Reflection Latinx

Colorblind Racism

Author(s): Meghan A. Burke

Source: Sociological Perspectives , OCTOBER 2017, Vol. 60, No. 5, Special Issue: New Frontiers in the Study of Colorblind Racism (OCTOBER 2017), pp. 857-865

Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.

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Sociological Perspectives 2017, Vol. 60(5) 857 –865

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Article

Colorblind Racism: Identities, Ideologies, and Shifting Subjectivities

Meghan A. Burke1

Abstract Sociologists have recently begun to recognize the need to more deeply examine the mechanisms of contemporary colorblind racism, to move beyond frame identification and glean new insights. This is important because as racial dynamics evolve, so will the ideologies and discourses that surround them. This article considers how we might be able to untangle ideology, racism, discourse, and the material realities of our wider social systems. It also introduces the themes in this Special Issue that parse ideals from ideologies, that consider individual subjectivities as they emerge in different social contexts, and that examine strategies for grappling with the realities of racism. This allows us to trace the connections between colorblind ideology and racism more broadly, giving us traction to potentially use this knowledge to sharpen our resistance to racism.

Keywords theory; race, gender, and class; racial and ethnic minorities

It has been nearly 15 years since Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) first published Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, which is among the most influential books on contemporary colorblind racism—the set of ideologies and discourses that uphold contemporary racial inequality by denying either its presence or its significance. Yet even before this seminal book, social scientists were beginning to trace features of a “new” or “modern” racism, one defined more by its symbolic and covert nature than by its reliance on direct and overt racial aggression (see Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997; Carr 1997; Kinder and Sears 1981; McConahay and Hough 1976; Pettigrew 1979; Smith 1995; Sniderman et al. 1991). An enormous body of work has grown since that time, further exploring the presence of this ideological system and tracing its impact in both institutional settings and everyday life (for an overview, see Burke 2017a).

Recently, a growing number of sociologists have begun to recognize the need for a reinvigo- rated scholarship around the study of colorblind racism. After a hearty round of scholarship that has provided significant evidence to support Bonilla-Silva’s work, many scholars are recognizing how “much of the literature has become stagnant, repeatedly identifying the presence of its frames

1Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, IL, USA

Corresponding Author: Meghan A. Burke, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Illinois Wesleyan University, P.O. Box 2900, Bloomington, IL 61702-2900, USA. Email: [email protected]

723827 SPXXXX10.1177/0731121417723827Sociological PerspectivesBurke research-article2017

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858 Sociological Perspectives 60(5)

without adding new insights” (Burke 2016:103). Reinvigorating our efforts will support our abil- ity to more carefully examine the causal relationship between colorblind racism and other phe- nomena (Hughey, Embrick, and Doane 2015), its ability to adapt (Doane 2014), its material roots and consequences (Bonilla-Silva 2015; Burke 2016), and more. Furthermore, as Michael Omi and Howard Winant (2009:123) suggested, “the very necessity of divulgating a ‘color-blind’ racial ideology itself demonstrates that deep fissures have appeared in the ‘system’ of racism, and that it is as not monolithic as [previous] authors have suggested.” It is now time to more carefully inspect the dynamics of colorblind racism so that we can more deeply consider its ongoing role in perpetu- ating racial violence and inequality.

This need is made all the more urgent by contemporary political dynamics, including the rise of the far or “alt-right” and recent social movements that have arisen in reaction to racial- ized police violence. The “All Lives Matter” refrain in response to the Black Lives Matter movement is emblematic of colorblindness, for its inability to see the well-documented and stark disparities in the criminal justice system that deeply constrain and endanger black lives (see Alexander 2010). And of course it is not just the “All Lives Matter” response that is so discouraging—that a seemingly innocuous claim, simply that black lives matter, could spawn such hatred and resistance from large numbers of the American public reveals the deep racial fears and resentments that often simmer just below the surface, even after the successes of the Civil Rights Movement.

Both ends of this spectrum should give us pause. On one end, we remain deeply colorblind: “All Lives Matter,” and many deny that anything other than individual merit explains success or survival. This is not isolated to one end of the political spectrum; white liberals and moderates are also complicit in colorblind racism. At the same time, Michael Tesler (2013) demonstrated that “old-fashioned racism” found renewed explanatory power in predicting white Americans’ partisan preferences in the Obama era—and many white Americans, thanks to the work of orga- nizers in the Black Lives Matter movement, are reckoning with the realities of racism in new ways. As such, growing numbers of Americans may be more aware of racism than in recent decades. Fewer people today would likely say that we are “post-racial” than many commentators hoped in the early years of Obama’s presidency. And in the midst of all of this, many are grap- pling with the ideals of colorblindness—that race should not matter—alongside the stark reality that it does. Many desire diversity, and yet too often reproduce racism. Some are careful in their speech, but bold and overtly racist online or in the back stage. And people of color are navigating ever more complicated dynamics as they move within and between social spaces. It is therefore crucial that we recognize that as racial dynamics evolve, so will the ideologies and discourses that surround them.

