2003-09-23 -- ARTICLE AND REFERENCES, Colorblind Racism

Now that open racial bigotry is supposed to be a relic of the past
(unless needed for Homeland Security), some researchers are seriously
seeking to uncover institutional racism, while other researchers are
seeking to conceal institutional racism in the guise of being
color-blind.

This is a gold mine of material, but remember the Powells.com comments
in the Review section come from the books' publishers.  Abigail and
Steven Thernstrom, Shelby Steele, Jim Sleeper, and Tamar Jacoby are
members of right-wing think-tanks like the American Enterprise
Foundation, Manhattan Institute and Hoover Institute, or are funded by
right-wing foundations like the Olin Foundation and the Bradley
Foundation.  An excellent source is  http://www.mediatransparency.org/
.  (You may need Internet Explorer rather than Netscape to view the
pages.)

Media Transparency also has good information on Ward Connerly's
funding by the Bradley Foundation, which funded publication of Charles
Murray and Richard Herrnstein's notoriously racist book "The Bell
Curve," which asserted that blacks are genetically inferior to whites
in intelligence.  So much for color-blindness.

Journalists, scholars and advocates will gather October 2-4 in Palo
Alto to explore issues related to Proposition 54, the California
racial classification initiative. The centerpiece conference at
Stanford University, "Colorblind Racism?: The Politics of Controlling
Racial and Ethnic Data," begins Thursday evening, October 2, and
continues all day Friday, October 3. More information at the end of
the article.



COLORBLIND RACISM Sally Lehrman, AlterNet, September 18, 2003

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16792



Colorblind Racism

By Sally Lehrman, AlterNet September 18, 2003

Editors Note: This is the first in a short series of articles by Sally
Lehrman, a veteran journalist and Expert Fellow of USC Annenberg's
Institute for Justice and Journalism, which are being published by
AlterNet in an effort to provide context about issues related to
racial and ethnic identity. The Institute for Justice and Journalism
was created at the University of Southern California's Annenberg
School for Communication with Ford Foundation funding to strengthen
news coverage and public understanding of justice and civil rights
issues.
Institute for Justice and Journalism:
http://www.justicejournalism.org


African Americans with a college diploma find themselves unemployed
almost twice as often as whites with the same education. Hispanics
must get by on only about half of the individual income that Asian
Americans and whites divvy up among the bills.

And when blacks and Latinos are hospitalized with a heart problem,
they are less likely than European Americans to receive
catheterization, be sent home with beta blockers, or even be advised
to take aspirin to protect their health.

While many Americans agree that open racial bigotry is generally a
thing of the past, stark disparities in daily life persist, as
documented by academic researchers, the U.S. Census Bureau and the
Institute of Medicine.

Frustrated with theories plainly unable to explain the problem,
sociologists increasingly are relying on a new framework to understand
racism and develop solutions. "It's not just Archie Bunker any more,"
says Troy Duster, a sociology professor at the University of
California, Berkeley, and New York University who is president-elect
of the American Sociological Association.

Just in the past six months, at least five books - including one
co-authored by Duster - have put forward a fresh analysis of racial
injustice. They set aside overt prejudice and individual acts of
discrimination, which they assert actually may have little impact in
today's world. Instead they pull back the covers on social practices
and policies sewn into the fabric of work, school and the medical
system that favor whites. Even the most well-intentioned white person,
they say, benefits from a legacy of accumulated preferential
treatment.

In part, these scholars hope to inject new ways of thinking into
California's debate over the potential value of "color-blind"
government policies to create a more equitable society. They aim to
create new paradigms for pushing beyond historical discrimination in
order to understand the roots of ongoing racial injustice.

"Intellectuals lost track of the ability to discuss what racism is
after the Civil Rights Act," says Andrew Barlow, referring to the
landmark 1964 legislation that prohibited employment discrimination
based on race, sex, religion or national origin. Research on
inequities continued to focus solely on discriminatory acts by
individuals, he explains, adding, "We are really at the beginning of a
new era."

The emerging school of sociologists also is responding to
intellectuals such as Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom (America in Black
and White: One Nation Indivisible, 1997), and Shelby Steele (A Dream
Deferred, 1999), who assert that discrimination is old news.
Consisting mostly, but not entirely, of conservatives, this group says
the country needs to transcend race by acknowledging the progress made
over the past several decades. Race-conscious policies, they argue,
only stir up resentment among whites while also promoting a lack of
ambition among people of color by holding them to a lower standard.

As support for their claims, they point to the genetic evidence
provided by the Human Genome Project that race has no biological
foundation as a way to categorize people. They also cite a 1998
statement by the American Anthropological Association that explains
"race" as a classification system invented in the 18th century to
justify status differences between European settlers and conquered and
enslaved peoples, then expanded to support efforts such as the Nazi
extermination of Jews.

In August 2002, the American Sociological Association took a stand
against such attempts to abolish "race" as untrue and irrelevant. In a
statement, the professional society urged social scientists not to
ignore race classifications or stop using them as a research tool,
even though they may be biological fiction. "Those who favor ignoring
race as an explicit administrative matter, in the hope that it will
cease to exist as a social concept, ignore the weight of a vast body
of sociological research that shows that racial hierarchies are
embedded in the routine practices of social groups and institutions,"
the society wrote.

