1. “BUT I’D NEVER SAY THE N-WORD!”: WHITE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF RACE,
RACISM, AND WHITE PRIVILEGE
By
Ann Harper Luke
An Independent Study Thesis
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Course Requirements for
Senior Independent Study: The Department of Communication
March 23, 2015
Advisor: Dr. Beth Boser
2. ii
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions that white students at a small
liberal arts college have about race, racism, and white privilege today. The researcher studied
these perceptions through in depth ethnographic interviews conducted with several white college
students. The students were asked about how they understand the concepts of race, racism, and
white privilege, their beliefs about their prevalence today, their opinions on current race-related
events, and their ideas about how racial issues should be combatted. The interviews revealed
several themes including a lack of understanding of the terminology, an inability to decide
whether race is relevant today, a belief that we will soon be living in a post racial society, a lack
of awareness of race related event and incidents, and statements in support of a fight for racial
equality accompanied by no personal involvement in said fight. The major conclusion of this
study is that while all participants hold egalitarian beliefs, they live, speak, and act in ways that
keep them isolated from people of color and allow them to maintain subconsciously prejudiced
perceptions of other races.
Key Words: Race, Racism, White Privilege, Ethnographic Interviews
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first person I would like to thank is my advisor, Dr. Beth Boser. Her support, positive
attitude, and advice kept me going all the way to the end. Our discussions every week helped me
remember my passion for my topic and I always left our meetings with a renewed motivation and
love for my study. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to guide me through this process,
Thank you, Dr. Boser. I would also like to thank Dr. Atay, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Bostdorff and the
entire Communication Department. I am so glad I chose to major in Communication Studies
because our department clearly has the best, most encouraging, funniest, smartest, and most
caring people of any department at Wooster. I am so grateful to have had such wonderful people
guide me through my four years here.
On a more personal note, the most important person I need to thank is my mother, Trudy
Weiker-Luke, without whom I would not have made it to college let alone finished my senior
independent study. All of my success is due to my mom and the love and support she has given
me through every difficulty I’ve ever faced. Mom, you’re the best and strongest person I know
and I hope you know that every good thing about me comes from you; I love you.
I want to thank my Dad for always managing to make me smile, no matter how stressed I
am and Ian and Jamie for encouraging me every time I need it. Thank you to my Ohio
family,Uncle Jamie, Aunt Christa, Eleanor, and Amelia who have helped me get through the last
four years by giving me a second home to escape to whenever I need time away from school. An
especially big thank you to my boyfriend, Sima, for being such a rock for me this year and
always staying positive when I was struggling the most. I am so, so very lucky to have you.
I am also so, so grateful for all my friends here at Wooster – Naveeshini, Miko,
Elizabeth, Sydney, Jalyn, Allie, Alyssa, Marina, and Nina – who all suffered through I.S. with
me and made it so much more bearable. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to make it through
the stresses of senior year with out my B.B.’s Jess and Kate – thanks for always understanding
every weird thought and idea I have and always assuring me that things really are going to be
okay.
Much Love,
Harper
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................1
Purpose Statement.............................................................................................................1
Rationales..........................................................................................................................2
Definitions.........................................................................................................................3
Method..............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................5
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................6
Race...................................................................................................................................6
History and Development of the Concept of Race ...............................................7
Scientific Versus Social Understanding of Race ................................................11
Critical Race Theory...............................................................................13
Race Versus Ethnicity.........................................................................................15
Racism.............................................................................................................................17
History of The Term Racism ..............................................................................17
Racism Versus Prejudice ....................................................................................19
Blatant or “Old Fashioned” Racism....................................................................20
New Racism........................................................................................................21
Aversive Racism.....................................................................................23
Colorblind Racism ..................................................................................25
Institutional Racism ............................................................................................28
Whiteness........................................................................................................................30
Development of the White Race.........................................................................31
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Definition of Whiteness and White Privilege.....................................................32
White Privilege Today........................................................................................35
Race and Higher Education ............................................................................................38
CHAPTER III: METHOD...........................................................................................45
Justification of Method ...................................................................................................45
Participants......................................................................................................................46
Specific Methodological Steps .......................................................................................47
CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS.........................................................................................50
Participants......................................................................................................................50
Impressions of Racial Context at the College of Wooster..............................................50
Signs of Progress ............................................................................................................53
(Lack of) Understanding of Terminology.......................................................................55
Race.....................................................................................................................55
Ethnicity..............................................................................................................57
Racism.................................................................................................................58
It Is Everyone’s Responsibility to Fight Racism, Except Mine......................................60
We Do Not Live in a Post Racial Society Yet.................................................................64
Race Does Not Matter, Except When.............................................................................67
Perceptions of the Colorblind Ideology..............................................................68
Important of Racial Identity for White People Versus Black.............................71
Awareness of Racial Issues.............................................................................................73
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS............................77
Major Conclusions..........................................................................................................77
7. 1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
When President Obama was first elected in 2008, many people claimed that it was a clear
and final sign that we are living in a post-racial, and post-racism, United States (Delgado and
Stefancic 30). Tim Wise, however, asks the question, if Obama had lost the election would those
same people see it as a sign that racism is still rampant in our society (11)? This question serves
as an illustration that racism is still a controversial and often contested issue in the United States
today.
Racism has traditionally been understood as overt statements and actions against a person
because of the color of his or her skin (Gaertner and Dovidio 618). However, in the early twenty-
first century the more common manifestation of racism is one that is subtly ingrained in our
society. This subtlety allows racism’s existence to be denied by many. This is despite the fact
that racism still accounts for many of the inequalities found throughout the U.S. (Kivel 50-52)
and is constructed in favor of White people, at the expense of people of color (Rothenberg 120).
In order to give this issue better attention as well as to provide a more clear understanding of
what racism is today and how we should fight it, I chose to conduct a study focused on the
perceptions of White people in order to gain insight into how they view racism. It is my hope
that this study will bring to light some of the issues surrounding race that our country still faces.
In doing so, I hope the study will help people see how important it is for all people to address
these issues. This chapter will introduce this study by providing its purpose statement, rationales,
method, and definitions.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this study is to understand the perceptions that people in the
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United States who racially identify as White have about white privilege and racism in the early
twenty first century. I will study this by interviewing several White U.S. Americans about their
awareness, ideas, and experiences with race.
Rationales
There are several reasons why this study of race and white privilege is relevant and
important today. The first rationale for this study is that race is still a very prominent and
important social issue that effects all people in the United States, whether or not they are aware
of it (Tatum 124). Racism in the United States effects people of all races in all areas of their lives
– employment, housing, education, health, safety, shopping, self-image – either positively or
negatively depending on whether they are considered White or a person of color (Kivel 28-29).
This unequal treatment of individuals in our society has lead to a culture of inequality and
injustice which needs to be discussed, written about, and studied so that we can fight against it
and begin restructuring society toward a more socially just United States.
The second reason for conducting this study is that one of the most important first steps
to fighting racism in the United States is to gain a better understanding of what racism is and
how it expresses itself today. Dovidio and Gaertner explain that racism as it stands today is very
different from how it was understood fifty years ago and is expressed in much more subtle ways
compared to the past (134). Because this modern racism is so subtle people often misunderstand
what racism is or are unaware that racism is still an issue the U.S. is facing today (Tatum 124).
This unawareness and misunderstanding, especially by White people, makes it important to write
about and conduct studies that address racism today.
The third reason why this study is important is the fact that racism is not being written
about, studied, or discussed enough. Although there are several books written about racism in the
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United States many of those focus on racism prior to the last fifty years and only address the
overt, violent manifestation of racism (Leach 433). Not only that, but books that are being
written about racism and people of color are being read predominantly by people of color who
face racism everyday rather than White people who never experience it and are often unaware of
it (Kivel 15). Unfortunately, people of color often are not taken seriously or are accused of
exaggerating the issues by White people, which allows White people to maintain their ignorance
of these issues (Pettigrew 280). My study is important because it will focus on the role of white
people in the racism discussion. It is my hope that because I am a White person conducting this
study and writing this paper, it will gain the attention of White people – a hope that painfully
illustrates how prevalent racism really is – which will then encourage them to learn more about
the topic.
Definitions
In order for my study to be fully understood, it is important to first define key terms.
Three terms that will be used throughout my study are race, racism, and white privilege. Race is
the most crucial and prevalent of these three terms and, yet, is also the most difficult to define.
Not only has its definition evolved over time (something that will be discussed in more detail in
the following chapter), but it can also be defined both scientifically and socially. Kivisto and
Croll define race scientifically as a classification of people based on inherent biological traits
and differences that are determined by one’s skin color (2). Goldberg explains, however, that this
definition of race as being inherent traits or characteristics based in a person’s skin color is no
longer accepted because it is not founded in fact (63-67).
