Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society

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Racism, in short, is a form of "prejudice. After all, virulent antiblack sentiments have diminished, formal barriers based on malicious intent have in large part been dismantled, and few Americans would accept publicly sanctioned racial barriers today. Were these its undisputed characteristics, one might be tempted to agree that racism is obsolete.

The law institutionalizes the American ideal of equality, and it provides remedies for those hurt by bias. Current law embraces the concept of racism as intentional individual prejudice, and also its corollary—that whites today are often unfairly accused. Evolving doctrine in racial discrimination cases reflects what Angela Harris has called an "essentially moralistic" view. In several reverse discrimination lawsuits, for example, the Supreme Court has explicitly worried that affirmative action plans impose unacceptable burdens on "innocent" third parties read whites.

In equal protection cases, the Court has increasingly emphasized invidious intention as a necessary element for finding actionable discrimination. But this perspective has its critics. Twenty-five years ago, Alan Freeman documented how, after a brief period of attention to what he called a "victim perspective" in the jurisprudence of equality, the Court moved decisively to adopt a "perpetrator perspective" on issues of race.

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Adopting the perpetrator perspective means looking at contested race issues from the vantage point of whites. The "perpetrator perspective" in law, like the conservatives' understanding of racism, is preoccupied with white guilt or innocence. It largely ignores whether people of color have suffered injury or loss of opportunity because of their race.

Other critics have raised analogous arguments, paying attention to group subordination or disadvantage. Ignoring these analyses, the courts have extended and deepened their attachment to the perpetrator perspective as the racial law of the land. The Supreme Court's standard for white innocence is very low. Before the modern civil rights era, the Supreme Court often insisted that analysis of motive was inappropriate in constitutional adjudication.

During the past several decades, however, the Court has increasingly required that plaintiffs in equal protection discrimination cases not only may, but must, probe defendants' motives. To be successful, plaintiffs must prove specific and conscious bad intentions, the equivalent of the concept of racism as personal prejudice. Under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court holds it is not enough to show that people would reasonably know the discriminatory consequences of their actions.

Nor is it enough that actors foresaw the predictable effects of their actions and still proceeded in spite of them. To gain or sustain a remedy for racial injustice, litigants must meet a very high standard: Reva Siegel argues on the basis of credible evidence that the Court knew this was a level of responsibility plaintiffs would "rarely be able to prove.

The Court has sometimes said that proof of employment discrimination may be based on a demonstration that policies have a disparate impact rather than on a showing of intent—proving, for example, that African Americans or other racial groups are more likely to be disadvantaged by an employment practice than whites.

Although the courts give lip service to unintentional bias in cases involving claims of discriminatory treatment, particularly in employment, most of the governing precedents require that plaintiffs prove intentional bias. In the Supreme Court further extended that requirement. It held that under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the discriminatory use of federal money, proving disparate impact would no longer be sufficient to win discrimination suits by private parties against federally funded contractors or institutions.

The Court now requires proof of invidious intention in most cases of racial discrimination. It does not apply this standard of intent in age discrimination cases where the relevant statutory language is identical to that in Title VII.

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In these cases, the courts have accepted a distinction between motive a factor in causing action and intent a specifically proven state of mind that is more favorable to plaintiffs alleging discrimination. In other settings that address harms caused by others, such as personal injury law, courts assess liability and compensate victims not simply for intentional harms but also for injuries caused accidentally, that is, negligently. Plaintiffs do not have to prove malice or purpose unless they seek punitive damages. Choosing to make the specific intentions of identifiable individuals the criterion of racism is neither neutral nor appropriate.

It is self-aggrandizing and misguided to judge others by their actions but ourselves only by our intentions. In Supreme Court decisions and in the minds of many whites, the relevant "ourselves" are predominantly white or, in Freeman's phrase, potential "perpetrators. If we are deciding whether to put someone in jail, then assessing his intentions may be appropriate. However, where disputes do not involve criminal charges but rather decisions about social, educational, welfare, or employment policy, questions of guilt, innocence and punishment are not the issue.

No one goes to jail for discrimination. In discrimination litigation, the focus is on the legitimacy and fairness of the distribution of scarce opportunities and resources. To ameliorate injustice and achieve a more desirable state of civil affairs, it is more important to examine the problems of discrimination, injuries, and unfairness than to evaluate the culpability and motives of particular perpetrators.

Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society - David J. Maume,

The Court's narrow definition of discrimination, like the realists' equation of racism with prejudice, severely restricts what counts as bias or as evidence of bias. This definition tends to exonerate whites, blame blacks by default , and naturalize render unobjectionable the broad realities of race-based subordination in the United States.

This definition of racism, as we have already noted, is also empirically and conceptually flawed. It depends almost exclusively on attitudinal evidence uncovered by opinion polling. This poses two problems. First, even on its own terms, this interpretation of racism ignores significant research that shows how racist attitudes have persisted. In his recent book The Ordeal of Integration , Orlando Patterson examined a variety of evidence and concluded that "all things considered, it is reasonable to estimate that about a quarter of the Euro-American population harbors at least mildly racist feelings toward Afro-Americans and that one in five is a hard-core racist.