New Frontiers in the Study of Colorblind Racism

These are some of the dynamics that animate the articles presented in this Special Issue, devoted to what I have been calling “new frontiers” in the study of colorblind racism (Burke 2016). They also represent a trajectory of their own. In 2015, I was awarded an American Sociological Association Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) grant to host a Summit on the same theme, which took place on my campus at Illinois Wesleyan University in May of 2016. This Summit brought together 20 scholars, mostly sociologists, from around the country, to pres- ent their work, dialogue with local and national antiracist activists and organizations, and to hold a strategy session that began to articulate the themes for future work that would begin to shift our scholarship in needed new directions. While the peer review process necessitated that the Summit and this Special Issue be decoupled, several Summit scholars’ work are presented in this issue, and many more served as peer reviewers for this issue. As such, my hearty thanks goes out to Barbara Combs, Paul Croll, Ashley “Woody” Doane, Doug Hartmann, Matthew Hughey, Jennifer

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Mueller, Chinyere Osuji, Matthew Oware, Raúl Pérez, and Laurie Cooper Stoll for their collabo- ration on this issue.

The six articles represented here highlight what I expect will be some important themes in the study of colorblind racism in the years to come. Yet, the efforts to uncover these “new frontiers” in the study of colorblind racism go well beyond this issue, as evidenced by the voluminous response that the Call for Papers elicited, and a number of scholars are doing important work outside this issue. This work moves beyond the practice of merely identifying the presence of colorblind frames, as I (Burke 2016), and others (Doane 2014; Hughey et al. 2015), have sug- gested is necessary to do. Rather, it considers how we might be able to untangle ideology, racism, discourse, and the material realities of our wider social systems. The articles here do so by pars- ing ideals from ideologies, by considering individual subjectivities as they emerge in different social contexts, and by examining strategies—toward both progressive and regressive ends—for grappling with the realities of racism. All of this allows us to begin to trace colorblindness’s con- nections to ideology and racism more broadly, giving us traction to potentially use this knowl- edge to sharpen our resistance to racism.

Ideals and Ideologies

The volume begins with an important contribution from Douglas Hartmann, Paul Croll, Ryan Larson, Joseph Gerteis, and Alex Manning, parsing colorblind ideologies, as traditionally con- ceptualized, from a colorblind identity. After all, when we study individuals, we must consider how they make meaning of the worlds that surround them, and also the ways that activity based on that meaning may work in the service of larger oppressive or liberatory practices, where mate- rial consequences are produced. Hartmann et al. take on this individual subjectivity squarely in their article, exploring an important distinction between individual identification with colorblind ideals and colorblind ideology as typically understood. What we so often call colorblind ideology is reflective of researchers’ typical assumption that expressions of colorblind discourse reflect a defense of racism. While there is no doubt that this is a pervasive practice, they suggest that it is worth parsing implicit ideological expressions from explicit intentional expressions of colorblind ideals or perhaps even from colorblind identities that are articulated purposely, and likely sin- cerely, from individuals themselves. Colorblindness, for many, is a cherished ideal—something aspirational and worth actively claiming as a central part of one’s identity and politics.

In other words, if people say that they see themselves as colorblind, what might believing them help us to better understand about contemporary racial dynamics and systems of racism? Feminist epistemologies have used this strategy for decades; doing so does not foreclose the pos- sibility of critiquing those expressions or the beliefs and practices that may be connected to them. Hartmann et al. (part of upcoming Sociological Perspectives special issue) do this by tracing this measure of affinity’s connection to typical indicators of colorblind ideology as well as its varia- tion between and within racial groups. Their results are mixed and should provide a launching pad for deeper investigation into these complexities. After all, as they write, “Not only does colorblind identification not generate the same negative effects as measures of colorblind ideol- ogy, but it is also possible that a strong colorblind identification can have a positive effect on race relations.” In this way, individual identities may shape institutions in a variety of ways, rather than only negatively, as a singular focus on ideology has often suggested. Hartmann et al.’s work suggests that colorblindness can instead cut several ways—It can be a defense of entrenched rac- ism, or embraced actively by those who desire antiracist outcomes,1 including, of course, many people of color. This exemplifies yet another way that racial ideologies can split paths or evolve.

