New Frontiers in the Study of Color-Blind Racism

Color-Blind and Contemporary Racism

In the decades since the Civil Rights Movement, sociologists have sought to understand persistent racial inequalities and the ideologies that support them. Although the Civil Rights Movement generated many important gains, most notably the removal of overt, state-sanctioned forms of segregation and discrimination, it did little to address already-institutionalized disparities. Consequently, many Americans believe that we now live in a just society—a society wherein inequalities are viewed largely as emanating from individual efforts or cultural differences. Racial inequality, however, persists and seems to be intensifying. Such persistence, coupled with an ideology that denies its significance, has come to be known as color-blind racism.

Social psychologists seem to have been the first to identify this disconnect between ideological systems and the empirical realities of racial inequality, exclusion, and discrimination, sometimes calling this “symbolic racism” (Sears 1988) or “modern racism” (McConahay 1986). Early sociological treatments of this topic include Robert Charles Smith’s (1995) and Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith’s (1997) concept of “laissez-faire racism,” and Carr’s (1997) Colorblind Racism. The names attributed to the phenomenon vary, and the concepts are also often treated interchangeably, perhaps for good reason: they all situate ideology in a broader sociopolitical structure of neoliberalism that maintains institutionalized racism and white privilege.

Some sociological work, however, has more clearly emphasized the material foundations of such ideological views. Kluegel (1990), for instance, argued that what he called “motivational individualism” (i.e., attributing lack of success to a lack of motivations rather than to genetics) “may also stem from more recent sources of antiblack hostility, e.g., perceived economic or political threat” (p. 513). He also points out that “for many whites opposition to policies for improving the economic status of blacks stems solely from their interpretation of [the black-white] gap” (p. 523). In other words, the color-blind views of whites themselves are often grounded in material social conditions or perceptions of those conditions—conditions that more contemporary analyses of ideology and racial inequality have tended to neglect.

Bonilla-Silva (2003) was one of several (see also Brown et al. 2003; Gallagher 2003) to highlight the importance of contemporary color-blind rhetoric and frames in Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Drawing on discursive responses to often-hypothetical scenarios, he establishes four central frames, or “set paths for interpreting information” (p. 26), common to color-blind ideology. Perhaps due to the popularity of this text among both students and scholars, and his earlier paradigm-shifting piece (Bonilla-Silva 1997) that emphasized the social and ideological structure of white supremacy over individual racial attitudes, Bonilla-Silva’s work is often considered the central framework and text.

Sociologists and those working in other fields have now convincingly demonstrated the prevalence of color blindness as the dominant racial narrative of the post-Civil Rights era. Indeed, there is now a preponderance of literature that documents the many contexts within which color blindness is applied as an interpretive and discursive framework (see Burke (forthcoming) for a useful overview). This has been a crucial collective project, for as Zamudio and Rios (2006) noted,

one aspect of the struggle against racial inequality must be to demystify this discourse, to look at how this seemingly benign discourse around race and the institutions that promote it, put their stamp on a continued racial project where whites benefit at the expense of the racialized Other. (P. 484)

There is no question that such efforts have been successful, and that we as scholars have rightly held this discourse—a discourse that is so central to contemporary racial inequality—up for critique. We can do more as social scientists, however, to move the field forward. Especially important in this regard, I argue, are efforts to ground the sociological understanding of color blindness in a firmer understanding of its material and social-relational foundations, not to mention its tangible consequences. Such a call is reminiscent of Wacquant’s critique of literature surrounding structural violence:

Structural violence may be strategically useful as a rhetorical tool, but it appears conceptually limited and limiting, even crippling. One can adopt a deeply materialist approach to the anthropology of suffering without resorting to a notion that threatens to stop inquiry just where it should begin, that is, with distinguishing various species of violence and different structures of domination so as to trace the changing links between violence and difference rather than merging them into one catchall category liable to generate more moral heat than analytical light. (Farmer 2004:322)

Echoing this sentiment, I argue that it is time for scholars of color-blind racism to begin at what had been the end—that is, to move beyond the heat of labeling and categorical reification and, instead, trace the nuances and connections of color-blind ways of speaking and thinking in more concrete ways. Moving in such a direction, by specifically incorporating attention to color-blind racism’s material bases, will generate much-needed insight on contemporary racism and inequality. It may also offer more directed and specific solutions to those problems.

A Return to Materialism

It is time for scholarship to move beyond the echo chamber that affirms the presence of color-blind ideologies, and into the social relations and their material foundations that may give rise to them. It is no longer surprising, for instance, that we find color-blind ideology in any institution or social/relational setting. Unfortunately, however, too often this is where the scholarship has stopped: identifying its presence without reaching back to the social relations or contexts wherein that presence matters. We have learned that color blindness is the dominant racial framework, but what else have we learned? What else can we learn? After all, as Dorothy Smith (2004), echoing Marx, reminded us, “Consciousness is always and only the consciousness of individuals; it is embedded in the actual activities of people, in their social relationships, and in economic and technological level of development through which individuals subsist” (p. 449). I define materialism, accordingly, as an approach that is grounded in the concrete social relations where individuals are embedded and where they navigate their real lives and activities.