Today, race is understood as being a concept born out of the development, structure, and
culture of a society. Race is now defined as a social construct not based in biology or in any way
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fixed or inherent but rather “categories that society invents” based on a person’s skin color
(Delgado and Stefancic 8). This definition acknowledges that people of the same race do share
the genetic trait that accounts for skin color, but clarifies that those genes only account for 0.5%
of a person’s genetic make up (Goldberg 67) and therefore have no relation or effect on one’s
“personality, intelligence, and moral behavior” (Delgado and Stefancic 9). Thus, the definition of
race that will be used in this paper is as follows: a social construct designed to separate and
categorize people originally founded from incorrect beliefs about human biology.
This definition of race leads into the next key term of this paper: racism. Racism is often
confused or equated with the term prejudice, which means discriminating against a member of a
group based on his or her membership to a group (Kivisto and Croll 162). Kivel explains that
prejudice is one aspect of racism, but it differs in the fact that racism is “the institutionalization
of social injustice” (2) and a system of advantages and privileges based on skin color. This
definition clarifies that racism is different from prejudice in that racism provides advantages to
some while oppressing others. It also explains that, whereas prejudice refers to an individual’s
feeling and opinions, racism can refer to both individual feelings and systemic inequality. As this
study is focused on racism in the United States it is important to add to this definition that racism
in the U.S. “perpetuates an interlocking system of institutions, attitudes, privileges, and rewards
that work to the benefit of white people” (Rothenberg 120). One of the most important things to
note in Rothenberg’s definition of racism in the U.S. is that she did not say that racism is
necessarily intentional or enacted by a person, an idea that will be discussed later.
Racism in the United States hurts people of color and favors White people. This has lead
to a culture of white privilege, a third key term used in this paper. Leonardo defines white
privilege as the notion that White people gain advantages in many areas of their lives because of
11. 5
their whiteness (75). These advantages, in turn, allow for White people to experience and have a
certain view of the world that is different from those of people of color and is “sanctioned by
dominant norms and works to keep systemic injustice in place” (Applebaum 35). One of the
most important aspect to understanding white privilege is that even though no white person asks
for it, they are all born with it, whether they are aware of it or not. White people cannot choose to
stop receiving these privileges until there are significant changes in the structure of society in the
United States (Leonardo 75-76).
Method
In order to gain firsthand knowledge about the perceptions that White people have about
white privilege, race, and racism, I conducted ethnographic interviews. An ethnographic
interview is a form of qualitative research, meaning that rather than conducting surveys or
gathering statistics I gained more in depth and personal information about each individual
interviewed. I did this by asking each participant intimate questions about their own experiences
with the topic in an informal conversational setting (Frey, Botan, Friedman, & Kreps 285).
Conclusion
Racism in the United States is real, is rampant, is affecting all people’s lives and,
therefore, is something that needs to be addressed and discussed. This chapter introduced how
this study addresses the issue of racism by explaining the topic of this paper and the purpose and
rationales for conducting this study. This chapter also defined the key terms used throughout the
paper and explained the method used to conduct the study. The following chapter will provide an
in depth background on race, racism, white privilege, and race in the context of higher education
in the United States as well as a clear understanding of all terms and concepts of my study.
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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
Before beginning this study, a thorough understanding of the concepts and terms used throughout
is required. The following chapter is a review of previous literature done on the topics of race,
racism, whiteness, and race relations and how these topics manifest in the context of higher
education. The understanding of race, racism, and whiteness is especially necessary to dissect as
these concepts have evolved so much since their first use. A literature review is also important to
provide background for the opinions and thoughts of the participants in this study. Race relations
in higher education are key to my study and have also been changing, especially since the civil
rights movement, making these important to contextualize as my study focuses on the
perceptions of college students. Each section will provide background on the concepts as well as
definitions and explanations of controversial or debated ideas and theories behind them. This will
allow for a more comprehensive analysis of the findings of this study and its implications.
Race
In order to fully understand the perceptions White people who participate in this study
have about race today, we first need to understand what the concept of race is. Although race is a
word used and heard daily and therefore many people believe that they understand what it
means, it is a complex concept with a long history. Today race is understood as a social construct
– something that will be explained further below – which means that it is an idea that was
constructed through interactions between and beliefs held by the majority of society. Because it
was created by people and only exists as people understand it to, the definition of race is
arbitrary and often changing from generation to generation. The following section will explain in
detail what the word race means by describing how the word has been used since the beginning
13. 7
of the European expansion at the end of the fifteenth century to the definition that is accepted by
social scientists today. This section will also explain how race is defined scientifically versus
socially, the difference between race and ethnicity as well as how we categorize people into races
now.
History and Development of the Concept of Race
Prior to the European Expansion, Western Europeans knew very little of human diversity
and therefore did not have categorizations for people with distinct physical characteristics
different from their own. Rather, people were categorized as simply the “other.” Having little
interaction with people not of European descent, rather than describing people from other
continents with characteristics of their own, they were described based on how they differed
from Europeans (Miles and Brown 19). For example, a person from Africa would be described
as having darker skin and thicker hair than Europeans.
The first perceptions of race in the western world came about when Europeans began to
explore Africa and the Americas and meet many people who did not look like themselves.
European explorers perceived Africans as violent, unintelligent, and godless. These perceptions
were based entirely on the writings of Europeans who were exploring the area and trying to
understand whether or not these new people belonged in the same categorization, or family of
man, with people from Europe (Omi and Winant 62). In Curtin’s discussion of racial imagery
from the colonial era, he observes that, “the reporting often stressed precisely those aspects of
African life that were most repellent to the West and tended to submerge the indications of a
common humanity” (23). Meaning that European explorers described the Africans they
encountered specifically using words that would differentiate them and that would draw images
of and comparisons to animals. Europeans described African and American people as savages,
14. 8
cannibals, beasts, and many other words that dehumanized them (Miles and Brown 34).
These first instances of the dehumanization of people from Africa and the Americas are
the foundation for people’s understanding of race. By putting Western Europeans above all
others, especially those from Africa and the Americas, Europeans established race as a system
through which people are given power or have power taken away from them (Omi and Winant
17). Describing people this way also allowed Europeans to justify colonization and slavery,
which led to racism as we see it today (Buck 31-32).
By the late seventeenth century it was commonly understood in Europe that Western
Europeans were superior to all other races. The first justifications for this idea were based in
religion. Europeans believed that they were God’s children, and because people from Africa and
the Americas did not practice Christianity they were godless creatures and less human than
Europeans were (Omi and Winant 62). However, toward the end of the seventeenth century this
explanation became unsatisfactory and so the first scientific explanation of race arrived. This
scientific explanation rationalized race as being caused by climate and the environment.
Scientists in this era explained that blackness was originally caused by the heat of the sun, but
had become an inherited characteristic (Miles and Brown 38). This idea continued to justify
slavery and colonialism by allowing people to argue that the climate also caused certain
personality traits inherent in Africans and Americans. For example, a common belief among
Europeans at the time was that Black people are lazy because the sun is so hot in their native
environment (Miles and Brown 38).
During this era, when science was first used to explain racism, scientists were also
attempting to determine what the racial categories were. The most notable of these was Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach who, in 1775, created a racial categorization system made up of five
15. 9
races. These races were: Negroid (black), Mongolian (yellow), Malayan (brown), American
(red), and Caucasian (white) (Walton and Caliendo 3). Blumenbach is one example of the many
scientists during the Enlightenment era who attempted to establish concrete racial categorization
based in biology and his ideas were widely accepted across Europe.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the environmental explanation mentioned
above became less accepted and scientists began instead to study the physical bodies and
skeletons of people from different races in order to understand what the real and “natural”
differences were (Walton and Caliendo 4). Unfortunately, not only were the scientists at the time
attempting to categorize people, they were also trying to scientifically defend the ranking of
people based on race (Omi and Winant 63). It became widely accepted during this time that each
race had certain fundamental characteristics that determined their intelligence and ability to be
civilized (Muck 33-34). Scientists believed that White people had larger brains than other races
and were therefore inherently more intelligent and capable of a level of sophistication that other
races were not. The inferiority of the non-Caucasian races were ranked in order of how different
their appearance was from Western Europeans, meaning that those in the “Mongolian” race were
the most intelligent non-Caucasian race (although still inferior to the Caucasian race) and the
“Negroid” race was the least intelligent of all races (Halley, O’Malley, Eshleman, and Vijaya
25).
The idea of race as biological was accepted by most into the twentieth century. In fact, in
1994 Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray published a book - The Bell Curve: Intelligence and
Class Structure in American Life - which used statistical data and IQ tests to argue that race was,
in fact, a determinant of intelligence (Caliendo and McIlwain 141). However, Hernstein and
16. 10
Murray’s opinion was unique as the association between race and biology began to decline in
popularity starting in the early twentieth century.
