equal access to jobs, housing, education), and political and legal discrimination (lack of legal recourse, lack of political representation, criminalization, racial profiling).

Variations of abstract liberalism are: the notion of meritocracy perpetuating the myth that white privilege is earned and not granted by historical factors; laissez-faire politics seen in anti-affirmative action stances where the “invisible hand of the market” will purportedly balance out social inequality hence the government is not need in equalizing the playing field (Bonilla-Silva 34); claims of reverse discrimination where individual incidents of prejudice/discrimination experience by white people or non-minority individuals are seen as equal to institution/structural discrimination experienced on a larger, historically-rooted scale upon entire communities based on race; individualism where the false notion of choice and opportunity is used as a justification for blaming individuals for problems when the social world they reside in is not held accountable, to name a few.

Yet, when we look we can still see racial disparities. Hence, this underlying ideology of abstract liberalism works as the little voice inside our heads telling us that we all have the same opportunities, allowing whites to blame poverty on communities of color and minorities rather than looking at the structures of whiteness and white privilege that benefits. It tells white people that what they have they worked hard for and earned, and as people of color they are to blame for what they haven’t achieved. It tells us all that if we just work harder we can attain the “American Dream”. Abstract liberalism invests whites in “whiteness” for whites don’t want to lose privilege even if they are unearned.

Naturalization is the second frame which allows whites to justify/naturalize racial inequality as if it was inevitable/natural. The most common way this frame is utilized in when talking about social segregation as “self-segregation”. When whites say that people of color “segregate themselves”, the history of economic disinvestment, redlining and discriminatory and exclusionary real estate practices, and other race-based policies which made it very difficult for people of color to own homes and property where they choose is minimized (Bonilla-Silva 37, 39). Naturalization is also a way in which school segregation is explained as natural, where disproportionate funding to schools in communities of color and disparities caused by the G.W. Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Act, are justified and de-racialized. Hence, the connection between past and present (historical causality), where people live and how this determines where they can go to school, and the racialized policies which structure these “choices” are obscurred.

Cultural racism is the third frame, or justification by whites as to the racial (or de-racialized) social reality in which we reside. Due to a lack of analysis of the institutional effects of discrimination in the labor, housing , and educational markets and the well-documented impact that race-based discrimination has had on middle-and upper-class Blacks (Bonilla-Silva 41), whites often construe the situation of Blacks as a cultural thing, drawing from the previously mentioned “culture of poverty” arguments of the 1960’s. Since race as biology had been disproven, “racial difference” still needs to be explained, hence culture is still looked at a marker of social, political, and economic inequality. Unfortunately, scientists some of who may have been trying to do a good thing by looking at race as a social construction hence unfixed and changeable, perpetuated yet a new justification for inequality. By “blaming the victim”, whites don’t have to take responsibility for racism/racial inequality, because we don’t have to examine our own complicity in maintaining the dominant status quo/white privilege.

Minimization is the fourth frame and operates as yet another way in which the dominant racial group can explain away racism. This frame is particularly insidious for it allows whites to ignore claims of racial inequality from individuals and communities of color who are experiencing it. Otherwise known as “playing the race card”, accusations of “reverse discrimination”, accusing minorities of being too sensitive and using race as an excuse, and others obscure the real incidents of racism (not just prejudice) and race-based discrimination (Bonilla-Silva 29). Minimization also allow whites to be racist through the rhetoric of colorblind racism, by silencing the voice of the oppressed, telling those who are experiencing racism that they are being “hypersensitive”, and allowing the oppressor to analyze and mandate the terms of what is/isn’t racism/racist (Bonilla-Silva 29).

All in all, Bonilla-Silva’s extensive research among respondents from universities in the midwest, south, and westcoast as well as respondents young and old, white and Black, revealed these 4 frames are used interchangeably and with significant rhetorical incoherence (look at Data Sources- 12, 13). He describes the styles of colorblind racism as “How to talk nasty about minorities without sounding racist”, as his third chapter is titled (53). Bonilla-Silva describes the “race talk” of colorblind racism as the way in which this racial ideology allows users to legitimate themselves individually and the system of white supremacy/privilege/complicity as a whole (53). The stylistic elements include: whites’ avoidance of race talk altogether; “semantic moves” to save face; the role of projection, or “blaming the victim” instead of whites taking responsibility, being accountable for, or at least acknowledging their place in the social hierarchy; the role of diminuitives to “candy-coat” racial ideology; and finally rhetorical incoherence when asked to clarify racial beliefs (Bonilla-Silva 54).