A materialist approach to the study of color-blind racism is one that remains sharply critical of racism but does not bury complex individual subjectivities or connected social systems. That is, future explorations of color-blind racism should recenter on the social relations of individuals who express them in concrete, material settings rather than on the concept or frameworks of color blindness itself. It is only in this way that we might best practice sociology and generate meaningful projects that convincingly trace the causes and dynamics surrounding color blindness. Sociology is, in fact, at its best when it begins in people’s real lives and their thinking about those lives, and from there interrogates how thinking, motivations, and actions are related to social structures and relations that surround them. Color blindness as a prevalent ideology is very much part of that social system, but to conceive of people as mindlessly repeating frames without also mobilizing their complex thinking about their lives and experiences is surely missing some important dimensions of social life, how it is reproduced, and in what ways it might be challenged.

Take, as a case in point, affirmative action. Asking people to abstractly reason through their support for or opposition to this politically charged effort often provokes the view that race should not matter. Beginning instead in the real ways that, for example, working-class women negotiate their raced and gendered selves in relation to the shifting power dynamics in their communities and workplaces will necessarily generate something more complex and revealing than the stamp of each frame that has been reified in much existing scholarship. In other words, it is crucial that we do not begin our analyses with these frameworks and then seek to find proof of their existence. Rather, more revealing would be insights into how and in what ways individuals’ concrete lives, struggles, and social relations forge, shape, and interface with the ideological positions that they adopt.

Although this may (ironically) sound abstract, there are strategies already in place that we can turn to for guidance. Some of this is methodological: qualitative studies have always been incredibly well suited to the task of unpacking the complexities and contradictions of color-blind discourse, and the ways that people make meaning of the racial landscape. Such studies are welcome but should dig ever deeper into the complexities and contradictions between lived experiences and perceptions regarding race and racial inequality. Relatedly, scholars may also wish to revisit the way that survey research and design may contribute to these conversations. Paul Croll’s (2013) work on whiteness, for instance, uses a survey measure specifically designed to understand nuances of racial ideologies and identities. He is able to demonstrate how “far greater numbers of Americans see ways in which whites benefit from racialized systems than may have been previously assumed” (p. 70). Such a finding rattles common conceptions of color-blind racism and its application. Moreover, it exemplifies the need for more sophisticated tools, be they qualitative or quantitative, to better understand the complicated dynamics of privilege and racism.

Other disciplines, especially psychology, have consistently made use of statistical measures to study color blindness, typically relying on the Color-Blind Racial Attitude Scale (CoBRAS). CoBRAS asks participants to answer a series of questions about racial and power evasion (Neville et al. 2000). Bonilla-Silva and some others argue that the scale is not interchangeable with the sociological framework of color-blind ideology, but as even he acknowledges, “the CoBRAS measure of color-blind racism was positively correlated with many measures of racial prejudice. Other studies have found that the CoBRAS measure of color-blind racism was positively correlated with white fear of other races” (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 2011:194). Furthermore, O’Brien and Korgen (2007) demonstrated how high degrees of color blindness can limit the impact of the contact hypothesis: “It is evident that even close interracial contacts can coexist with racist ideology in today’s colorblind society” (p. 375).

We must, however, go even further. As O’Brien and Korgen (2007) argued,

Along with prejudice scales, social scientists need to begin to develop antiracist ideology scales. These measures would not emphasize whether people believe anti-black stereotypes or the numbers of interracial contacts people have, but would focus on how people explain individual race-related differences—whether it is through “colorblind” rhetoric or actual systemic/institutional explanations. (P. 376)

Understanding the complex ways people make sense of race and racism in their real lives encourages the materialist emphasis I advocate in this article—an emphasis that can compliment and extend, in important ways, the largely descriptive focus in prior literature. After all, if color blindness can overlap with both fear and proximity, it is important to interrogate more deeply those contradictions and their roots in peoples’ structural locations and relational experiences.

Another strategy that future scholarship should consider carefully is to look more fully at variation and from where it derives. The comparative study of color blindness has rich potential, particularly if we incorporate differing racial/ethnic groups. Bonilla-Silva’s foundational text focuses primarily on whites, and with good reason—color blindness does the work of legitimating a system of white privilege and supremacy. This is a crucial insight, to be sure, but should not be interpreted to mean that whites do so in uniform ways. Lewis (2004), for example, has demonstrated how, for many whites, race is falsely conceptualized as something that “happens” only to people of color. Whites’ raced bodies remain socially invisible to them, even while granting them privileges in most social settings. But this does not mean that whites are always blind to their racial identity or privileges (Burke 2012; Croll 2007, 2013). In what contexts are they more apt to see such privileges, and do there exist notably interpretational variations depending, for instance, on gender, employment, or social class statuses? These are important questions—questions that should be central to future analyses.