Considering the role of identities and aspirations does not, of course, preclude our ability to examine ideologies. Ashley “Woody” Doane’s article emphasizes that an ideology is racist to the extent that it maintains a racialized social system, and as such, conflating colorblind ideology

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860 Sociological Perspectives 60(5)

with racism may be a conceptual error. He suggests that this fluid nature of ideologies allows them to be merely one process by which racism, as a wider practice, is upheld. In fact, he empha- sizes that ideologies persist precisely because they are flexible. Candace Smith and Sarah Mayorga-Gallo, in their article, demonstrate this by building upon prior work on diversity ideol- ogy, which essentially pays lip service to diversity without enacting meaningful change to improve the experiences or conditions of still-marginalized groups (Embrick 2011). While diver- sity ideology “assumes that race shapes individuals’ world views and cultural practices, and that interaction across racial lines is positive and important” (Warikoo and de Novais 2015:861), it has also been used in the service of ongoing racial exclusion. Smith and Mayorga-Gallo suggest that diversity ideology allows whites to support principles of inclusion while failing to support policies that enact these principles. Ultimately, this takes place when dynamics of power are unacknowledged, in favor of practices that make whites feel better or to enhance their lives; this point is addressed further in a section that follows and in Jayakumar and Adamian’s article. While findings like this are not necessarily new (see Burke 2012), their work does point to a growing negotiation between diversity ideology and the discourse of colorblind racism, in that race is not being ignored but rather claimed and co-opted.

Considering the relationship between identities and ideologies helps us to consider the mul- tiple meanings that are being made of colorblindness and related ideologies. These meanings are necessarily subjective, and as the range of articles along this spectrum demonstrate, they can be mobilized in the service of ideals that can either subvert or sustain racism. It will be crucial for scholars, moving forward, to more carefully trace how individuals both make sense of and enact colorblindness as identities and as ideological maneuvers, how they make meaning of race and diversity in their social spaces, and how those meanings are mobilized to shape material outcomes.

Individuals and Institutions

The second major theme in these articles involves the role of individual actors as they interface with institutions. These examinations involve a consideration of differing social worlds. For example, Vanessa Gonlin and Mary Campbell examine the ways that people of color make use of colorblind ideologies and bring further insight into the complicated role of individuals in social and institutional contexts. Gonlin and Campbell rightly point out that people of color have been understudied in prior analyses of colorblind ideologies and discourses, and that they have also too often been collapsed into one category, ignoring differences in the ways that blacks, Latinos, Asians, and other identity groups may understand and navigate their social locations. In particu- lar, they test the contact hypothesis—the theory that increased interracial contact will diminish racist attitudes (see Sigelman and Welch 1993), and find that people of color with close relation- ships to whites do not tend to embrace colorblind racial ideologies to a greater degree than those without. However, respondents do tend to minimize racism—particularly the racism that other people of color face, though their results vary across racial groups. These insights have a range of implications, but centrally, they demonstrate how context and embodiment matter for indi- vidual subjectivities. Again, we see that ideologies are not fixed but are rather fluid and socially contingent.

Individual subjectivities are deeply connected to institutional settings in the article by Uma Jayakumar and Annie Adamian, who examine whites who attend historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). They consider how these white students manage an awareness of racial privilege that is often made salient to them in their coursework and social settings, and find that whites simultaneously demonstrate an awareness of systems of power and feel victimized by such conversations—a trait sometimes known as white fragility. They manage white fragility by doing identity work to demonstrate that they are not individually complicit with these systems of

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racism. They also use their “race cache” to demonstrate their presumed knowledge of racial mat- ters and specific elements of racial subcultures.

From this insight, they suggest a potential fifth frame of colorblind racism, which they call the “disconnected power analysis frame.” Their work allows us to explore how whites maneuver their identities and discourse in relation to these discussions, focusing on their presentation to others more than their actions, as some of my own previous work has also shown (Burke 2012, 2017b). These practices are what help to create Smith and Mayorga- Gallo’s “principle-policy gap.” This insight may also help us to appreciate the ways that the subjective and contextual nature of colorblind enactments matter. After all, in Gonlin and Campbell’s article, people of color who have close contact with whites still demonstrate fewer colorblind racial attitudes than whites, and minimize not their own experiences with racism, but rather the experiences of others. While it is certainly crucial to continue to explore whites’ manifestations of racism, we must not lose the centrality of people of color, who must navigate a racist society in an array of contexts and relationships with far greater risk than whites.

