The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism,by DiTomaso,N.

Reviewed by: Alford A. Young Jr., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA DOI: 10.1177/0730888414534933

The sociological study of race and racism has taken a decisive turn since the emergence of the concept of color-blind racism. That concept has been employed by sociologists to explore how and why White Americans maintain positions of dominance in the post-civil rights era without their having to acknowledge a role for personal or structural racism as relevant to that outcome. Much of the research on this phenomenon has offered that color-blind racism allows its benefactors to embrace a sanitized worldview of racial and ethnic others, and of race relations more generally, even though those individuals benefit from the social conditions, forces, and circumstances that disadvantage those people.

In The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism, Nancy DiTomaso offers further interpretation of the salience of colorblind racism. DiTomaso focuses on the occupational sector to advance claims about how and why worldviews associated with color-blind racism endure so strongly in America alongside pervasive racial disadvantage. In extraordinarily clear and straightforward language, The American Non-Dilemma makes the case that the racial divide is rooted in the preferential treatment that many White Americans demonstrate for members of their own social group, especially in the areas of employment and access to mobility-enhancing institutions such as schools. DiTomaso asserts that many upwardly mobile and higher income White Americans are now firmly located in the private sector of the modern economy, and this condition allows for more subtle forms of preferential treatment to drive contemporary race relations.

DiTomaso employs the term opportunity hoarding to discern the manner by which White Americans withdraw from public sector employment almost immediately after civil rights legislation is enacted to create opportunities in that sector for the racially disadvantaged. The movement of White Americans into the private sector means access to opportunities (e.g., better jobs, schools, housing, and neighborhoods) that are both more rewarding and less controllable by external entities such as the government. Alternatively, African Americans and Latinos have remained restricted to the financially less rewarding public sector as that has been the site for most of the employment advances that they have experienced in the post-civil rights era. What this amounts to is that the most socially and economically powerful racial group in the United States has responded to the circumstances designed to advance equality by shifting the terrain from the public to the private sphere. In doing so, a public discourse centered on fairness without racial considerations proliferates alongside private practices that allow racial inequalities to persevere. Moreover, as many White Americans experience little to no substantive interaction with non-Whites (neither at work nor in their neighborhoods of residence), their capacity to interpret the social choices and outcomes of those racial others relies upon stereotypes, misperceptions, and fictions rather than on consistent interaction with and intimate knowledge about such people.

The data used in this analysis come from varied sources. DiTomaso draws from a wide body of social science research. She uses this material to supplement her own interviews with White Americans who hold membership among either the working or the white-collar professional classes. The interviews explore the life histories of these individuals, their views on race and race relations, and their sociopolitical attitudes and opinions. She uncovers a range of interrelated arguments, including that many of those she interviewed claim to support equal opportunity in principle, but that they also are heavily invested in activities and ideologies that promote their own group's social, economic, and political advantages. Perhaps the most insightful effort to link history to the present day is DiTomaso's reflection upon her own family history of racial outlook and attitude formation. She draws upon her family history and experiences not only to explain why she pursued the research agenda that resulted in this book but also to demonstrate quite precisely how White Americans could develop a strong sense of security in feeling nonracist while having benefited greatly by post-civil rights era processes of racial privilege for White Americans.

Some of the story told here has been presented in the work of Larry Bobo, Paul Sniderman, Donald Kinder, and others who have conducted survey research on White racial attitudes. The extension provided by DiTomaso is the richer and more detailed portrait of White American racial sensibilities through the interview material as well as the argument that living in distinct socioeconomic worlds—White Americans in the more private and lucrative and Black Americans in the less lucrative public sector (if employed at all)—means that White Americans are structurally located in ways that allows for their not feeling very much implicated in the problematic condition of Black America. DiTomaso makes clear that although the civil rights era can and should be recognized for creating extensive transformations in the life chances of African Americans and other people of color, it is a social transformation occurring after its conclusion that drives the current, and highly disturbing, state of affairs for race relations.