Ramsaran (2009), consistent with my point above, has shown that class dynamics alter the form and degree of color blindness among whites. I have shown that color blindness further takes a unique form in liberal communities (Burke 2012), while Hughey (2012) has traced the harm of color blindness and other forms of racism even among explicitly antiracist whites. And, finally, Bonilla-Silva (2003) suggested that working-class women are less likely than other whites to be color-blind; evidence for this claim remains uneven and is yet another site for further exploration. All of these studies raise important questions about how whites navigate the racial landscape and how status, context, relations, and experiences are an important part of the puzzle.

Dynamics both within and between racially marginalized populations can also reveal important insights about the contemporary racial structure. Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich (2011) found that Latino/as are as likely to adopt color-blind frameworks as whites. McClain et al. (2006) suggested that this may be a strategy to distance themselves from blacks, who occupy the bottom of the racial hierarchy in many people’s minds. Similarly, Korgen (2009) has shown that biracial Americans in middle-class settings often claim an “honorary white” status in their communities in an effort to distance themselves from blackness, which is often stereotyped as poor and undereducated.

Interestingly, non-biracial blacks also participate in this same dynamic: Welburn and Pittman (2012) found that “while middle-class African Americans are united in their belief that members of their group face persistent racial inequality, they also attribute motivational factors to disadvantage for African Americans” (p. 536). Koreans also may draw upon color-blind frames to explain their relative success (Nopper 2010:81), despite changes in laws that facilitated institutional privileges for those who were allowed to immigrate after 1965. Even black youth who have an awareness of structural racism articulate color blindness alongside that discourse (DeFreece 2014), further suggesting that color-blind frames are not used in a uniform or universal fashion among any racial group, regardless of their placement in racial or other hierarchies. Further uncovering these causal factors and processes is sure to reveal important insights about the contexts and social relations in which marginalized populations and individuals are embedded.

While the aforementioned studies center on racial identities, others factors that future scholarship should consider include class, national or regional variation, education, and so on. The core question is, and should be, how complex experiences and lives are negotiated inside of an unequal social structure. The literature in this new era must, in my view, engage the concrete social relations that give rise to privilege and inequality rather than relying on assumptions, explicit or implicit, of a monolithic ideology or culture that happens in an institutional, social-relational, or experiential vacuum.

As Bonilla-Silva (1997) himself has argued,

[When] racism is conceived of as a belief with no real social basis, it follows that those who hold racist views must be irrational or stupid. . . . This view allows for a tactical distinction between individuals with the “pathology” and social actors who are “rational” and racism-free. (P. 468)

Instead, he offers an analysis of racialized social systems—systems wherein a belief in racial categories and their concurrent social meanings impact all institutions and perpetuate institutional inequality. In short, there is no standing outside of it. To suggest a singularity of beliefs inside of these many institutional layers runs the risk of producing ideology rather than sociology, or, put differently, favoring the conceptual framework over an analysis of the messier reality to which it is being retrofitted: “Whereas the ideologist mystifies the social relations experienced as powers over against individuals as ‘holy powers,’ the new materialists work in the opposite direction, generating questions about the underlying and actual social relations, opening them up for investigation” (D. Smith 2004:455). Given the violence of contemporary racism, ranging from interactions with police to erasure in classrooms, glossing over these questions involves a risk that we simply must not take.

Conclusion

Future research on contemporary racism must move from its current, largely descriptive emphases to one that considers questions about how, why, and in what ways these social systems persist. As Dorothy Smith (2004) wrote in her treatment of ideology and epistemology, “The difference between ideology and science is the difference between treating those concepts as the primitives of theory and treating them as sites for exploring the social relations that are expressed in them” (p. 446). Research surrounding contemporary color-blind racism runs this very risk of becoming ideological when we begin with the framework (i.e., either Bonilla-Silva’s four frames or the expression of color blindness conceived similarly) and then chase and simply document its expressions. It is arguably more important for sociologists to interrogate such frames relative to the tangible social relations, experiences, locations, and contexts within which they reside or manifest. Doing so will reveal more about the intersectional social relations and inequalities that surround us, how and in what ways they are reified, and how they might best be challenged.

Given the prevalence of the ideological and discursive system of color blindness, we may still find and document its many expressions. This is necessary. Yet, doing so in ways that systematically uncover racism’s roots in material experiences and relations (e.g., inside organizations and institutions that work alongside other, associated social projects and meanings) would extend sociological insight more so, and in needed ways. Looking more closely at these layers from the experiences of those embedded inside of them will, I believe, help shed much-needed light on the true complexities of contemporary racism. After all, these complexities represent the material reality where actual individual lives and experiences are forged.

When we step outside of the already-existing framework of color blindness as our primary analytic lens, a deeper and more insightful sociological theory of inequality immediately becomes possible. Rather than existing in some nebulous, intangible realm of culture as is often implied by much of the literature to date, the material emphasis I am encouraging scholars to incorporate will enable us to better delineate ways that power and inequality are activated in the course of everyday interactional contexts, and within institutions and organizations. After all, it is when we most clearly see power relations that we can best challenge them.