Carefully examining the role of colorblindness at both the individual and institutional levels helps us to better examine how context matters in our examination of colorblind discourses. While it can be useful to examine how individuals respond to hypothetical scenarios and general- ized questions, these are by definition abstractions that do not always reveal the complex interac- tions between individuals and institutions, which both shape and are shaped by material social conditions. A closer investigation would help us to further unbury subjectivities, including, importantly, those of people of color, who necessarily navigate systems of racism in more com- plicated ways to ensure their safety and survival. Tracing the dynamics between self and society from within the contexts that produce them, rather than by abstractions, will help us better under- stand how systems of racism operate and may be altered.

Racial Consciousness and Evasion

This brings us to the third theme in these articles—the tension between race-conscious and race- evasive practices. Humor, as Raúl Pérez argues in his article, is one way that race consciousness can be deployed, often as a deliberate affront to colorblind principles and ideologies, particularly as it resonates around notions of “political correctness.” Joke-tellers defend racist humor by using colorblind principles such as being “equal-opportunity offenders.” And yet, in a society where opportunities are deeply unequal, racist humor builds community and a sense of racial superiority within groups, especially among whites, by identifying and mocking members of an out-group, typically people of color—over whom, for example, in majority-white police forces where racist jokes are prevalent, whites exert considerable power. They do this by first dehuman- izing the targets of racial ridicule and racial violence. In this sense, joke-telling brings racism from the back to the front stage—sometimes quite literally for stand-up comedians—and also invites membership into hate-filled spaces such as in white supremacist communities and the alt- right, where online racist humor is prevalent.

As such, comedians and joke-tellers who deploy racialized or racist meanings directly engage race and racial stereotypes in a deliberate fashion, and yet position their jokes alongside the col- orblind assumption that race no longer matters—that political correctness is something to be challenged rather than reflective of a growing concern over the realities of ongoing racism and discrimination. The pretext that these are “just jokes” allows individuals to evade matters of power and co-opt racial meanings, or to directly mobilize racist stereotypes and slurs, without themselves being subject to charges of racism. It is also part of a wider practice that Matthew Oware (2016) has called racial evasion. It is truly, to borrow the title from Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) book, racism without racists.

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Evasion also takes place in the context of diversity ideology explored by Smith and Mayorga- Gallo, and among the white students at HBCUs explored by Jayakumar and Adamian. In both spaces, the salience of race is explicit—either by embracing principles of diversity (which is almost always interpreted racially—see Bell and Hartmann 2007) or by choosing to attend a historically black college or university. At the same time, race is evaded by failing to support policies that actually support diversity, or by focusing on one’s own impression management as someone who carries “race cache” or is not personally racist. I found both trends in my own examination of whites who held power in racially diverse neighborhoods—They expressed col- orblind principles of “tolerance” and embraced diversity as a cherished value, but at the end of the day, most only worked to preserve their own material assets or to consume diversity as a way to enhance their own lives (see Burke 2012).

This tension between racial consciousness and racial evasion is an important theme for future research, as it reveals how understandings about race and racism are actively managed by those embedded in material realities in the service of their own self-preservation. This is obviously not taking place on an equal playing field: Self-preservation for whites in a racist society is not itself a challenge and almost always comes at the expense of people of color. But as Doane (part of upcoming Sociological Perspectives special issue) also points out, “whites are not really ‘color- blind,’ they increasingly acknowledge and deliberately misrepresent the extent of systemic rac- ism.” While a claim like this deserves empirical testing and scrutiny, we likely have assumed too much naivety on the part of whites in prior research. In this way, paying attention to how actors navigate and manage their knowledge of the realities of race and racism, rather than assuming that they do not, is sure to reveal deeper insights about how racism is produced and challenged.

Race, Ideology, and Paths Forward

Doane’s article (part of upcoming Sociological Perspectives special issue) helps us to step back and look at exactly how we might begin to untangle ideology, racism, and the wider mechanisms of our social systems. His central claim is that colorblindness is but one of many racial ideolo- gies, which he defines as “collections of beliefs and understandings about race and the role of race in social interaction,” emphasizing that these are always tied to existing social relations. Much as I stressed in my 2016 article in Social Currents, and Bonilla-Silva had in his 2015 piece in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, we must not lose sight of the reality that ideologies are always grounded in material realities, embedded in institutions and concrete social practices that give them meaning and produce real social outcomes. This only further underlines the need for contemporary scholars of racism to move beyond frame identification and to more carefully trace the precise ways that mechanisms of racism are just that—processes that link to the material conditions of the social world while also allowing our subjectivities to navigate it as such. This will always happen in ways that travel with the social power that we carry in differing ways, depending on how we embody racial identities and our lived experiences.