As more and more journal articles and books refuting and disproving the link between
race and biology were published, the idea of race as a social construct began to emerge such as
Franz Boas’ book Race, Language, and Culture and W.E.B. Du Bois’ book The Souls of Black
Folk. What really influenced this shift in thinking was Nazi Germany, which used the argument
of inferiority of certain races to justify the genocide of the Jewish people. The Holocaust brought
to people’s attention that the word ‘race’ was being used to justify the exclusion and genocide of
thousands of people (Miles and Brown 59).
The fights for decolonization and independence across Africa, the civil rights movement
in the United States, and numerous movements for equality for all also elicited the questioning of
the scientific definition of race (Omi and Winant 65). With people around the world challenging
the old understanding of race, UNESCO published several papers in the 1950s and 60s with
world renowned scientists to determine the scientific validity of race (Miles and Brown 60).
Each of these papers concluded that the current idea of race was based on “a scientifically
untenable premise” (Montagu x). In other words, although biology had been used to justify
racism for decades, it was now being used to disprove racial classification completely.
This new era of racial understanding began to define race as it is today: as a social
construct. This idea of race rejects any scientific explanation and instead concludes that race is a
social invention, used to justify slavery and colonialism and to “privilege members of some races
and disadvantage others” (Walton and Caliendo 5). This brings us to our current definition and
understanding of race. Race is a social construction (defined in chapter I on page 3) that is used
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to empower and benefit some while disempowering and impairing others based on the color of
their skin and other physical characteristics.
Scientific versus Social Understanding of Race
Despite understanding that race is a social construction, biology cannot be completely
taken out of the racial equation. While a person’s race is in no way indicative of their
intelligence, character, and personality, the color of a person’s skin is determined by genetics and
therefore biological. However, through The Human Genome Project scientists found that less
than one percent of our DNA is responsible for skin color, a number so insignificant that there is
actually “no meaningful description of different racial groups, therefore making the term ‘race’ a
biological term without any socio-biological meaning attached” (Osemwegie 3). The
insignificance of using genetics for racial classification is further proved by the fact that two
people of different races are often more genetically similar than two people of the same race
(Malik 4-5). In other words, while genetics and biology do determine a person’s skin color, they
do not define a person’s race as we understand the word to mean.
John Dupré and Feldman and Lewontin take the argument for the insignificance of the
race gene one step further by stating that there are, in fact, no genes for race. They argue that
when a person’s race is identified through the genes in their DNA what is actually being
identified is the person’s geographical ancestry (46; 90). Dupré explains that because a person
who is from or who has ancestors from a certain geographical area will typically be of the race
that is the majority in that area, this gene has been interpreted as defining race (47; 93). The
insignificance of the “race gene” is further proved by how racial classifications are defined. If
race is to be understood as the differences in skin tone, hair texture, and nose and lip size
between people, then the idea of a “race gene” is no longer sound as there is a wide variation of
18. 12
all these physical traits within each race (Morning 45). Dupré provides an example of this with
the fact that it is very difficult to predict the skin tone of a baby before it is born and often the
prediction is wrong because of “the continuous variability of skin color” (47). Whether there this
gene is indicating race or geographic roots, geneticists have concluded that the gene is not
significant enough to indicate anything about the person, be it their skin tone, personality,
intelligence, or morality.
Despite most scholars agreeing on the insignificance of the race gene (Morning 36-48),
this conclusion raises questions about why there are disparities between races and illnesses.
Feldman and Lewontin explain that there are diseases that are more common in some “classically
defined” races (97). For example, sickle cell disease is more common in people with African
ancestry (Feldman and Lewontin 98). While this fact may appear to be evidence in support of
race as biology, it is actually a marker for the cultural and social differences between races. The
propensity of people of African descent for sickle cell disease is actually a marker from living in
an area where malaria was present and as such has nothing to do with race (Feldman and
Lewontin 98).
Propensities toward certain illnesses or disease and efficacy of medicines among races
are not only explained by geographical factors, but also by cultural. Disparities in health can be
explained by a number of racial inequalities present in the U.S. today. Firstly, the fact that people
of color in the United States are more likely to live in a poverty-stricken area and therefore
attend lower quality elementary and high schools, they are more than likely to receive inadequate
nutrition in their school meals and go to health care facilities that are much lower quality than
those in more affluent areas (Wise 49). This leads to a higher likelihood of obesity, malnutrition,
and diabetes as well as many preventable illnesses going untreated. Secondly, the widespread
19. 13
prevalence of racism in the United States causes high levels of stress and anxiety to people of
color, which, in turn, leads to high blood pressure and a higher chance of developing heart
disease (Williams, Neighbors, and Jackson 201). Because the experience of racism and
discrimination by people of color lead to stress and stress is often associated with smoking,
drinking and drug use, this cultural experience also explains the higher levels of substance abuse
among people of color (Dingel and Koenig 187). Thirdly, the disparities in health between races
is explained by the fact that even when a person of color has access to quality health care, they
are less likely to receive routine medical procedures, which can then lead to preventable health
problems (Lee 353). The Institute of Medicine states that this is a result of institutional and
attitudinal racism in the health care system (Good 595).
These examples illustrate that the differences in health between races are actually
arbitrary as they stem from cultural and social differences rather than biological ones. This
further shows that race is simply a socially constructed ideological belief, with no base in
science. This means that race is an invented concept whose meaning is constantly evolving with
society as reflected in “social, political, and legal discourse” (Muck 30). Race is a “set of social
practices, institutions, identities, and beliefs; an ideology and system of social inequality based
on ancestry” (Caliendo and McIlwain 204). Even as a societal invention, race is deeply
embedded in power structures, institutions, and social systems and as such affects the world and
individuals in a very real and palpable way – defining race socially and politically is not meant to
undermine its reality, but rather to emphasize that it is not “inherent or static” (Frankenberg 11).
Critical Race Theory. Understanding race this way led to a movement by scholars and
activists interested in “studying and transforming race, racism, and power” known as Critical
Race Theory (CRT) (Delgado and Stefancic 2). This movement began in legal studies, but has
20. 14
now become a lens through which many disciplines analyze and study social relations and
organization based on race as they manifest today (Trevino, Harris, and Wallace 7). Critical Race
Theory focuses on bringing attention to the ways in which society is structured to advantage
some and disadvantage others based on their race as a means of bringing about racial equality
and justice (Trevino, Harris, and Wallace 8). CRT disrupts the dominant narrative of racial
hierarchy and White privilege in order to offer knowledge and insight to White people – as the
dominant race – so that they will better understand the injustices people of color are facing and
work toward ending them (Writer 3).
There are several core tenets to Critical Race Theory. First, race and racism are accepted
as societal norms – whether we are aware of this or not (Delgado and Stefancic 7). For example,
a lower class neighborhood that is composed of primarily families of color is considered typical
in the U.S. Second, our culture is embedded with the belief in White superiority and as such,
maintaining racial inequality serves the interests of White people (Delgado and Stefancic 7). This
tenet addresses the fact that not only is it difficult to counteract racism in the U.S. because it is
accepted as the norm, but also because ending racial inequality would also end white privilege,
which gives White people less of an incentive to help end it. Third, race and racism are merely
social constructs, which evolve and are manipulated as society demands and have no objective,
fixed, or biological meaning (Delgado and Stefancic 7). This means that the way we see and
understand race stems entirely from social interactions, experiences, and developments.
A fourth tenet is that because of the evolving definitions of race and racism, different
minorities are racialized at different times based on the response to changing needs of society
(Delgado and Stefancic 8). For example, today Latino/as are being increasingly racialized
because they provide cheap labor. Fifth, no person is defined solely by his or her race – everyone
21. 15
has intersecting identities which form whom he or she is and his or her place in society (Delgado
and Stefancic 9). In other words, there is no single Black identity or single Asian identity and
people cannot be understood based solely on their racial identity. Finally, CRT posits that every
person of color possesses a unique voice stemming from his or her experiences with racism and
discrimination that allows him or her to inform White people on issues they may not be aware of
or understand (Delgado and Stefancic 9). The explanation of race as a social construct described
above and these six tenets of CRT serve as an in depth explanation of the concept and a
foundation for understanding how race exists in U.S. culture.
Race versus Ethnicity
The concepts of race and ethnicity are often confused as they are similar and overlap in
the way the two concepts classify people. For example, Asian is both a race and an ethnicity.
This section will explain the concept of ethnicity so that it may be differentiated and understood
apart from the concept of race. Simply put, race is based on physical attributes and ethnicity is
based on a person’s culture – invisible characteristics of his or her identity (Bloch and Solomos
5). Ethnicity is defined as “the result of a group formation process based on culture and descent”
(Omi and Winant 15). The tenets of culture that ethnicity takes into account include religion,
language, rituals, traditions, customs, politics, beliefs, and nationality (Glazer 74). The part of the
definition that looks at descent refers to the common ancestry shared by a group of people from
the same geographical area, although only some authors include this, such as urban sociologist
Robert E. Park who theorized that common origins lead to a common culture (Omi and Winant
25).
