I’ve made no secret of my view that bigotry—naked, grotesque bigotry in its various guises—was the dominant factor in the thinking of those that voted for Trump, as I expressed in diaries here and here. There are any number of reasons why Secretary Clinton didn’t win an election in which she received over two-million more votes than her opponent, but none of those reasons account for the votes for Trump.
Voting against Secretary Clinton does not adequately explain the thinking that leads one to vote for a manifestly unqualified, bigoted autocrat.
A crucial perspective on race and racism in America comes from Eduardo Bonilla-Silva: Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Fourth Edition, 2014)
His observations about the transition from the overt racism of the Jim Crow era to the invisible framework of racial dominance—in his terminology, structural racism, are eerily prescient, and all too relevant in the days and weeks since Trump’s election:
In the third edition of the book I argued that Obama’s election was not a miracle, but an expected outcome that reflected the sedimentation of the “new racism” regime that had emerged in the 1970s (for more on this regime, see chapter 2 in this edition). Specifically, I stated that Obama’s election did not represent “racial progress” or signified a rupture with either the racial order or the dominant racial ideology at play in the nation, namely, color-blind racism. This argument was important, as Americans at the time (somewhat less so today) believed Obama’s election had magically taken us to the racial Promised Land of honey and milk.
The second sociopolitical reason for reengaging readers is my belief that it is imperative to explain the coexistence in America of crude and vulgar antiminority sentiment and actions alongside the ideology (and its corresponding behaviors) I label in this book as color-blind racism. To anticipate the comments I will offer in chapters 2 and 11, (1) racial orders are never “pure,” as elements of the past (and even of the future) often coexist with the dominant ways of conducting racial business, (2) coercion has always been central to the maintenance of racial domination,1 and (3) despite the rise in racist violence, the practices I label as typical of the “new racism” period are still the dominant ones in America (more prevalent and central). (pp. xiii-xiv)
There has been much discussion of the travesty of normalizing Trump by the media, but less discussion of normalizing Trump voters, whether asking us to consider their ‘legitimate grievances and concerns’, or imploring us to recognize that ‘most are good and decent people’.
The alternative, of course, would be to question just how good and decent the 90% of reliable Republican voters who voted for Trump actually are, if the words ‘good’ and ‘decent’ are generally presumed not to include racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and homophobia. These good and decent folks continue to support policies and politicians—as they have for decades—that directly contribute to harassment, discrimination, violence, suffering and death of anyone who is not white, male, Christian and heterosexual. Bonilla-Silva offers insights into the role ‘good and decent’ folk play in a society premised on racial domination (and how self-described progressives, and the victims of the racist society also play a role):
Although as I have argued elsewhere (Bonilla-Silva 2011), successful domination (racial or otherwise) requires making the dominated believe, participate, and process their standing as normative, as this is the way things are, dominants need not only what Max Weber called the institutional “legitimate monopoly of violence” but also the violence of their masses in case of emergency.3 Nevertheless, despite the ebb and flow of racial violence in the new-racism period—an ebb and flow usually related to the state of the economy in the nation—I maintain that racial domination is still fundamentally maintained through new practices (economic, political, social, and ideological) and we must focus on this fact if we wish to attain racial justice in America. The more we assume that the problem of racism is limited to the Klan, the Birthers, the Tea Party, or to the Republican Party, the less we understand that racial domination is a collective process (we are all in this game) and that the main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits! (pp. xiv-xv)
Although there is much about Bonilla-Silva’s work that is important for understanding the framework of racial domination (and similarly, sexual and gender domination by heterosexual males), it is his debunking of assertions of ‘I’m not a racist’ that I see as crucial as a starting point; we have to recognize the nature and extent of the problem if we are to begin to address it:
Nowadays, except for members of white supremacist organizations,1 few whites in the United States claim to be “racist.” Most whites assert they “don’t see any color, just people”; that although the ugly face of discrimination is still with us, it is no longer the central factor determining minorities’ life chances; and, finally, that, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,2 they aspire to live in a society where “people are judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.” More poignantly, most whites insist that minorities (especially blacks) are the ones responsible for whatever “race problem” we have in this country. They publicly denounce blacks for “playing the race card,” for demanding the maintenance of unnecessary and divisive race-based programs, such as affirmative action, and for crying “racism” whenever they are criticized by whites.3 Most whites believe that if blacks and other minorities would just stop thinking about the past, work hard, and complain less (particularly about racial discrimination), then Americans of all hues could “all get along.”4
… regardless of whites’ “sincere fictions,”5 racial considerations shade almost everything in America. Blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life; they are about three times more likely to be poor than whites, earn about 40 percent less than whites, and have about an eighth of the net worth that whites have.6 They also receive an inferior education compared to whites, even when they attend integrated institutions.7 In terms of housing, black-owned units comparable to white-owned ones are valued at 35 percent less.8 Blacks and Latinos also have less access to the entire housing market because whites, through a variety of exclusionary practices by white realtors and homeowners, have been successful in effectively limiting their entrance into many neighborhoods.9 Blacks receive impolite treatment in stores, in restaurants, and in a host of other commercial transactions.10 Researchers have also documented that blacks pay more for goods such as cars and houses than do whites.11 Finally, blacks and dark-skinned Latinos are the targets of racial profiling by the police, which, combined with the highly racialized criminal court system, guarantees their overrepresentation among those arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and if charged for a capital crime, executed.12 Racial profiling on the highways has become such a prevalent phenomenon that a term has emerged to describe it: driving while black.13 In short, blacks and most minorities are “at the bottom of the well.”14 How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant? (pp. 1-3, emphasis added)
There is a mysterious phenomenon, which Bonilla-Silva clearly explicates, and which many of us have observed over the course of our lives: racists are almost nowhere to be found in predominantly white communities. Those that live in the predominantly white communities are offended (at least, prior to Trump’s campaign), to be ‘lumped together with the klan and Nazis’, and we are told not to misjudge, or offend them-- don’t judge such a large association of individuals (conservatives, Republicans, members of predominantly white communities) by its worst members, and so forth. Yet those ‘worst members’ feel right at home under their white conservative tent, and racism is as potent, present and destructive as it ever was. And the destructive, dehumanizing effects of racism are evident, even if the individual actions and actors that perpetuate white racial dominance are rendered invisible:
The frames that bond together a particular racial ideology are rooted in the group-based conditions and experiences of the races and are, at the symbolic level, the representations developed by these groups to explain how the world is or ought to be. And because the group life of the various racially defined groups is based on hierarchy and domination, the ruling ideology expresses as “common sense” the interests of the dominant race, while oppositional ideologies attempt to challenge that common sense by providing alternative frames, ideas, and stories based on the experiences of subordinated races.
Individual actors employ these elements as “building blocks . . . for manufacturing versions on actions, self, and social structures” in communicative situations.61 The looseness of the elements allows users to maneuver within various contexts (e.g., responding to a race-related survey, discussing racial issues with family, or arguing about affirmative action in a college classroom) and produce various accounts and presentations of self (e.g., appearing ambivalent, tolerant, or strong minded). This loose character enhances the legitimating role of racial ideology because it allows for accommodation of contradictions, exceptions, and new information. As Jackman points out about ideology in general, “Indeed, the strength of an ideology lies in its loose-jointed, flexible application. An ideology is a political instrument, not an exercise in personal logic: consistency is rigidity, the only pragmatic effect of which is to box oneself in.62 (pg. 10)
Calls to ‘move past identity politics’ play into this framework, reinforcing white racial dominance as the standard form of the social and political institutions of American society. Racism flourishes in policies, economic conditions, norms, and overt acts of violence—whether perpetrated by private citizens or the police:
… state-sanctioned abuse of blacks under the cover of enforcing drug laws is clearly not aimed at stopping drug distribution. Rather, it is a manifestation of how supposedly race-neutral laws can be applied at the discretion of officers and departments to control the black population. Since the late 1990s, a new form of state-sanctioned social control has been written into law in numerous states. Promoted by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, these so-called stand your ground or castle doctrine laws institutionalize racist vigilantism. Made famous through the tragic murder of Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old black kid walking to his home, these laws are applied in a racist manner. Twenty states have adopted these laws since 2000 and murder rates in these states, counter to the expectations of advocates for these laws, have increased by 8 percent.96 And, as one would expect in a racialized society, these laws have not been applied in a racially neutral manner. (pg. 47)
Efforts to delegitimize the use of identity categories, such as race or gender, serve only to keep the structures of power and dominance invisible, and as a result to insulate them from challenge:
The central component of any dominant racial ideology is its frames or set paths for interpreting information. These set paths operate as cul-de-sacs because after people filter issues through them, they explain racial phenomena following a predictable route. Although by definition dominant frames must misrepresent the world (hide the fact of dominance), this does not mean that they are totally without foundation. (For instance, it is true that people of color in the United States are much better off today than at any other time in history. However, it is also true—facts hidden by color-blind racism—that because people of color still experience systematic discrimination and remain appreciably behind whites in many important areas of life, their chances of catching up with whites are very slim.) Dominant racial frames, therefore, provide the intellectual road map used by rulers to navigate the always rocky road of domination and, as I will show in chapter 6, derail the ruled from their track to freedom and equality. (pg. 74, in original)
How might a white person hide their racist attitudes, even from themselves—that is, to claim that they are ‘not a racist’? By normalizing the reality that is racist, in a way that can be characterized as not racist:
A frame that has not yet been brought to the fore by social scientists is whites’ naturalization of race-related matters. Although the naturalization frame was the least-used frame of color-blind racism by respondents in these two projects, about 50 percent of DAS respondents and college students used it, particularly when discussing school or neighborhood matters, to explain the limited contact between whites and minorities, or to rationalize whites’ preferences for whites as significant others. The word “natural” or the phrase “that’s the way it is” is often interjected to normalize events or actions that could otherwise be interpreted as racially motivated (residential segregation) or racist (preference for whites as friends and partners). But, as social scientists know quite well, few things that happen in the social world are “natural,” particularly things pertaining to racial matters. Segregation as well as racial preferences are produced through social processes and that is the delusion/illusion component of this frame. (pp. 84-5)
Similarly, ‘cultural racism’, embedded stereotypical attitudes that favor whites, and disfavor blacks, help whites interpret a racist reality in a way that allows them to not claim they are also racist:
When cultural racism is used in combination with the “minimization of racism” frame, the results are ideologically deadly. If people of color say they experience discrimination, whites, such as Kara and Kim, do not believe them and claim they use discrimination as an “excuse” to hide the central reason why they are behind whites in society: their presumed “laziness.” (pg. 88)
Bonilla-Silva documents in painstaking detail how whites use language, in the form of rhetorical maneuvers, to escape the suggestion that they are in fact racist in any way whatsoever:
First, I document whites’ avoidance of direct racial language to expressing their racial views. Second, I analyze the central “semantic moves” (see below) whites use as verbal parachutes to avoid dangerous discussions or to save face. Third, I examine the role of projection in whites’ racial discourse. Fourth, I show the role of diminutives in color-blind race talk. Finally, I show how incursions into forbidden issues produce almost total incoherence in many whites. This last element is not part of the stylistic tools of color blindness but the result of talking about racially sensitive matters in a period in which certain things cannot be uttered in public. Nevertheless, because rhetorical incoherence appears often in whites’ remarks, it must be regarded as part of the overall language of color blindness. (pg. 102)
I would characterize efforts to push Democrats, and progressives generally, away from ‘identity politics’, as a repackaging of ‘color-blindness’ ideology, which ultimately devolves into the kind of incoherence Bonilla-Silva describes.