If Patterson is correct, the Thernstroms' "miscreants of the night" are hardly a fringe. Second, by relying on survey questions written in the s, this research ignores possible changes in the character of racism and is, therefore, incorrectly measuring modern expressions of it. Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders write that "a new form of prejudice has come to prominence, one that is preoccupied with matters of moral character, informed by the virtues associated with the traditions of individualism. Today, we say, prejudice is expressed in the language of American individualism.

There are also abundant survey data documenting the persistence of widespread racial prejudice forty years after the civil rights revolution. Many writers who use polling data to show the decline of racism cherry pick among these surveys and omit this evidence. Some of the most compelling evidence of tenacious prejudice comes from studies of residential discrimination. In , the Detroit Area Survey found that 16 percent of whites said they would feel uncomfortable in a neighborhood where 8 percent of the residents were black, and nearly the same percentage said they were unwilling to move to such an area.

Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society

If the black percentage rose to 20 percent, 40 percent of all whites indicated they would not move there, 30 percent said they would be uncomfortable, and 15 percent would try to leave the area. Were a neighborhood to be 53 percent black, 71 percent of whites would not wish to move there, 53 percent would try to leave, and 65 percent would be uncomfortable. A more recent study of four cities Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles yielded similar results. Camille Zubrinsky Charles found that more than half of whites in these four cities expressed a preference for same-race neighborhoods, while blacks expressed a strong preference for integrated neighborhoods.

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Contrary to the optimism of racial realists, one finds precious little evidence, even in the polling data they use, that many white Americans believe in integrated neighborhoods, especially if that means a neighborhood with more than a very few black families. Pejorative racial stereotypes are not restricted to one's choice of residence. They continue to be fundamental to white American culture.

When the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center asked people to compare blacks and other ethnic groups on a number of personal traits in , they discovered that 62 percent of nonblack respondents believed that blacks were lazier than other groups, 56 percent stated that they were more prone to violence, and 53 percent thought they were less intelligent.

Another report suggests that white Americans are still substantially opposed to intimate contact with African Americans. In one national survey conducted in , 70 percent of whites rejected interracial marriage on principle. This hardly represents the significant change in whites' attitudes trumpeted by the proponents of racial realism.

Both the meaning of survey data and the way they are used by these cheerleaders for racial progress are also problematic. Because the typical questions used to measure changes in racial attitudes essentially gauge how closely attitudes conform to the American creed enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, it is not surprising to find that most white Americans sound tolerant. This is because when prejudice and tolerance are evaluated by these criteria, the questions assess only whether people subscribe to American ideals.

It is hardly a major discovery to find that racism has declined when individuals are asked whether they believe in equal job treatment and integrated schools. Because the ideals of equality and formal tolerance are central to American identity, most Americans know the "correct" answers to such questions. Thus, rather than representing a decline in racism, these polling data actually measure adherence to the principles of American society. Because most surveys tap only surface commitment or verbal adherence to ideals, polling data may reveal more about the correlation between self-presentation and socioeconomic class than about the persistence of racism.

When tolerance means verbalizing principles acquired through exposure to liberal middle-class institutions, lower- and working-class whites will appear to be more racist than middle-class whites. Surveys that find prejudice and intolerance declining among America's white middle class also link racist sentiments disproportionately to poor and working-class white Americans, or to the "lunatic fringe.

As long ago as , Paul Sheatsley found that the highest scorers on his "pro-integration scale" shared three features in common: But the narrow catch of this racism net reflects only its limited definition of racism. About the Book White Americans, abetted by neo-conservative writers of all hues, generally believe that racial discrimination is a thing of the past and that any racial inequalities that undeniably persist—in wages, family income, access to housing or health care—can be attributed to African Americans' cultural and individual failures.

About the Author Michael K. Williams The Nation "In Whitewashing Race, an impressive and diverse group of scholars launch an empirically grounded assault on the vast body of colorblind orthodoxy. The authors harness a medley of disciplinary perspectives into a cogent argument about racial stratification accompanied by a set of practical racial justice policy options.

Their aim is both simple and ambitious: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy "This powerful book disposes of the claim, so often heard, that America has solved its race problem and can now be 'color-blind. Americans have always worked hard at burying our racial truths, thereby leaving half-truths, myths and raw bigotry to continue their brutal work on our most vulnerable citizens.

The authors cauterize these terrible wounds with prodigious research and brilliant insights. Their work is a great service to justice and to our country. The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism "For many years conservative scholars and think tanks have been trying to convince the American public that racism is dead and that race-specific policies, such as affirmative action, cannot be justified and are in fact detrimental.

To a great extent they have succeeded in making ostensible 'color-blindness' the dominant test of law and policy affecting racial minorities. Now at last we have the definitive response to this argument. If you originally registered with a username please use that to sign in. To purchase short term access, please sign in to your Oxford Academic account above. Don't already have an Oxford Academic account? Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Sign In or Create an Account. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. University of California, San Diego. Racial realism means methodological individualism; the goal of Whitewashing Race is to The authors provide an impressive array of empirical evidence showing the continuing relevance of race and of both intentional and unintentional discrimination. You do not currently have access to this article. You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? Don't have an account? Organization of American Historians members Sign in via society site.

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