There is still some debate about the meaning of ethnicity though. Ethnicity is unique from
race because it is often not apparent to others unless a person chooses to make it so and people
22. 16
therefore have the choice to identify with their ethnicity or not, which is rarely the case with race
(Bloch and Solomos 5). Ethnicity also differs from race in that people within an ethnicity chose
to form as a group and identify as such, whereas a person’s race is assigned to him or her by
society (Ibrahim 13). However, some theorists argue that the concept of ethnicity was only
invented to be a more politically correct way of discussing race (Miles and Brown 92). Max
Weber, one of the earliest writers on ethnicity, also viewed ethnicity this way. He believed that
ethnicities are socially constructed groups formed to categorize people and instill authority,
domination, and power (Hechter 1163). This view of ethnicity is perhaps where from the
confusion between race and ethnicity stems.
Understanding ethnicity is further complicated by the large number of ethnicities that
people choose to identify with today. For example, I identify as White. I am also a U.S.
American, from Michigan, I was raised in the Presbyterian Church, and my grandparents are of
German, Irish, and English descent. If my race is clearly established as White, then do I identify
my ethnicity by my nationality, my statehood, my religion, my ancestry, or all of them? This
issue is made more complicated because many people have become such a blend of nationalities
and ethnicities that it is common people to not understand how to ethnically identify (Rothenberg
8). This seems to be especially true for White people who have become especially disconnected
from their ethnicity. While it is quite common to hear a Black person identify ethnically as
African American or a Latino/a person identify ethnically as Hispanic, it is rare to hear a White
person identify himself or herself as German American or Irish American. The lines between
race and ethnicity are further blurred by the fact that some races and ethnicities have the same
name. For example, Asian and Native American can be used as both races and ethnicities.
Although these terms are closely related, this paper will be focused primarily on the concept of
23. 17
race as it is defined above. This paper will also refer to five different races: White, Black, Asian,
Latino/a, and Native American. In the case of the Black race, many scholars as well as the
participants in this study, use the racial term Black interchangeably with the ethnic term African
American. Although African American is not a race, in some instances throughout this paper it
will be used to describe a person’s race if the person being cited or quoted used it in this way.
Racism
The moment people first defined race as a social hierarchy in which some people are
better and more human than others, was the same moment racism began. As such, the history of
racism in the United States is intertwined with and almost the same as the history of race.
However, because people genuinely believed that people of other races were inferior to White
people, treating them as such was not seen as discrimination so the term racism was not used
until quite recently (Miles and Brown 58). Despite racism existing for hundreds of years
beforehand, the first documented use of the word racism was in Magnus Hirschfeld’s book
Racism published in 1933 (Feagin 112) in which he refuted the scientific explanations for racial
hierarchy and explained racism as a feeling, not a concrete hierarchy of humanity (Miles and
Brown 58-59).
History of the Term Racism
Two factors elicited the creation of the term “racism” in the 1930s. First, was the decline in the
popularity of the scientific, biological understanding of race in the twentieth century as many
scholars were developing other theories (Brodkin 41). The concept of racism became more
popular after WWII. The second factor was Nazi Germany’s use of the “scientifically proven”
inferiority of Jewish people to justify their genocide forced U.S. Americans to re-evaluate their
views on race. The U.S. joined WWII because they believed what Hitler was doing was wrong.
24. 18
In order to believe this and prove it to Hitler, scientists and academics had to find explanations
for race that dismantled the scientific inferiority theory (Brodkin 41). This prompted a change in
many people’s understanding of race and the treatment of people of color.
The definition of racism evolved similarly to the definition of race. Dovidio explains that
there have been three waves of research on the concept of racism, through which the meaning of
the word has changed (830). As mentioned above, when racism began it was considered
acceptable for a White person to treat people of color as below him/herself because it was
believed that they were biologically inferior (Frankenburg 13). When this perception of race
began to fade and the first wave of research on racism was introduced in the 1930s, it was “seen
as not simply a disruption in rational processes, but as a dangerous aberration from normal
thinking” (Dovidio 830). Racism at the time was not seen as such, but rather as simply the way
society was constructed and the invention of the word “racism” would disrupt the social
structures that had served as the foundations of the United States. The first definition explained
racism as a social illness and was studied as such. Researchers in this first wave studied what
caused people to be racist and approached racism as if it were something from which a person
could be cured (Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi 138).
The second wave, beginning in the 1950s, approached racism as the complete opposite to
the first wave. Researchers in this wave viewed racism as the norm, rather than the abnormal
(Dovidio 831). This era was concentrated on how socialization, social norms, and identity
development could lead to prejudiced thinking. Scholars examined how being arbitrarily grouped
with certain people and separated from others effected a person’s self image as he or she viewed
members of his or her own racial group positively and members of others negatively (Dovidio
830).
25. 19
The third and current wave of research on racism began in the 1990s. Today, academics
view racism as being multi-dimensional and manifested and experienced in many different forms
(Horton and Sykes 241). These many dimensions, which will be explained below, allow for a
more thorough understanding of racism, but also make us aware of the many complexities of
race in the United States.
Racism versus Prejudice
Before describing the different ways people of color can experience racism it is necessary
to explain a broad, encompassing definition. The difficulty in defining racism comes not only
from its complexity and many facets, but also from the way it is intertwined with the word
prejudice. Prejudice and racism are both forms of discrimination against a person based on his or
her membership in a group (Hallay, Eschleman, and Vajaya 13). The difference between them is
that racism specifically refers to discrimination based on skin color and racism has one
characteristic that prejudice does not – power (Spears 23).
The term prejudice stems from the word prejudgment which means “judging people
before one obtains information about them” (Spears 22). To be prejudice, then, is to prejudge and
have a negative perception of someone because of his or her (perceived) membership in a group
(Van Dijk 171). Anyone can be prejudice, and people are prejudice for a number of reasons, such
as, class, race, ethnicity, age, ability, nationality, sexuality, and gender.
Racism differs from racial prejudice because racism provides power and advantages to
some, while racial prejudice does not. Rothenberg defines racism in the United States as “an
interlocking system of institutions, attitudes, privileges, and rewards that work to benefit White
people” (120). There are two key ideas in this definition. First, only White people can be racist.
This is one of the most common misperceptions about racism because any one can be prejudice
26. 20
against another person because of their skin color. However, in the United States, Whites are the
only group that benefits from racism and receive power from it and as such are the only group
that can be racist. Second, this definition shows that while prejudice is an individual’s thoughts,
opinions, and ideas about a person or group, racism is much more complex than that. Tatum
explains that racism cannot be understood simply as prejudice. This is because racism can
manifest not only as “personal ideology based on racial prejudice, but a system involving
cultural messages and institutional policies and practices as well as the beliefs and actions of
individuals” (127). This is especially important because it explains that racism can still be
prevalent in a society if the dominant racial group, as individuals, does not consciously follow
racist ideologies. This definition of racism has many components to it, which is why the concept
has been broken down into several categories so that one can better understand the many ways
racism manifests itself today. These categories or types of racism will be described below.
Blatant or “Old Fashioned” Racism
Blatant racism, also known as “old fashioned” racism, is what most people consider to be
the only understanding and expression of racism. This type of racism is defined as “individual
acts of intentional bigotry” (Halley, Eschleman, and Vijaya 12). Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi
explain that was the first understanding of racism and was much simpler and more closely
related to prejudice (138). Old-fashioned racism focuses on individuals’ negative beliefs about
racial groups and the ways those beliefs lead people to discriminate against those groups
(Bonilla-Silva and Baiocchi 138). This type of racism is most heavily associated with the race
relations up to the civil rights era, when many people discussed their racist views more openly
and expressed them through violence toward Black people (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, and Krysan
10).
27. 21
Many people today believe that this blatant form of racism has been all but been replaced
by a more subtle manifestation (Augoustinos and Every 124). Although there are many subtle
forms of racism rampant in the U.S., this old fashioned form is still prevalent as well. This can be
seen in everyday acts such as when the manager of a clothing store only monitors people of color
for shoplifting or when 83% of the people stopped under Stop and Frisk in New York City
between 2004 and 2012 were Black or Latino (The Editorial Board). This form of racism may be
known as “old fashioned,” but it is still common today and as such is equally important to
understand and discuss this form as it is the more modern forms.
New Racism
Several types of racism in the United States today are expressed in ways in which they
are not viewed as racism. This subtle manifestation of racism is known by several names –
symbolic racism, laissez-faire racism, modern racism, and most commonly, new racism. Bonilla-
Silva explains that this new racism began as the civil rights era ended when racial ideologies
began to shift and the discourse on race changed (3). In the late sixties and early seventies, as
Black Americans and other marginalized groups demanded equal rights to Whites and an end to
the Jim Crow racial segregation laws, discussing race or voicing racist beliefs became taboo and
was frowned upon (Bonilla-Silva 55). However, the reduction in openly blatant racism by no
means meant that racism was no longer prevalent throughout the U.S. This change merely meant
that racism expressed itself in different ways.