It is for this reason that Doane, again, reminds us that ideologies are only racist to the degree that they maintain a “racialized social system” (Bonilla-Silva 1997). The flaw of conflating colorblind- ness with prejudice, which Doane cautions us against, is made clear in the analysis of people of color as they deploy colorblindness strategically in this same racialized social system, as in Gonlin and Campbell’s article, and in Hartmann et al.’s article, where we are able to decouple colorblind identities from ideologies, and more meaningfully begin to trace how each shapes attitudes and practices that support or subvert a racialized social system. We are also, of course, as Pérez demon- strates, able to see ever more precisely how it can also be used in the service of ongoing racism.

The articles in this volume also help us, as Doane suggests is crucial, to appreciate how color- blindness is a process—always evolving according to the specific social settings and wider soci- etal dynamics where it is being deployed. Diversity ideology (Embrick 2011; Warikoo and de

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Novais 2015) complicates this, fostering the appearance of inclusion through some tangible forms of racial awareness, but doing so in ways that, as Smith and Mayorga-Gallo demonstrate, widen the principle-policy gap. Jayakumar and Adamian’s suggested fifth frame of colorblind racism also illustrates this beautifully: A disconnected power analysis reflects colorblind ideol- ogy as an ongoing process that shifts to accommodate racial awareness but still evades systems of power that could alter the larger system of racism and racial ideology that Doane suggests is so often served by it.

At the same time, Hartmann et al. suggest that colorblind ideology may also be evolving to accommodate progressive and/or antiracist racial ideologies. To continue to assume that colorblind- ness is the sole, fixed contemporary racial ideology misses fundamental insights about both racism (as lived experience with material social outcomes) and ideology (as fluid, multiple, contested, and never evenly applied). Many Americans understand the realities of racism, as best as any one indi- vidual can in their specific social location, and want to push for social change, but are not sure how to talk about these realities or desires. As Michael Omi and Howard Winant (2009) wrote,

“Colorblindness” may be little more than a form of antiracism “lite,” but the fact that millions of whites (and not only whites) identify with this idea, and the fact that many whites have adopted a more serious antiracism—many students for example, cultural workers, “movement people,” etc., who cannot be dismissed as mere tokens or exceptions—clearly calls into question the rigidities of [some previous analyses]. (P. 123)

Our investigations moving forward need to expand to consider more deeply and contextually how ordinary individuals make sense of racialized social systems and how they act to change them.

The authors in this volume provide evidence that many individuals, including many whites, often are not colorblind at all, but rather deeply aware of the presence of a racialized social sys- tem, no matter the ideologies or politics that they tag onto it. At the same time, people of color receive the violence of this same system. Colorblindness is always grounded in these material realities, but its contextual nature, the difference between identities and ideologies, and the ways that individual subjectivities navigate this racial awareness within those systems of power pro- vide starting points for much further investigation. Moving forward, we must remain attuned to these materialist, subjective, and contingent expressions of colorblindness, and the ways that power is being negotiated in unequal spaces. The articles in this issue should be helpful to schol- ars as we continue to chart these new frontiers.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the Editors of Sociological Perspectives for their collaboration on this Special Issue and for their helpful feedback in preparing this manuscript. Authors Doug Hartmann, Candis Smith, and Raúl Pérez also shared helpful feedback on this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note

1. This is in some ways related to the point that Conor Friedersdorf (2015) made in a recent article in The Atlantic called “The Left’s Attack on Color-blindness Goes Too Far.” While his article tends toward

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alarmist rhetoric that misses the very nuance he suggests, he, too, asserts the need to consider aspira- tional colorblindness.

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Author Biography

Meghan A. Burke is associate professor of sociology at Illinois Wesleyan University, where her areas of specialty are social theory and race. She was awarded an ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline grant to host a national Summit on New Frontiers in the Study of Colorblind Racism; she is also the author of two books and several articles about colorblind racism, with a third book on the topic under contract. In 2016, she earned the Midwest Sociological Society Early Career Scholarship Award.

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