It is difficult to ignore the widely reported news coverage of violent acts of racism and the numerous racist comments made by high profile figures in the United States over the past several months. Given recent events in Ferguson, MO, and New York City, an exploration of views on race and racism seems in order.
Intentionally, we’ve included differing opinions from Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology, Duke University, Dr. Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, and Dr. Rodney Coates, Professor of Sociology, Miami University of Ohio. These three have written and spoken extensively on race and its implications for American society and offer differing
From the Writings of Professor of Sociology, Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University
“...there is a form of “new racism,” insists Dr. Bonilla-Silva. “Racism in the 21st century is of a more hidden and difficult-to-detect variety than the outright version utilized prior to and during the civil rights movement.
In White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, published in 2003, Bonilla-Silva wrote, “Despite real progress that the abolition of most of the formal, overt, and humiliating practices associated with Jim Crow represented, this did not mean the end of practices to reproduce racial hierarchy. Instead, new racism practices have replaced Jim Crow ones in all areas of life.
...the way in which racial inequality is reproduced in this area is vastly different from how it was reproduced in the past. For instance, residential segregation today, which is almost as high as it was forty years ago (Lewis Mumford Center 2001; Yinger 1995), is no longer accomplished through clearly discriminatory practices, such as real-estate agents employing outright refusal or subterfuge to avoid renting or selling to minority customers, federal government redlining policies, antiminority insurance and lending practices, and racially restrictive covenants on housing deeds (Massey and Denton 1993). In contrast, in the face of equal housing laws and other civil rights legislation, covert behaviors and strategies have largely replaced Jim Crow practices and have maintained the same outcome—separate communities.
A number of researchers have documented the manifold subtle yet systematic ways in which racial privilege is reproduced in the United States (Feagin 2000; R. C. Smith 1995). I have labeled this new, kinder and gentler, white supremacy as the “new racism” and have argued that it is the main force behind contemporary racial inequality (Bonilla-Silva 2001; Bonilla-Silva and Lewis 1999).
Although the “new racism” seems to be racism lite, it is as effective as slavery and Jim Crow in maintaining the racial status quo. The central elements of this new structure are: (1) the increasingly covert nature of racial discourse and practices; (2) the avoidance of racial terminology and the ever-growing claim by whites that they experience “reverse racism”; (3) the invisibility of most mechanisms to reproduce racial inequality; (4) the incorporation of “safe minorities” to signify the non-racialism of the polity (e.g. Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell) to dignify the nonracialism of the polity; and (5) the re- articulation of some racial practices characteristic of the Jim Crow period of race relations.” Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is author of Racist Racism, and co-author of Anything but Racism: How Social Analysts Limit the Significance of Race (with Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Hayward Horton) and White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology.
From a conversation with Professor of Sociology, Dr. Rodney Coates, Miami University of Ohio
Dr. Coates refers to the term “covert racism” when referring to the concept Bonilla-Silva has called "new racism.” Coates says, "Covert and overt racism have co-existed throughout U.S. history. As a people, we've spent most of our time concentrating on the most obvious forms of racism and now that those forms have been eliminated, the less obvious forms appear to be most salient. But the reality is that prior to 1960, overt ‘in your face’ racism existed in the South and a more covert subdued racism existed in the North. The civil rights/apartheid-like structures such as lack of voter rights and literacy tests, so prevalent in the South garnered all of our attention. These de jure forms of racism were quite apparent. But the less obvious, the de facto forms of racism were all but ignored. These de facto forms of racism operated outside of the law, nevertheless, served to curtail the life chances of those trapped within its tentacles.
After Obama was elected president gun sales went up 35%. In many ways, the election of the first black president challenges the core of race and racist structures. Many of the attacks against Obama have reflected this, for example the blatant hostile attacks on the president of which an example is GOP Republican Congressman, Joe Wilson, who stood up during a state of the union address and yelled "lie". President Obama has experienced a kind of abuse of office not before seen in our country. It raises interesting questions about why now and why this. I believe it points to these more covert, less obvious forms of racism.
The targets of racist hostility have historically been black youths, particularly young black men. These were the ones most likely to be whipped as slaves, lynched (and coincidentally few of these murders were ever punished), and more recently targeted with more aggressive policing, racial profiling and increased incarceration. This long standing reality forces us to now question and even protest what appears to be a coordinated assault against young black males by police across this country. Today, young black males are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white males. Imagine if this fact were different; imagine if instead of young, black males were talking about young, white females being shot by black police. Another element of covert racism is “plausible deniability”. Why of course, these black males represented a threat and the police were only acting in their own self –defense. Again, the black community and communities across this country say –Hell no, never again.”
Excerpts from Dr. Thomas Sowell’s Race, Culture, and Equality
Nothing has been more common in human history than discrimination against different groups, whether different by race, religion, caste or in innumerable other ways. Moreover, this discrimination has itself been unequal--more fierce against some groups than others and more pervasive at some periods of history than in others. If there were not so many other powerful factors creating disparities in income and wealth, it might be possible to measure the degree of discrimination by the degree of differences in economic outcomes. Even so, the temptation to do so is seductive, especially as a means of reducing the complexities of life to the simplicities of politics. But the facts will not fit that vision.
Anyone familiar with the history of race relations in the Western Hemisphere would find it virtually impossible to deny that blacks in the United States have faced more hostility and discrimination than blacks in Latin America. As just one example, 161 blacks were lynched in one year in the United States, but racial lynching was unknown south of the Rio Grande.
Perhaps [the strongest] case against the predominance of discrimination as an explanation of economic disparities would be a comparison of blacks in Haiti with blacks in the United States. Since Haiti became independent two centuries ago, Haitian blacks should be the most prosperous blacks in the hemisphere and American blacks the poorest, if discrimination is the overwhelming factor, but in fact the direct opposite is the case. It is Haitians who are the poorest and American blacks who are the most prosperous in the hemisphere--and in the world.
None of this should be surprising. The fact that discrimination deserves moral condemnation does not automatically make it causally crucial. Whether it is or is not in a given time and place is an empirical question, not a foregone conclusion. A confusion of morality with causation may be politically convenient but that does not make the two things one.