According to McConahay and Hough -- two of the first scholars to study new racism --
new racism is expressed in two ways: through a person’s attitude and through their behavior
(24). Attitudinally, new racism is a collection of beliefs and assumptions about Black people,
such as how they act and behave, what they deserve, and whether they are treated equally
28. 22
(McConahay and Hough 24). Sears and Henry explain this further when they state attitudinal
new racism is comprised of four themes: “the beliefs that (a) Blacks no longer face much
prejudice or discrimination, (b) Blacks’ failure to progress results from their unwillingness to
work hard enough, (c) Blacks are demanding too much too fast, and (d) Blacks have gotten more
than they deserve” (260). Behaviorally, new racism is enacted through action that helps maintain
the racial status quo such as “voting against Black candidates, opposing affirmative action
programs, opposing desegregation in housing and education” (McConahay and Hough 24).
However, an important aspect of the behavior of new racism is that the actions are explained and
justified as motivated by something other than race (Kinder and Sanders 106). For example,
rather than stating that Black people are not as successful as White people because they are
biologically inferior, through new racism a person might think that they are less successful
because their culture is inferior and say that this makes them lazy or unwilling to work hard
(Bonilla-Silva 5).
Another way new racism might be articulated is through the myth of American
meritocracy. American meritocracy is the belief that any individual who is independent, self-
reliant, and a hard worker can be successful and that all success should be earned. This is an
ideological belief that has long been the most fundamental value in American culture and is a
belief still held by many. Meritocracy leads many White U.S. Americans to be against programs
that provide reparations to people of color for past oppression because they think these programs
offer unearned and therefore undeserved advantages (Carmines and Merriman 243). This
ideology is enforced by the common understanding in the U.S. that racial discrimination is no
longer prevalent. White people’s belief that their own success was through merit rather than
through a system of advantages and disadvantages based on race also undermines how
29. 23
significant race still is today (Jensen, White Privilege 130-131).
The way in which new racism is articulated in U.S. culture allows White people to deny
that racism still exists, remove the responsibility and blame of racism from themselves, and
maintain the status quo of racial hierarchy. According to scholars of the subject, there are two
expressions of racism today that can be categorized under new racism: aversive racism and
colorblind racism. These will be explained in the following sections.
Aversive Racism. Aversive racism is difficult to study because it is an incredibly subtle
method of discrimination. Dovidio and Gaertner first coined this term in the late 1980s and since
has been recognized by many authors studying contemporary racism (Halley, Eschleman, and
Vijaya 192). Dovidio and Gaertner explain that because it has become unacceptable to openly
express racist beliefs, “many white Americans who possess strong egalitarian values and who
believe that they are non-prejudiced” (“On the Nature” 134), in fact, do “harbor negative feelings
and beliefs about Blacks and other historically disadvantaged groups” (“Understanding and
Addressing” 618). In other words, aversive racism is another version of old fashioned racism in
that aversive racists hold the same beliefs as old fashioned racists, but aversives do not express
these beliefs the way an old fashioned racists might. Aversive racists are often unaware that they
harbor prejudice beliefs because these beliefs were subtly adopted through socio-cultural
influences, cultural stereotypes, and justifying ideologies presented to people in the U.S. on a
daily basis without their being aware (Gaertner and Dovidio, “Understanding and Addressing”
618).
Aversive racism is difficult to address because the people who exhibit it consciously
believe in equality for all; therefore they intentionally act in ways that could not be construed by
others as racist or discriminatory (Gaertner and Dovidio, “On the Nature” 134). However,
30. 24
Gaertner, Dovidio and others have discovered some ways in which people respond to racial
issues, or the discussion of them, that can be identified as characteristics of aversive racism.
They argue:
First, aversive racists, in contrast to old-fashioned racists, endorse fair and just treatment
of all groups. Second, despite their conscious good intentions, aversive racists
unconsciously harbor feelings of uneasiness toward Blacks and thus try to avoid
interracial interaction. Third, when interracial interaction is unavoidable, aversive racists
experience anxiety and discomfort, and consequently they try to disengage from the
interaction as quickly as possible. Fourth, because part of the discomfort that aversive
racists experience is due to a concern about acting inappropriately and appearing
prejudiced, aversive racists strictly adhere to established rules and codes of behavior in
interracial situations that they cannot avoid. Fifth and finally, their feelings will get
expressed, but in subtle, unintentional, rationalizable ways that disadvantage minorities
or unfairly benefit the majority group. Nevertheless, in terms of conscious intent,
aversive racists intend not to discriminate against people of color – they behave
accordingly, when it is possible for them to monitor the appropriateness of their behavior.
(Gaertner, et al. 380)
Aversive racism is an interesting manifestation of racism because despite being expressed
through individual prejudices, it is predominantly unconscious behavior. However, this does not
mean that the impact of aversive racism is any less severe than old-fashioned racism. Rather,
these five characteristics of aversive racism merely show that aversive racism may be harder to
counteract, not that it is in any way less damaging.
31. 25
Gaertner et al. conducted several studies of the ways aversive racism is expressed. These
experiments found three ways in which White people who claim to not be prejudiced exhibited
racism in blatant ways. Those tested assisted a person with car trouble only 3% of the time when
he/she was Black compared to 19% when he/she was White; helped Black victims of an
emergency only 37.5% of the time compared to helping Whites 75% of the time; and when asked
to evaluate resumes with identical credentials, participants chose the Black candidate
considerably less than the White candidate, but made a point to justify their decision as based on
factors other than race (Gaertner et al. 381-385).
França and Monteiro contend that aversive racism can become evident in situations in
which either the “socially desirable response” is unclear or in which bias can be justified through
reasons other than race (264). Even so, under these circumstances, aversive racists may still have
good, egalitarian intentions and believe they are acting in a way that expresses those. Their racial
biases are often only apparent to people of color – who are more perceptive of subtle
manifestations of racism – who witness inconsistencies between verbal and nonverbal behavior
in White people (Vorauer and Kumhyr 716). Aversive racism, as with most modern forms of
racism, is difficult to recognize and address, especially because of the egalitarian, non-prejudiced
values aversive racists hold.
Colorblind Racism. Colorblind racism is another new, post-civil rights era racism. This
form of racism is viewed by the majority of White people as a way of combatting racism or
proving that they, as individuals, are not racist. Colorblindness is the idea that when someone
looks at other people, he or she does not see their race (Frankenberg 143). This method of
addressing race – or rather not addressing it – developed from the idea that by not
acknowledging race a person is demonstrating that he or she does not believe the stereotypes
32. 26
about that race. This colorblind ideology is used almost exclusively by White people. For this
reason, and others to be discussed below, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and several scholars after him
contested the view of colorblindness as a means of moving toward racial equality and argued that
it is actually a new method of racism that helps to maintain our culture’s racial ideologies
(Bonilla-Silva 2).
The colorblind ideology stems from the idea that if society stops talking about race
racism will gradually stop being an issue. However, this has proven not to be the case for several
reasons. First, people who believe in being colorblind only apply this thinking to people of color.
This is a flaw in the idea of colorblindness because if a person is colorblind -- an ideology that is
supposed to allow people to view each other as having no differences -- but only to people of
color, that in itself is differentiating people of color from White people. Second, to be colorblind
means to not see a person’s race or color, which would mean that color is not something people
want to see. By arguing that color is something people do not want to see, this ideology is saying
that any non-white races are bad and undesirable (Frankenberg 144). Third, Howard Winant
argues that using the idea of being colorblind to suppress discussions of race is actually a method
of delegitimizing any discussions of racism thereby ensuring the maintenance of the racial
hierarchy (47-48). In summary, although colorblindness was originally developed as a method of
fighting racism, it is in actuality, another form of racism itself.
According to Bonilla-Silva, there are four key frames through which the colorblind
ideology argues that the racial disparities seen in the U.S. today are not the result of racism:
abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism (26). Abstract
liberalism involves using the ideas associated with political and economic liberalism, like equal
opportunities for all and freedom of choice in a racialized way (Bonilla-Silva 74). This frame is
33. 27
similar to the use of the myth of American meritocracy in that abstract liberalism promotes
equality by condemning any programs that might give some people preferential treatment. For
example, someone who employs this frame would make the seemingly moral argument that all
people be treated equally thereby opposing programs like affirmative action that give preferential
treatment to people of color based on their race.
Those who use the second frame, naturalization, argue that incidences that seem racial
are actually naturally occurring (Bonilla-Silva 76). This frame brings back the race as biological
argument to some extent by saying that current housing segregation and the commonality of
people predominantly interacting with others of their own race are natural, almost primal
occurrences of people gravitating toward like themselves – birds of a feather, flocking together.