Furthermore, dominant group’s racial ideology is legitimized/maintained and perpetuated by racial stories and testimonies. Bonilla-Silva states that story-telling is central to communication, as the way that status, biases, and beliefs about the social order are passed down through generations (75). “Stories are also important because they help us reinforce our arguments; they assist us in our attempt of persuading listeners that we are ‘right’” (Bonilla-Silva 75). Who tells the stories is also very important. As social representations, racial narratives are a very powerful tool in explaining away racism, where testimonies provide more authenticity and emotionality to what is already a very subjective interpretation of events (Bonilla-Silva 76) . Racial stories by the dominant racial group (whites), often ignore the fact that “pro-white policies in jobs, housing, elections, and access to social space have had a positive multiplier effect for all those deemed ‘white’” (Bonilla-Silva 81). What this means is that racial privilege is obscurred as it is normalized. White are deemed race-less, but not class-less therefore class not race is the determining factor in social life. Whites are culture-less not cultural appropriators, not colonizers, not imperialists, not capitalist exploiters. Whites alleviate themselves of social responsibility for the world around them, as if our actions have no effect. As if the “multiplier effect” or the “wages of whiteness” of a history in our favor has had no effect upon disproportionate wealth and ownership accumulation, political power, access to jobs, schools, education, and other resources necessary for social advancement/equality (Bonilla-Silva 81). We don’t have to see this as whites, we don’t have to acknowledge this unearned privilege. Therefore white privilege isn’t only disproportionate wealth/access/resources, but it is the privilege of not having to acknowlege where this came from, the cost to those who were denied so that we could have what we have. White privilege is unearned, it is historically rooted, it is the ability to”choose” ignorance as bliss and not be held responsible for it.

*The next essay “white habitus- an analysis” will further discuss Bonilla-Silva’s anti-racist sociological framework…

In opposition to the work of racialist scientists of the 20th century, geneticists, biologists, historians, and anti-racialist social scientists among others revealed and scientifically established that there are no genetic markers for race, deconstructing the notion of “race” as biological hence predetermined, inevitable, unchanging, natural, and normal. The “statement on ‘race’” published by the American Anthropological Association in 1996 confirmed this consensus in the scientific community scientifically disproving the biological argument of the 20th century which claimed that people who aren’t white are biologically inferior. However, just because race isn’t biologically “real” doesn’t mean that racism and racial inequality aren’t socially real, and as evidenced by the vast field of sociology, our social world has very real consequences.

Research professor of sociology at Duke University Eduardo Bonilla-Silva discusses race and racism as a social structure/construction in his 2nd edition of his book “Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States”. Bonilla-Silva argues that race/racism still has very real social consequences (9). He contends that the subsequent 1960’s “culture of poverty” argument popularized by Oscar Lewis just shifted its focus justifying racism/racial inequality on the grounds of biological difference to cultural difference. Yet in both arguments, individuals are blamed for social, economic, and political disparities, despite overwhelming evidence that racial inequality is caused by racialized policies and practices instilled by whites to uphold white supremacy and privilege. In “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, sociologist and professor James W. Loewen discusses how sociologists view the dynamic interplay between slavery (social structure) as a socioeconomic system and racism (superstructure) as an idea system which legitimizes the way that Blacks were treated and the institutional structures put in place during slavery to uphold and perpetuate white supremacy and privilege (143). Similar to Bonilla-Silva’s concept of “wages of whiteness”, the unearned privilege of whiteness in this system are manifold and multiplied. In this system, if you are white the position you hold in society doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Complex historical processes situated you in a social world where based on “race” you are either advantaged or disadvantaged. Loewen contends that “the superstructure of racism has long outlived the social structure of slavery that generated it” (144).