In a chilling examination of white self-segregation, Bonilla-Silva gives us a portrait of hyperwhite communities (which we now know voted en masse for Trump), and how these communities perpetuate the conditions (cultural and cognitive) that breed large numbers of people who might gravitate to someone like Trump:
… I argued that whites live in a white habitus that creates and conditions their views, cognitions, and even sense of beauty and, more importantly, fosters a sense of racial solidarity. This postulate fits the arguments and findings of the status construction and social identity theories. Whereas work in the social identity tradition has amply demonstrated how little it takes to create antagonistic groups, work in the status construction tradition has shown that once there are two or more status groups in a social system, those at the top tend to adjudicate the status differences to nominal characteristics such as race and gender.40 Research in these traditions has also uncovered that when status differences between groups exist, as in the case between whites and blacks, the advantaged group develops its own “groupthink,” values, and norms to account for and rationalize these differences (pg. 171)
Bonilla-Silva, in a stark and unsettling message for progressives who (like me) felt President Obama’s election represented a turning point in race-relations in America, tells us that the achievement was less a demonstration of racial healing than we might have hoped:
Four years ago, when I wrote the first draft of this chapter, many Americans (mostly white but also some confused people of color) believed that the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the nation was truly a foundational event. My critical views on Obama, on his centrism, and particularly on his color blindness were not appreciated by most. I was accused of all sorts of things; I still am, albeit with less emphasis given that we have four years of data on Obama. But I maintained my stand that we needed to explain why, in a country where race matters at all levels, a black man was elected president. It was not enough to postulate that Obama could not be elected, as many race commentators did, or to suggest his election meant we were close to the end of racism (I remind readers that only 43 percent of whites voted for Obama in 2008 and 39 percent in 2012, and not all who did were “beyond race”). Hence, now that Obama was reelected so narrowly, we must revisit how he was elected president in the first place, what he did as president, and what is the meaning of eight years of Obamerica. This chapter is my effort to remain engaged in the politics of race in the so-called post-racial moment we live in. (pg. 255)
In his questioning of the claimed emergence of a post-racial America, Bonilla-Silva traces the explicitly racist response to President Obama’s election, and the foothold overt white supremacists gained in the GOP:
Both studies indicate whites are experiencing racial resentment around Obama and his policies. Furthermore, there is some evidence that whites’ resentment is translating into increased individual racism. A set of Associated Press surveys published in 2012 showed that whites demonstrated more racism than in 2008 when Obama was elected, whether measured through explicit views or implicit biases.92 All this should come as no surprise to those of us who have been following the events following Obama’s election. Indeed, since 2009 we have seen the resurgence of old-fashioned, overt racism in response to the country’s election of a black president. So many people rushed to racist forums immediately following Obama’s election that the website Stormfront had to be temporarily shut down.93 This was soon followed by the birth of the Tea Party Movement, whose white supporters frequently voiced racist opposition to Obama. (pg. 270)
And he goes on to exhort us, in the subtitle of the last section of Chapter Ten to ‘Let Social Justice Not Die at the Altar of ‘Pragmatism and Color Blindness’. (pg. 281, emphasis added)
In his concluding chapter, Bonilla-Silva points us in the direction necessary to fight white racial dominance as the defining feature of American society, by first telling us not to look to reasoned arguments with racists as a method to bring about substantive change:
…whites’ racial views (views increasingly shared by a portion of the minority community) are not mere erroneous ideas to be battled in the field of rational discourse. They constitute, as I argued in this book, a racial ideology, a loosely organized set of ideas, phrases, and stories that help whites justify contemporary white supremacy;5 they are the collective representations6 whites have developed to explain, and ultimately justify, contemporary racial inequality. Their views, then, are not just a “sense of group position” 7 but symbolic expressions of whites’ dominance. As such, they cannot be simply eradicated with “facts,” because racial facts are highly contested. In the eyes of most whites, for instance, evidence of racial disparity in income, wealth, education, and other relevant matters becomes evidence that there is something wrong with minorities themselves; evidence of minorities’ overrepresentation in the criminal justice system or on death row is interpreted as evidence of their overrepresentation in criminal activity; evidence of black and Latino underperformance in standardized tests is a confirmation that there is something wrong (maybe even genetically wrong)8 with them. (pg. 302, emphasis added)
