Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., & Kawakami, K. (2010). Racism. In J. F. Dovidio, M. Hewstone, P. Glick, & V. M. Esses (Eds.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 312-327). London: Sage.

John F. Dovidio is a psychology professor at Yale whose research interests surround issues of social power and social relations, both between groups and between individuals. I explore both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit) influences on how people think about, feel about, and behave toward others based on group membership. I continue to conduct research on aversive racism, a contemporary subtle form of prejudice, and on techniques for reducing conscious and unconscious biases.

Summary of Main Points:

This chapter reviews a quick history of racism and its modern development.  Dovidio et al. state that there are three main kinds of racism: cultural, institutional, and individual.  Racism is understood as a bias against another group based on their race/racial identity.  Through social categorization theory the authors attempt to understand how the functioning of race/racialization/racism appears to be a natural/comfortable system to many.  They review some concepts of group theory to understand how populations construct identity and draw boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’.  In this chapter the authors also review various theories/analyses of racism in the United States from implicit bias/racism to contemporary racism such as symbolic racism and aversive racism.

Analysis/Evaluation:

Their definition of racism is incorrect.  White supremacist racism/racism/white supremacy is a system of power based on the supremacy & dominance of “White” people.  “White” is a political concept created by the European & colonial ruling elite of the 17th & 18th centuries that is revealed in attitudes, behaviors & institutional systems in which white people maintain supremacy over peoples of color.  Human beings create & maintain the systems which, in turn, reinforce racism.  The concept of race as human subspecies did not exist prior to the 17th century.  What existed prior to the concept of racism was the association of darkness with an ability to stand hot climates.  Nation mattered more than physical appearance.  Dovidio et al.’s racial analysis is lacking and removes racism from its cultural context as a justification system for the enslavement of Africans to fuel capitalism in its early stages.  Dovidio et al.’s analysis leaves out the function of socialization as well as the function of power.  In the words of Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture, ““I think the problem is that many people in America think that racism is an attitude. And this is encouraged by the capitalist system. So they think that what people think is what makes them a racist. Racism is not an attitude.  If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem.  If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.  Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you’re anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude. You cannot be a racist without power. You cannot be a sexist without power. Even men who beat their wives get this power from the society which allows it, condones it, encourages it. One cannot be against racism, one cannot be against sexism, unless one is against capitalism.” Racism is more than attitudes and to not understand it as a hegemony is to mistake it for what it really is.

Questions:

(1) Based on Dovidio et al.’s discussion about implicit bias and social categorization; what do you think about theorists who categorize racism as a psychological pathology?

(2) How useful are the concepts “cultural racism”& “symbolic racism” within sociological understandings of “white supremacist racism”?

(3) Do popular notions of racism that reduce it to attitudes encourage us to be more concerned with how Eurocolonialists feel about racism rather than its impact on racialized peoples?

(4) Is Dovidio et al.’s conclusion that overtly/consciously endorsed racism has decreased true?

 

Other Related Literature:

Omi, M., Winant, H. 1994. Racial Formation. In: M. Omi and H. Winant. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. p. 59-68.

In this section Omi and Winant cover the basic components of understanding how race and racism function in everyday life.  Omi and Winant refer to racial formation a historical project that is constantly remade with modern contexts as well as historical components.  Race and racism are ideologies that are taught to all individuals within a society, the theory of racial formation states that we all learn some combination of the racialized social structure.  Omi and Winant state that for all of its history as a “nation”, the United States has been a racial dictatorship.  The racial dictatorship of the United States became the norm through which all U.S. politics was situated and had three main consequences: (1) they defined the “American” identity as White, (2) it organized the “color line” and made it fundamental to fundamental social and economic divisions in American society, (3) and it consolidated the oppositional racial consciousness which helped construct the racial identities of the “Other”.  It is through the production of hegemonic ideology that race and racism is maintained within society.  Racial hegemony in the United States is maintained via White Americans’ elaborating and maintaining a popular system of ideas and practices – through things like media, education, religion, folk wisdom, etc. – which Antonio Gramsci referred to as “common sense”.  According to Gramsci, it is through the perpetuation of common sense, society provides consent to the way in which it is ruled.  Omi and Winant conclude this chapter by drawing attention to the intersectionality of systems of domination and hegemony.  They state that race, class, and gender are not fixed or discrete categories and are by no means autonomous.  Race, class, and gender intersect and fuse with one another and have mutual determinations.  There are no clear boundaries between these different regions of hegemony, making hegemony tentative complete, and messy.