Hence, we are still living in the social, political, and economic systems that were created in pre-, during, and post-slavery, and they are still a very powerful determining factor in the lives of people of color. Furthermore, the way history is taught in high school classrooms across America without a causal historical analysis connecting slavery to racism makes “[...] it too easy to blame the victim and conclude that people of color are themselves responsible for being on the bottom. Without causal historical analysis, these racial disparities are impossible to explain” (Loewen 135-171).

Bonilla-Silva analysis further reveals that the forms racism/racial inequality have taken have just shifted yet racism still remains a major factor in shaping the life opportunities and chances for people of color in the United States. From the biological argument to the cultural, and now to the contemporary colorblind argument, the historically-rooted, structurally- and institutionally- located factors at play in our social world often remain invisible to so many Americans, even to academics, activists, scientists, and policymakers. Centuries of history are overlooked as the conditions upon which our present realities were shaped, as a profound disconnect between cause and effect and past and present in history is minimized, obscurred, ignored, often erased, as social, political and economic disparities in communities of color is once again naturalized, normalized, deemed inevitable and unchanging. Yet our analytic focus has often been in the wrong place. Participating (unknowingly perhaps) in “blame the victim” studies, white researchers, scholars, and policymakers continue to look outward towards communities of color as the root of the problem, perhaps as missionaries hoping to save or rescue the poor and afflicted, without an inward analysis of white privilege and complicity as the root of the problem.

“Blaming the victim” through the “culture of poverty” argument of the 1960’s served and continues to serve a purpose however. Bonilla-Silva believes that since we have put so much of our personal and societal focus and energy into blaming communities of color for their problems, we have forgotten to examine how our social structure has been created and by whom. Who decides? Who is at the decision-making table, and who is left out? In addition, we must look at our American history and within that, we must look at who has structured our society, for what purpose, and how our present day reality is shaped by our history (or what we know of it). Further, we must look at the history that has been omitted, fabricated, and distorted and why.

As a regular contributer to the History Channel’s History magazine and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont, in the historical revisionist tradition, James W. Loewen is working to re-construct American history out of many omitted sources which are needed to correct the mis-education of American students. In “Lies My Teacher Told Me”, he examines 18 history books used in high school curriculum across the U.S. to see what kids are being taught, and finds startling omissions, distortions, and fabrications, particularly of the histories of people of color, downplaying and minimizing their role and agency in American history. In his analysis, Loewen found that despite the startling size of American history books (the heaviest one weighing in at almost 11 pounds with 1358 pages), history is not only the least liked subject in American high schools, but generations of American high schoolers have been severely mis-educated. By this he means, we are taught a complex history from a single author who often updates only secondary sources without any recent research (Loewen 7). Further, we are taught through the rubric of nationalism “to indoctrinate blind patriotism”, without attention to the people of color whose bodies, hearts, minds, and souls, stories, who were silenced, excluded, slaughtered in order to make this American nation so “great” (Loewen 6) . There is a startling and problematic disconnect between past and present and cause and effect, and as sociologists know, the past is powerful because we are all born into a “social slot” which has a religion, community, nation, and culture (Loewen 2-9). We are “taught” to memorize and regurgitate instead of critically engaging and questioning the actions of historical actors (Loewen 5). The historical “optimist approach” which teaches history as “a morality play” works as “blaming the victim” where the omissions and distortions of the lives and central contributions of women, minorities, and communities of color serve to further alienate “students of color, children of working-class parents, girls who notice the dearth of female historical figures, or members of any group who has not achieved socioeconomic success” (Loewen 6).

Loewen wanted to see why history is the least favorite subject of most high school students when throughout his career, he has found history to be so intriguing, complex, dramatic, and anything but dry and boring: “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it”- James Baldwin (Loewen 1). In fact, he found that five-sixths of all Americans never take a history course past high school (Loewen 8). From Loewen’s research, we can see why this is such an important task. If our youth are being mis-educated at this point, the chances that these beliefs that are being shaped at this point might never be corrected is very high.