Bonilla-Silva then gives an outline for how we can begin to fight back against color-blind racism:
Since I do not want to conclude this book on a pessimistic note, let me suggest a few of the political conditions necessary to fight color-blind racism. (Please see chapter 9 for a discussion of the politics and political strategies needed if the United States develops a Latin America–like racial stratification order.) First, blacks and their allies would be the core19 of a new civil rights movement demanding equality of results.20… (pg. 307)
Second, we need to nurture a large cohort of antiracist whites to begin challenging color-blind nonsense from within. Whites’ collective denial about the true nature of race relations may help them feel good, but it is also one of the greatest obstacles to doing the right thing. In racial matters as in therapy, the admission of denial is the preamble for the beginning of recovery… (pg. 307)
…the third way of combating color blindness is for researchers and activists alike to provide counter-ideological arguments to each of the frames of color-blind racism. We need to counter whites’ abstract liberalism with concrete liberal positions based on a realistic understanding of racial matters and a concern with achieving racial equality. For example, whites’ thesis of “We are for equal opportunity for everyone and that’s why we oppose affirmative action” must be countered with the concrete argument that because discrimination (past and present) affects minorities negatively, race-based programs and massive programs on behalf of the poor are the only ways of guaranteeing racial equality.23 The racially illiberal effects of the do-nothing social policy advocated by whites must be exposed and challenged. (pp. 307-8)
Fourth, we need to undress whites’ claims of color blindness before a huge mirror. That mirror must reflect the myriad facts of contemporary whiteness, such as whites living in white neighborhoods, sending their kids to white schools, associating primarily with whites, and having almost all their primary relationships with whites. And whites’ absurd claim that these facts of whiteness are just a “natural thing” must be deflated with research and exposed by journalists… (pg. 308)
Fifth, whiteness must be challenged wherever it exists; regardless of the social organization in which whiteness manifests itself (universities, corporations, schools, neighborhoods, churches), those committed to racial equality must develop a personal practice to challenge it. If you are a college student in a historically white college, you must raise hell to change your college; you must organize to change the racial climate and demography of your college. If you work in corporate America, you must wage war against subtle and covert racism; you must challenge the practices that track minorities into certain jobs and preserve high-paying ones for white males... (pg. 308)
Finally, the most important strategy for fighting “new racism” practices and the ideology of color blindness is to become militant once again. Changes in systems of domination and their accompanying ideologies are never accomplished by racial dialogues—the notion of “Can we all just get along?” or “workshops on racism”—through education, or through “moral reform”24 alone. What is needed to slay modern-day racism is a new, in-your-face, fight-the-power civil rights movement, a new movement to spark change, to challenge not just color-blind whites but also minority folks who have become content with the crumbs they receive from past struggles. (pg. 308, emphasis added)
This is my understanding of a progressive vision for America, what a progressive vision necessarily must be:
America has always been multi-cultural— just ask the indigenous Americans, those who were here first, about the immense variety of languages spoken and customs practiced before the Spanish, French, English and Dutch arrived.
The presence of diverse cultures has never translated to respect for that diversity by the dominant white majority, nor has the dominant white majority fully accepted the principles of an inclusive, pluralistic society, with equal protection of the law, equal justice, equal opportunity educationally and economically.
I don’t believe that conservatives have ever shared this vision of an inclusive, pluralistic America. That’s why they seceded, opposed civil rights for African-Americans, opposed suffrage for women, and fought marriage equality for LGBT individuals.The rejection of pluralism could not have been clearer in Trump’s statements, nor could the rejection of pluralism be expressed more clearly than through the act of voting for Trump.
If they don’t share this fundamental vision of America— an inclusive, pluralistic society— there’s no room for compromise.
And we must never compromise this conception of what America is supposed to be: an inclusive, pluralistic society, with equal protection of the law, equal justice, equal opportunity educationally and economically.