Harrison, F.V. 1995. The Persistent Power of “Race” in the Cultural and Political Economy of Racism. Annu. Rev. Anthropl. 24:47-74.

In this article Faye Harrison reviews how the field of anthropology came to critique the biological concept of race but then adopted a “no-race” concept of colorblindness and ethnicity based principles.  Anthropology as a discipline has largely contributed to the perpetuation of White supremacy and the biologization of difference.  The colorblind perspective that many anthropologists have taken leaves the persistence of racism unaddressed and its multi-leveled impacts.  Harrison points out that while much of the recent language in regards to racial politics move towards a colorblind/diversity/multicultural ideology, racism has become more subtle, evasive, and volatile.  Harrison points out that while the way that racism plays out around the world is contextually different, it is all White supremacist racism and a core component to its international reach comes from the imperialist military expansions of the West (notably the United States).  The binary of whiteness versus Blackness and First Nations peoples is generally the binary we see worldwide, those who are blacker in skin pigmentation are demonized as the polarized other and antithesis of Whiteness.  Racial meaning and hierarchies are unstable and in constant flux but is maintained by two poles of difference that have remained relatively constant: white supremacy and black subordination that demarcates the social bottom.

Krieger, N., Williams, D.R., Zierler, S. 1999. “Whiting Out” White Privilege Will Not Advance the Study of How Racism Harms Health.  American Journal of Public Health. 89(5): 782-783.

In this piece Krieger et al. discuss the importance of discussing White supremacy, White privilege, and institutional racism in public health.  Krieger et al encourage researchers to measure the diverse ongoing expressions of racism and how this racial inequality distributes health inequality.  Krieger et al state that by discussing and studying White privilege (the social, political, and economic advantages of being White in the United States) we can better understand the implications of such White privilege for health.  The researchers call for the use of research that looks at the intersections of race and class to investigate the economic and noneconomic consequences of racism and its effect on health status.  The researchers conclude by stating that there is a need to create a science that utilizes historical, social, political, economic, and ideological contexts.

Daniels, J. and A. Schulz. 2006. Constructing Whiteness in Health Disparities Research. In: Mullings, L., Schulz, A., editors. Gender, Race, Class, and Health: Intersectional Approaches. San Francisco: Jossey-Boss. p. 89-130.

In this chapter Daniels and Schulz discuss how Western epistemology and science is not bias free and how the base for the supposed normality (whether that be social or biological) is White.  The authors discuss the White supremacist racist past of racially motivated science and medicine and how much of health disparities research today upholds racist attitudes and perpetuates stereotypes.  The authors argue that in many ways the way health disparity research is constructed implies that Whites are the norm, or the baseline for the normal depictions of health and shows how people of color appear to be deviations from that constructed norm.  Daniels and Schulz discuss some of the arguments being made by scholars about the problems with racial classification.  Some argue that racial classification is unscientific and its use is problematic while others argue that while it is socially constructed it is a consequence of living is a racial dictatorship and such a categorization means that people of different racial categories have different health outcomes and we need to study the outcomes so we can point to the structural racism and how it is influencing the lives of people of different ‘races’.  While researchers know that race is socially constructed, many individuals are interpreting racial/ethnic health disparities as the result of biological or genetic differences or due to lifestyle/cultural factors.  Daniels & Schulz argue for the need to conceptualize race as a set of social relations that provide Whites with privileges over people of color.  The authors also discuss the overwhelming whiteness of the human genome project and how the project of whiteness is perpetuated in scientific and medical research and perpetuates racial/ethnic health disparities.