One of the key elements of mis-education that Loewen found is the profound disconnect in historical causality (7): “Students are right: the books are boring. The stories that history books tell are predictable; every problem has been solved or is about to be solved. Textbooks exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly on our national character. When they try for drama, they achieve only melodrama, because readers know that everything will turn out fine”(Loewen 5). In addition, these historical lessons that teach us that it is natural for whites to be on top of the social hierarchy, that genocide was inevitable hence justified, and that it is okay for the central roles that people of color played in history to be historically disrespected through minimization and distortion in favor of the “heroification” of people like Christopher Columbus, Woodrow Wilson, and other “great American heroes” whose record wouldn’t be so “great” if the entire picture of their lives was revealed is very damaging to the esteem, hopes, and dreams of students of color, girls, working-class students, and those who aren’t given historical role models who are really “heroes”(Loewen 21-22, 24, 29, 31-32, 64, 69). In addition, Loewen’s research found that the textbooks “answers” (to be memorized and regurgitated as facts without critical analysis and engagement) to historical questions as if history wasn’t the interaction of complex processes, as if there was no cause and effect, leaves students “unable to think coherently about social life” (7)

Dangerously, this presentation of history has greatly impacted the average American. Have you ever heard the phrase, we must learn from our mistakes (history) in order to avoid making the same mistakes? If as Loewen states, “what our citizens ‘learn’ in high school forms much of what they know about our past” (8), it becomes clear why many Americans have a great deal of difficulty connecting the past with the present. In adddition, if we are mis-educated about our past, how we see the present and make policies for the future will be very distorted. “Not understanding their past renders many Americans incapable of thinking effectively about present and future” (Loewen 9).

This mis-education of our American youth is so important to recognize, for sociologists such as Loewen and Bonilla-Silva’s work is informed by the understanding of “the power of social structure and culture [in shaping] not only our path through the world but also our understanding of that path and that world” (Loewen 9). Further, “understanding our past is central to our ability to understand ourselves and the world around us. We need to know our history, and according to sociologist C. Wright Mills, we know we do” (Loewen 2).

Connecting our past to the present, Bonilla-Silva states that in the 1960’s not only did “culture of poverty” arguments become a popular way of rationalizing social, political, and economic inequality, but a new racism formed and its dangerously elusive rhetoric informs the contemporary debate on race politics today. He calls this “colorblind racism”. Colorblind racism is the way in which “it is possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant” (Bonilla-Silva 2). In addition, it is the way in which ideology is used to defend the contemporary racial order (Bonilla-Silva 25). Racial ideology is central to talking about race. Although race has been deconstructed as biology, most scientists agree that racial categories have a history, but the debate continues on if they socially real (Bonilla-Silva 8,9). Racial ideology is defined by Bonilla-Silva as “the racially based frameworks used by actors to explain or justify (dominant race) or challenge (subordinate race or races) the racial status quo (9). Further, the most important component to this is that “although all the races in a racialized social system have the capacity of developing these frameworks, the frameworks of the dominant race tend to become the master frameworks upon which all racial actors ground (for or against) their ideological positions (Bonilla-Silva 9). This means that according to Bonilla-Silva, “the ruling [racial] ideology expresses as common sense the interests of the dominant race” (10), by “misrepresent[ing] the world (hid[ing] the fact of dominance) (10, 26).

Despite overwhelming and extensive evidence which shows how central race is to achieving social, economic, and political equality, science has been used once against to rationalize and justify inequality. Interestingly, colorblind analyses of social life has been perpetuated by contemporary social scientists as well. This historical connection reveals how deeply influenced “objective” scientists are by the social environment for it was also social scientists who created and perpetuated racialized science or race as biology arguments of the 20th century and the 1960’s “culture of poverty”/”blaming the victim” arguments. Despite the overwhelming evidence that “blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life [poverty, net worth, education, housing, social hostility, commercial discrimination, racial profiling, criminalization, legal discrimination, etc.] (there are 83 footnotes for chapter 1 alone!), colorblind racism is the racial ideology that allows whites as the dominant racial group to “rationalize minorities’ contemporary status as the product of market dynamics, naturally occuring phenomenon, and blacks’ imputed cultural limitations” (Bonilla-Silva 2).

*Further analysis of Bonilla-Silva’s book “Racism Without Racists:Color-Blind Racism And the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States”, is in my next essay “Racism Without Racists- an analysis”…