Cultural racism, the third frame, is essentially the opposite of naturalization as it argues
that the racial disparities still present today are a result of characteristics found in the respective
cultures of each race. This frame would enlist an argument like, “people on welfare are always
asking for handouts. They get pregnant for the first time at fourteen, have 6 kids by 25, and then
let everyone else pay for them.” While not directly bringing race into the conversation, this
argument perpetuates an image of people on welfare – who are predominantly people of color –
as being lazy, ungrateful, and irresponsible which allows for the continuation of racial
stereotypes (Bonilla-Silva 29).
The final frame, minimization of racism, “suggests discrimination is no longer a central
factor affecting minorities’ life chances” (Bonilla-Silva 29). This frame can be presented through
arguments like, “people of color only cry racism to ‘play the race card’ so they can get special
treatment” or “Racism does not exist any more, the only inequality the U.S. faces now is in
socio-economic class.” This method of minimizing racism is further perpetuated by the
34. 28
transformation of racism from its old fashioned form to its new post-civil rights era form.
Because most White people understand racism as an individual person believing he or she is
superior to people of a different race, and most White people do not see that on a daily basis,
they are able to argue that racism no longer exists (Bonilla-Silva 30).
Institutional Racism
New racism not only allows White people to maintain the racial hierarchy as the status
quo, it also provides an opportunity to deny the existence of institutional racism. Institutional
racism is a form of racism that has been intrinsic in the formation of the United States and its
systems since its founding. The U.S. gained its territory through the genocide of Native
Americans, was built on the backs of Black slaves, and grew through the oppression and
separation of those considered inferior to White people (Winant 42). This history has led to “the
intentional or unintentional manipulation or toleration of institutional policies (e.g., poll taxes,
admissions criteria) that unfairly restrict the opportunities of particular groups of people,” which
we now define as institutional racism (Dovidio and Gaertner 3).
This type of racism was most obvious before the civil war when Black people were
legally bought and sold in the very lucrative slave trade and were worked, much like cattle, to
develop the southern states (Winant 42). Even after slavery was abolished institutions in the U.S.
were legally racialized and segregated up until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. This
segregation was found in schools, businesses, employment practices, public services,
neighborhoods, and other institutions. These laws mandated where people of color were allowed
to work, eat, attend school, live, or sit (Miles and Brown 67). This long history of institutional
racism has embedded racism in U.S. culture and is still responsible for many of the racial
disparities we see today.
35. 29
Tim Wise, a prominent anti-racism voice in the United States, published a book shortly
after Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008 to argue that, despite Obama’s election,
racism was still an important social issue to be addressed in the United States. This book,
Between Barack and a Hard Place, serves as a collection of facts and statistics from a number of
sources about the ways in which institutional racism manifests today. Although there are enough
statistics illustrating institutional racism to fill a book, this section will only describe those that
contribute the most to understanding of the concept.
One such example of institutional racism, Tim Wise explains, comes from Patrick L.
Mason who states that even when all other traits that might effect income such as grades, test
scores, and family background are comparable, White males earn seventeen percent more than
their Black counterparts (40). This income inequality can then lead to the difficulties Black and
Latino people often face when applying for mortgages. As the Wall Street Journal explained,
only sixteen per cent of Black and Latino people with bad credit are able to get mortgage loans
compared to seventy per cent of White people (Wise 46). This can cause yet another
manifestation of institutional racism: the high concentrations of people of color living in poorer
neighborhoods. Judith R. Blau explains that this fact is illustrated through the average Black
student who “attends a school with twice as many low income students as the typical White
youth” (Wise 49). These high poverty rates, in turn, trigger a lower quality of education, Kevin
Carey explains, since property taxes are one of the principle sources of funding for school (Wise
50). Less money for public schools means fewer and less qualified teachers, fewer resources, less
opportunities for extracurricular activities, lower rates of students going on to higher education,
and higher dropout rates (Mckoy and Vincent 128 in Wise 51).
36. 30
These examples not only illustrate the many ways that institutional racism effects people
of color, but also shows that this form of racism is not necessarily intentional or the fault of any
one individual. In some cases institutional racism is the result of blatant discrimination such as
when a White man is hired over a better-qualified Black man because of the employer’s bias.
However, in other cases, institutional racism keeps the Black man from the opportunities a White
man has that would allow him to have the better qualifications, to the fault of no one person.
Caliendo and McIlwain articulate this well in their definition of institutional racism. They
explain that it “refers to the idea that disadvantage has been built into political, social, and
economic systems in ways that work separately from the conscious or subconscious prejudices of
individuals” (160). This definition differentiates institutional racism from blatant racism and new
racism by focusing attention on the fact that institutional racism is usually not caused by
individual prejudices – deliberate or not – but rather by the institutions themselves which are a
result of the many years of racial oppression that have formed the structure of our current
culture.
This is one of the strongest forms of racism because it is embedded in the foundations of
our systems, which can be much more powerful and harder to change than a person’s mind.
Understanding that institutional racism is not intentional is key in the fight against racism in the
21st
century. This is especially true because one of the big problems keeping people from
fighting racism is White people’s fear of being seen as racist. If White people see that individuals
are not to blame for most racism today perhaps they will have less of an adversity toward
acknowledging these issues. Whiteness and White people’s role and responsibility in relation to
race and racism will be discussed in the following section.
37. 31
Whiteness
Race tends to be a concept associated with people of color, rather than White people.
This is because of the way the concept of “whiteness” has developed in our society and the way
it has come to be understood and defined today as the center of societal power structures, while
people of color are marginalized. Race in our society has developed in a way that places White
people at the top of power structures and marginalizes people of color. The following section
will address this by describing how the White race developed throughout U.S. history and how
whiteness is defined now. The phrase “white privilege” will also be explained in this section as
well as the way white privilege manifests itself today. This portion of the study will discuss how
much awareness White people have of their own privilege. And finally, how intentional White
people are in how their privilege is exercised in their daily lives will be addressed.
Development of the White Race
As mentioned in previous sections, prior to the late 1600s the word race existed as a way
of distinguishing people from other animals (“the human race”) (Hannaford; Allen 1997).
However, as people began to explore and colonize the world they learned more about how
diverse humans can be and so the definition of race evolved into a method of classifying and
differentiating humans from each other. By the 1700s, biologists, had created a racial
classification system that established five human races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan,
Negroid, and American” (Walton and Caliendo 3). A person of the Caucasian race was identified
as being of European descent, having pale skin pigmentation, as well as having a certain texture
of hair and shape of lips and nose (Jensen 22). The issues with these seemingly objective
classifications came about because of the cultural ideologies in place at the time, which lead to
Blumenbach not only to establishing these five races, but also “objectively” creating a hierarchy
38. 32
of the races and declaring the White race to be the most beautiful (Halley, Eshleman, and Vijaya
25).
This early definition of race illustrates that it was a concept established by Western
Europeans to justify colonization and slavery by explaining that White people are inherently
superior to people of color (Jensen 24). This idea spread quickly throughout the world as the
dominant economic and social powers at the time were found in Western Europe, especially
England, and these ideas and ideologies of race were readily accepted around the world (Walton
and Caliendo 4). As such, race was developed not as a means to better understand humanity,
which anthropologists argued at the time, but rather as a way of differentiating White people
from all others. Once differentiated, those who were not White were placed in a social hierarchy
below White people. Developing these racial categories and choosing to categorize themselves
as White people, allowed Western Europeans to further assert their global dominance. This also
allowed for “whiteness” to develop to be not only the superior racial category, but also the
“norm” against which all other races are measured (Lipsitz 67-68).
Definition of Whiteness and White Privilege
Race is a social construct. As such, the White race must be defined not only by its
physical characteristics but by its social ones as well. The development of race as a social
hierarchy extended its meaning beyond the physical characteristics of each race to the social
location and privileges or disadvantages a person is afforded because of those physical
characteristics. In this study the physical characteristics will be referred to as the White race and
the social aspects that irremovably attached to the White race will be referred to as whiteness.
The development of the White race and whiteness as the norm from which all other races
are measured led to it being equated with “the human ordinary” – the original human race from
39. 33
which all others diverged (Dyer 47). Being understood as the neutral – the one race that is not a
race – makes it both difficult to define and difficult for people to see. When people are asked to
describe themselves, one will usually find that people of color will use their race as one of their
descriptors while White people will not. This is because whiteness has become the norm or the
“de facto state of being by which racialized others are judged” (Caliendo and McIlwan 103).
This concept originally stems from early American societal structures in which only White men
were considered full citizens who could become “fully formed individuals” because they were
not defined by what they could not do because of their race or gender. This allowed whiteness to
become transparent and therefore normalized and accepted as what an American looked like, an
idea that has persisted to the present day (Winant 180). By presenting White people as true
Americans or the normal state of being creates a damaging rhetoric that people of color are lower
class citizens, abnormal, and who deviate from the standard (Frankenberg 199).
