Abstract
Colorblind Racism is a very nick-able book. I know this because my first review copy was nicked – I suspect by a student to whom I had meant to loan, not give, the book. I explained this loss of the book to the review editor of this journal and she kindly ordered me a second copy. When it arrived, I took the second copy of Colorblind Racism into the field with me to peruse it while conducting research in the remote Aboriginal community of Barunga, Northern Territory, Australia. I recommended it to a colleague who had accompanied me into the field – and she took the copy I loaned her back home with her after the fieldwork. Luckily, this nicker of my second review copy suffered from pangs of guilt and returned the book to me in the post.
Colorblind Racism explores the ways in which colourblindness – the notion that race does not matter – can reinforce racist inequalities. It plots the history of racism in the United States, from overt to covert expressions of racism. Due to its insidious character, colourblind racism is akin to everyday racism (see Philomena, 1991).
This book consists of five chapters, spanning the history of colourblind racism up to its operation in the present. The analysis draws on the four central frames that were identified by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003): abstract liberalism, naturalisation, cultural racism and the minimisation of risk. The core argument concerns the movement from ‘traditional’ racism, which was overt and direct, to a ‘new’ colourblind racism, which is covert and more abstract.
Chapter 1 defines colourblind racism as ‘an assertion of equal opportunity that minimizes the reality of racism in favour of individual or cultural explanations of inequality’ (p. 2). This ideology justifies the ongoing social, economic and political advantages of racial inequalities. The core features of colourblind racism are identified as (1) the reactive use of ideology to justify the status quo of racial inequality and racial dominance and, through this, to diminish the explanatory power of racism; (2) complicity with neoliberal politics and ideologies; and (3) the ongoing use of racial stereotypes.
Chapter 2 places colourblindness within an historical context, not only in terms of the pre-Civil Rights laws and justifications that supported racial exclusion and segregation but also as colourblindness has informed – and been informed by – growing racial inequality in the United States.
Chapter 3 investigates the role of colourblindness in a range of divergent contexts: in the institutional sites of education, housing, health care and the criminal justice system; in laws relating to the workforce and housing, and in immigration policy and international politics; and in popular culture, home and family life, and interracial interactions. The author brings together these developments to argue that: Instead, it [colourblindness] is a denial of racism, an adherence to abstract ideals that ignore the realities that prevent them, coded adherence to pervasive racial stereotypes, social and residential isolation, and other manoeuvres that leave our current racial hierarchies and the assumptions that support them unchecked. (pp. 76–7)
Chapter 4 presents a nuanced consideration of colourblindness, outlining variations around and across the colour line, variations in social contexts, ‘backstage’ racism, racial codes and overt experiences. This chapter finishes by raising a number of new questions concerning the new racism and how it varies in terms of speaker, context and location.
Chapter 5 outlines possible new directions. The ‘white elephant in the room’ is identified as diversity ideology that allows whites to support principles of inclusion at the same time that they fail to enact policies that adhere to these principles. Finally, the author outlines ways in which contemporary racism can be challenged – most critically, through changing our daily and nightly practices and the associated landscapes of opportunity, ‘those myriad spaces where practices that perpetrate inequality and violence (including symbolic violence) must be actively altered’ (p. 121).
The book concludes with a very useful appendix that provides a scholarly timeline for major studies in colourblind racism. It starts with Joel Kovel’s (1970: 54) characterisation of ‘the aversive racist’ as ‘the type who believes in white race superiority but does nothing overt about it’ and finishes with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s (2003) Racism without Racists and Michael K. Brown et al.’s (2003) Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-blind Society.
While Colorblind Racism is aimed primarily at postgraduate and undergraduate audiences, as well as the general reader, it could be used in high school teaching. It is structured to teach complex ideas in accessible ways. Accordingly, it is interspersed with discussion questions that focus attention on the matter at hand and encourage the reader to draw on their own experiences and understandings of racism, such as:
How familiar do these common themes of racism sound, from the ways that you have heard race discussed in everyday life?
Who benefits from a widespread belief in colourblindness?
What elements of racial inequality are hardest to explain with these ‘common sense’ notions about race and racism?
Colorblind Racism provides new insights into the social, cultural, economic and political factors that underwrite the continued racially based structural inequalities of many Western countries. Moreover, it addresses difficult topics, such as the recent rise in white supremacy movements. It convincingly links the failure of some people to endorse social movements (such as Black Lives Matter on the basis that all lives matter) to a hesitancy to address the ways in which race structures inequality and, through this reluctance, to the perpetration of racial inequality. The overall message from the author is for the reader to learn more about contemporary racism so they are best prepared to challenge it.
Though Colorblind Racism is grounded in the history and present-day reality of the United States, the issues are relevant to colonised countries such as Australia and New Zealand (e.g. Smith et al., 2017), as well as countries with significant migrant populations, such as England, France and Germany (see European Network Against Racism, 2019). Thank goodness I have a review copy. Otherwise, I might have to find someone who already has a copy – and nick it.