Nakayama and Krizek explain that the White race is typically defined negatively, in
terms of what it is lacking rather than what it is (299). White is not Black, not Hispanic, not
Asian, not Native American, etc. To be White is simply to be without a color and therefore the
white race only exists when compared to other races (Garner 2). This understanding of White as
being not any other race, as well as it being accepted as the neutral race, allows for the White
race to exist almost invisibly and silently (Gustafson 32-37). Gustafson describes this
phenomenon well with the phrase “absent presence.” She explains that the invisibility of
whiteness manifests in a way that society never asks White people to use race as their most
dominant identifying feature as many people of color do. However, the fact that White people do
not identify racially illustrates the centrality of whiteness in our social structure (155).
The normativity, negativity, and invisibility of whiteness are three key features that allow
40. 34
it to remain at the top of the racial hierarchy in American society. The dominance of White
people in the last few centuries has given whiteness value (Crenshaw 255) and a superior
structural social status to people of color (Wander, Martin, and Nakayama 14-15). The United
States was built on an ideology of racial inequality, which remains today, and provides a system
of privileges and advantages to White people. This system is so completely founded in whiteness
that whiteness has become synonymous with privilege (McIntosh 11; Halley, Eshleman, and
Vijaya 62-62; Warren and Fassett 413).
Jackson, Shin, and Wilson explain how the physical definition of the White race and the
social meaning of whiteness intersect when they define whiteness as functioning “as a visible
qualification of social acceptance and power – it is the gold card that permits its cardholders
access to every area of American life” (71). To have whiteness is to have visible characteristics
that provide invisible social status and position. Frankenburg articulates the social meaning of
whiteness well. She explains that “whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race
privilege,... a place from which white people look at ourselves, at others, and at society,....
whiteness refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed” (1). If a
person is a member of the White race (or even if they are not, but are viewed as such by society
members), they are born into the social position of whiteness that is appointed to a White person,
and are therefore given white privilege.
White privilege can be defined simply as privileges that one is given and cannot reject or
return solely because they are identified as part of the white race. Examining white privilege is
difficult because of the way it is expressed and manifested in society. Linda Faye Williams
explains white privilege as “the social and political construction of race in a way that advantages
whites over people of color in economic markets, political institutions, and social policies” (91).
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Dyer and McIntosh explain white privilege as unearned advantages and dominance in society
that allow for a White person to succeed in ways that people of color cannot (Dyer 9; McIntosh
5-9). McIntosh adds to this that one of the most important characteristics of white privilege that
allows for it to thrive undetected is that White people are under the belief that the “special
circumstances and conditions [they] experience are [theirs] by birth, by citizenship, and by virtue
of being a conscientious law-abiding ‘normal’ person of goodwill” (9). This understanding that
White people have of their own success allows them to remain unaware that the advantages
afforded to them are not afforded to people of all races.
White Privilege Today
Peggy McIntosh, a feminist and anti-racist activist, has become well known in the
academic sphere for her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” In this
paper she compares white privilege to “an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions,
tools, maps, guides, codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear, and blank
checks” which cannot be removed and the advantages of which are taken “for granted as neutral,
normal, and universally available to everybody” (1-2; 10). This analogy describes two key
components of white privilege: it is invisible to White people as they have only experienced their
privileges as the norm and it cannot be detached from whiteness.
Not only did McIntosh provide an excellent analogy for understanding white privilege
that has been cited numerous times by other scholars, she also gave a list of forty-six examples of
the ways she experiences the unearned advantages of white privilege on a daily basis. Some that
she includes are, “I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be
followed or harassed,” “I can turn on the television or open to the front page of a the paper and
see people of my race widely represented,” “when I am told about our national heritage or about
42. 36
‘civilization,’ I am shown that people of my color made it what it is,” “I can be pretty sure of
having my voice being heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race,” “Whether I
use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against my appearance
of financial reliability,” and “I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters,
without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of
my race” (5-9). McIntosh explains that most White people, herself included, are unaware that
these are advantages rather than being the norm for everyone, which is why so many White
people have difficulty understanding and seeing their white privilege.
Many White people also struggle to believe they have White privilege because they are
disadvantaged in other ways. For example, a poor White woman is disadvantaged by her socio-
economic class and her gender, but has an advantage through her race. Having to overcome the
ways in which one is disadvantaged often makes it difficult for people to see their privileges.
This is understood as an intersectionality of privilege that refers to “different aspects of one’s
identity which interact (or intersect) with each other. While some individuals will have one
stigmatized aspect of their identity, others will have multiple stigmatized aspects that intersect
with each other, forming a matrix that may be used to dominate or oppress” (Halley, Eschleman,
and Vijaya 87-88). When it comes to White people acknowledging their privilege,
intersectionality is an important concept for everyone to understand especially so they can see
which privileges they receive because of their race compared to advantages or disadvantages
they receive because of their gender, class, religion, nationality, sexuality, or ethnicity.
The invisibility of their privilege has led to a common view of many White people that
the United States is now a post-racial country, meaning that racism no longer exists. Many White
people claim that because they cannot see any proof of White privilege or racism, it must not
43. 37
exist. This argument has become especially prevalent as many people of color have gained
success in the entertainment industry and since we elected our first Black president in 2008
(Wise, Between Barack 5). The invisibility of whiteness and its privileges allows White people to
remain ignorant to the disadvantages suffered by people of color (Wise, Between Barack 31).
McIntosh explains that until people in power experience or witness firsthand the lives of the
oppressed, they will not be able to understand it (“Reflections” 197). This is why White women,
especially lesbian White women, and gay White men are typically able to see and understand
their white privilege better than a White, heterosexual man (Johnson 118).
White people today are born into a society that has developed in a way that places them
at the highest point of a hierarchy, whether they wish to be there or not. This means that just as
White people do not consciously make the choice to receive privileges others do not, they also
do not have the choice to rescind those privileges if they so desired (Gustafson 156). Jensen
makes the point that understanding white privilege is not meant to elicit feelings of guilt or to
diminish how hard White people work for their success. Rather understanding white privilege
serves two purposes: one, to help White people see that they do not have to struggle to overcome
disadvantages that people of color do and two, so that White people can better understand their
responsibility in challenging the systems of privilege (“White Privilege,” 131-132).
Tim Wise writes that not only do White people have a responsibility to challenge the
social inequalities in the U.S., it is also in their better interest. He lists several ways in which
White privilege is costing White people more than it is rewarding them. Three of these are: by
creating a second class citizen base, we are being underbid for jobs which immigrants are willing
to take for lower wages, which in turn slows the growth and lowers the size of our economy; the
uneven distribution of resources for education creates a growing population of undereducated
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citizens which slows the development and advancement of our country; and the high rates of
incarceration of Black and Latino people takes White people’s tax money away from schools and
other more constructive uses (“Membership,” 134). For these and many other reasons, it is
imperative that White people are aware of, acknowledge, and challenge their privileges. This is
especially important for college students to acknowledge as they are the future generation of
leaders in this country and the college environment provides a unique opportunity to interact
with diverse people from a wide variety of backgrounds. Unfortunately, this diversity can also
lead to conflict and marginalization of minority groups, which will be discussed in the following
section.
Race and Higher Education
Colleges and universities provide a unique environment and experience for their students.
At most colleges, students are attending classes with, working with, living with, eating with, and
doing extracurricular activities with all of the same people. This can have somewhat of a
isolating effect in which it feels like the student body, faculty, and staff are all part of a micro
society within the school. This also allows for unique social interactions, relationships, and
incidents involving race. This section will describe these issues in order to provide context for
this study and its conclusions as well as to address how typical my participants’ responses were
regarding these issues.
In 1950 the U.S. population was 152 million, 89 percent White people and 10 percent
Black people (U.S. Census 1950). In 1954 there were 2.5 million students enrolled in a higher
education institution (Alexander 76). Of those, 108,000 (less than five percent) were African
American, 63,000 of which were enrolled at private African American colleges or universities
and 45,000 of which were enrolled at schools in the northern United States (Teddlie and Freeman
45. 39
81). There are no statistics on other races from this time. In 2009, there were 19,764,000 students
enrolled in higher education institutions. Of those, 15,027,000 (76%) were White, 2,889,000
(14%) were Black, and 2,434,000 (12%) were Hispanic (no data on Asians or Native Americans
was given in this chart) (U.S. Census Bureau, “Table 281”).
The 2009 enrollment numbers are more representative than the 1950 numbers, as the U.S.
population is currently 77 percent White, 13 percent Black, and 17 percent Hispanic. However,
there are more discrepancies in academic achievement when enrollment is compared to degree
holders. Also in 2009, 71.5% of those holding Bachelor’s degrees were White, 9.8% were Black,
and 8.1% were Hispanic (U.S National Center for Education Statistics, “Table 300”). These
statistics show that not only are people of color still in the minority in colleges by a huge
percentage, but it also shows that those who do begin higher education often do not complete it.
Because the majority of colleges and universities were founded and developed as entirely
White institutions and remain predominantly White institutions (PWIs) (Savas 514), their
curricula also developed from a White perspective. This has had such a lasting affect on the
schools that increasing the number of students of color enrolled has not significantly changed the
White pedagogy that is so deeply embedded in them. Meaning that the courses and curricula are
centered around whiteness and the culture, history, and perspectives of people of color is often
excluded from higher education learning (Tatum 5-6). Because of this, students of color still face
many different issues involving race throughout their college career.
Although laws that racially discriminate have been illegal since 1964 and affirmative
action programs for the promotion of people of color have been in place since 1969, society has
been slow to respond to these laws. An illustration of this is found in the very gradual increase in
the numbers of people of color who attend and graduate college. In 1964, there were 300,000
46. 40
African American students enrolled in colleges and universities compared to 4.7 million White
students, which was a drastic increase from 1954 (Teddlie and Freeman 83). However, in the
following decades Black student enrollment remained constant despite White student enrollment
continuing to increase, which resulted in Black students making up 9.4 percent of college
students in 1974-76 and only 8.8 percent in 1982-84 (Teddlie and Freeman 84).
There are, of course, a number of reasons why a student might not finish his or her
degree. However, for a student of color, the atmosphere of and people at his or her college or
university can greatly contribute to retention rates. Both Loo and Rolinson and Hunn examined
different factors that lead to higher retention rates of African American students at PWIs and
found similar results. Hunn discovered that “sense of belonging is very much related to academic
achievement and a strong predictor of retention” (304). Loo and Rolinson also determined that
“the dropout rate of minority students is mainly influenced by sociocultural alienation, such as
when there is a lack of support and socioemotional dissatisfaction (517). Unfortunately, Hunn
and several other authors have found that many students of color “perceive themselves as
unwanted, or receive clear messages that they are not wanted at PWIs” (Hunn 304). For example,
many students of color are excluded from group activities and projects, not invited to parties, and
are often the targets of racial slurs. Gokhan Savas discusses in his paper, “Understanding Critical
Race Theory as a Framework in Higher Education Research,” some of the experiences and
perceptions students of color have had at PWIs that would lead them to feel unwanted. Students
of color “suffer from isolation, alienation, and lack of support,” they feel a “sense of hostility and
racial discrimination, or notice a lack of interaction between themselves and White students,”
and “unwillingness from White faculty to recognize African American students in the
classroom” (Savas 514-516). In summary, despite the increased numbers in students of color
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attending higher education institutions, these institutions do not provide positive environments
that are conducive for learning, growth, or success.
One of the biggest causes of this mistreatment is the disproportionately high
representation of both White students and faculty which allows whiteness to become the norm
and by default students of color are outside of the norm (Cabrera 32). Brunsma, Brown, and
Placier explain that this “white habitus is a racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that
conditions and creates whites’ racial tastes, perceptions, feelings, emotions, and their views on
racial matters” (722). This means that the majority of students of color are forced to experience
college from a White person’s perspective and the exclusion of their own. They explain this
problem is exacerbated by what they call “walls of whiteness,” which “spatially separate White
and non-White students on HWCU [Historically White Colleges and Universities] campuses;
While HWCU’s have been legally or officially desegregated for decades, students re-segregate
during much of their time on campus” (721). (An HWCU is a college that was founded as a
“White only” institution prior to desegregation). Because students of color feel so out of place in
the predominantly White, homogenous environment, they choose to create communities within
communities and White students rarely make an effort to join these communities in anyway
(Altbach, Lomotey, and Rivers 31). This not only allows White students to continue to view
White as the norm but also allows them to remain ignorant of any racial issues that the college
campus is facing. Cabrera explains that this “insulates Whites from racial antagonism which they
frequently equate with racism.” This in turn “leads to skepticism regarding minority claims of
racial discrimination while reinforcing the sincere fiction that racism is largely a relic of the
past” (32). In other words, the segregation on college campuses allows racism and
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marginalization of students of color and slows the progress towards a more equal and diverse
student body.
Mills argues that this leads to a “white epistemology of ignorance,” meaning that this self
segregation allows people to remain ignorant about racial issues, which can lead to bigoted
thinking, even if only subconsciously. Following this logic, one would think education would be
the key to combating racial discrimination on college campuses, but Kim A. Case has found that
this does not always occur. Case studied the perceptions White students had of people of color
before and after they had taken a diversity course. She discovered that “participants’ prejudice
levels against Black, Arab, and Jewish people remained consistent” and prejudices against
Latinos increased over the semester (233). Case’s study also found that the number of cross-
racial friendships had decreased at the end of the semester, meaning that the majority of the
White students in the class would most likely continue to live in their “wall of whiteness,” which
would allow them to remain almost as unaware as before the class (233). This study shows that
traditional education is not an effective method for combating racist attitudes and beliefs and we
must work against inequality in every sphere including education, desegregation, and awareness
of race related issues and incidents on college campuses.
One reason that could have led to the disappointing results of this study is that, although
this particular class offered a non-White perspective, the majority of the classes offered, and the
school itself, continue to be framed from a White pedagogy. This pedagogy actually begins long
before students reach the university level. In fact, throughout all education levels all students are
taught White-centered history that minimizes the enormous struggle to fight for racial equality
and emphasizes that the fight is a thing of the past (Brunsma, Brown, Placier 727). Tatum gave
an example of this in her book “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
49. 43
Tatum describes the influence of the white pedagogy in an anecdote about a white student who,
when discussing the white pedagogy, said, “it’s not my fault that Blacks don’t write books”
(Tatum 5). Because this student had only (or predominantly) read White authors throughout his
White centered education he came to the conclusion that this was because Black people do not
write books.
Gendrin and Rucker also studied the teaching style of PWIs in comparison with those of
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Their study found that the classroom
environment and atmosphere and teaching styles at the PWIs were different from those at
HBCUs, which have much higher retention and graduation rates of African American students
than PWIs (46). HBCU classrooms typically maintain more conversational style, discussion
driven classes than the formal lectures often found at PWIs and the students at HBCUs were
much more likely to seek out one-on-one communication with the professor than the White
students at PWIs (44). The Black students at PWIs, do attempt to form personal one-on-one
relationships with their professors as the students at HBCUs do, but because the professors at
PWIs are accustomed to the White pedagogical style, Black students are often left feeling that
the PWI is unsupportive and “a more constraining culture for African American students” (43).
Race is an issue that affects everyone in his or her daily life, whether he or she realizes it
or not. However, living on a college campus allows for unique experiences and situations for
students because they are living with, eating with, working with, and being educated all with the
same group of people in a small, somewhat isolated environment. This same group of people
also often comes from all over the country and world. Given these unique circumstances and the
fact that students are presumably at these institutions to learn, one could assume that college
would provide an excellent opportunity to diminish racism and build social consciousness.
50. 44
Unfortunately, it has been determined that this is not the case. The studies described above all
indicate that PWIs have little interest in providing a diverse educational experience and the
students who attend these institutions will only lessen their racial biases if they make the
conscious decision to do so and act against the social norms of the school. My study will add to
this scholarship by providing further insight into the opinions and beliefs White students hold
about race, racism, and White privilege at the College of Wooster and whether these students fit
the mold of the typical educated White person today or deviate from the norm.
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CHAPTER III
METHOD
Now that I have provided background into the scholarship on race in chapter two, I will
delve into my own study on perceptions of race in the twenty-first century. To conduct my study,
I used a qualitative method of research: ethnographic interviews. The purpose of my study is to
gain an in depth and thorough understanding of White people’s perceptions of White privilege
and racism in the twenty-first century. These interviews will help me learn through my
participants’ opinions, experiences, and observations how these concepts are perceived. This
chapter will give my justification for using ethnographic interviews, the reasons why I chose the
participants that I did, and a description of how I conducted the interviews.
Justification of Methods
As discussed in the previous chapter, race is a social construct created through societal
relations and norms. As merely an imagined perception born out of a social hierarchy, race is a
difficult idea to quantify. Although surveys and statistics have been used to learn about the topics
of race, racism, and White privilege, the information gleaned from these does not allow for in
depth explanation. Because the participant can only choose an answer from the options given,
cannot ask clarifying questions, and is not able to explain or defend their answers the surveys
limit how much information can be gleaned from the participants (DeWalt and DeWalt 138).
Ethnographic interviews allow for further insight to be gained because discussing opinions,
beliefs, and experiences in an informal interview gives the participant the opportunity to speak
openly, share more honest sentiments (Gray 95-96).
Race is a relative concept meaning that its definition is constantly changing. Even so, it
remains an influential aspect of U.S. culture that affects the way people view and understand the