The statement sparked a debate in the society's newsletter, in which
California State University-Los Angeles professor Yehudi Webster
complained that sociologists - as well as government officials,
educators, and journalists - who use race classifications promote
racial awareness and separatism, which in turn foster exclusion and
discrimination. Intermarriage, migration and genetic redistributions
make such boundaries meaningless, Webster wrote.

While race may not hold up as a biological concept, responded Duster
and Barlow, its workings as a social idea cannot be ignored. "Not
everything 'real' is genetic, and we use racial categories to interact
with each other in ways that have significant consequences," explains
Pilar Ossorio, a microbiologist and assistant professor of law and
medical ethics at the University of Wisconsin. In its statement, the
sociological society urged members to track and study race-based data
collected by public agencies in order to understand and respond to the
deep inequities caused by racialized social and economic structures.

An increasing number of sociologists acknowledge that the old ways of
understanding racial disparities are no longer very useful. Along with
studying individual discrimination, they now are attempting to unravel
the ways racial privilege has been structured into the day-to-day
workings of institutions from education to public transportation to
criminal justice. "White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind
Society," written by seven scholars including Duster, begins the story
in the 1930s with Roosevelt's New Deal, aimed to protect the working
class but revised by Congress to safeguard racial segregation as well.

The Social Security Act excluded domestic and agricultural workers
from old-age pension and unemployment compensation. Three-quarters of
the black population, from domestics to self-employed sharecroppers,
fell through the net. Similarly, the Wagner Act, which empowered
unions, also allowed labor to shut black workers out from closed
shops. Loans under the Federal Housing Act differentially provided
whites the wherewithal to move into new suburbs, while federal
subsidies built public housing to contain black migrants from the
South in urban areas.

The GI bill, enacted in 1944, radically expanded the already racially
biased economic provisions of the time. While millions of returning
veterans and war industry workers became eligible for low-interest
mortgages and free access to higher education, whites benefited most.
Federal lending rules favored segregated suburbs and they had the
educational credentials to go to college. These policies formed a
foundation that has supported white economic advantage
generation-to-generation to this day, the book's authors write.

The racial hierarchy established over the middle of the 20th century
has largely held fast because one generation builds on the
accomplishments of the last, Duster explains. Like interest on a bank
deposit, children collect economic potential for themselves from the
property and social status of their parents. Just as directly, he
argues, disadvantages such as barriers to well-paying jobs,
segregation in housing and discrimination in lending reverberate from
parent to child. "The past becomes relevant to the present as personal
wealth and assets are reproduced from generation to generation,"
agrees Barlow. His new book on globalization makes a similar argument
about the historical underpinnings of U.S. racial stratification.
Furthermore, privileges in housing, jobs, education and other arenas
reinforce and augment one another, he says.

And far from lessening over time, Barlow argues that the disparities
built into American society are becoming more entrenched. In the 1960s
and '70s, business regulation, low-income housing, job training,
public health and other social programs successfully began to
compensate for long-term economic advantages held by white people. But
starting in the 1980s, the growth of the service sector and technology
information jobs, the mobility of businesses, and policy changes such
as deregulation and the curtailment of taxes reversed the trend. As
industry extends its global reach and creates large pools of
investment capital in developed countries, whites are clinging tightly
to their privileges, he says. "A greater disparity in income and
growing inequality makes more and more of the middle class experience
a sense of crisis, so they try to buffer themselves," says Barlow, who
describes himself as a civil rights activist as well as a sociologist.
"We need to think about racism in a new way."

Scholars now are studying the cause and effect of racial
stratification in more detail. New York University doctoral candidate
Julie Sze, for example, is identifying the neighborhoods where medical
waste incinerators most often are built, then examining both why those
sites were chosen and how those decisions may contribute to health
disparities such as higher rates of asthma among African Americans.
Other research explores economic issues such as the ways housing
segregation limits people's job options. Sociologists Lawrence Bobo of
Harvard University and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Texas A&M are studying
hidden racial animosity, while others have investigated differences in
the ways the same teachers treat students of different races.

Barlow, Duster and colleagues emphasize that whites may have no
awareness of their privileged status even as they protect their
interests. When parents successfully fight to protect funding for
suburban high schools, for example, they enable those facilities to
offer advanced placement classes and leadership opportunities that in
turn help students win a spot in the best colleges. Urban educators
rarely have such advocates, and thus are unable to offer the same
level of academic advantages. But both parents and graduates of
top-tier schools - most often white or Asian American - are likely to
consider their achievements solely the result of the young peoples'
own hard work.

While whites will acknowledge that disparities in education or other
realms exist, Barlow says, they are more likely to attribute these to
a lack of ambition and effort on the part of minorities than to
structural favoritism toward whites built into U.S. institutions for
generations.

"You don't need to be a racist to promote policies that are
race-conscious," says David Wellman, a professor of community studies
at UC-Santa Cruz and one of the "White-Washing Race" authors. "Most
whites don't see white as a race. Like a fish in water, they don't
think about whiteness because it's so beneficial to them."

References

Human Genome Project

Gene Media Forum's Initiative on Racial Mythology
http://www.genemedia.org/

Minorities, Race, and Genomics
http://www.ornl.gov/TechResources/Human_Genome/elsi/minorities.html


Race and the Human Genome
http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/aa021501a.htm


Race, Genes, and Anthropology (contains many great links)
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/misc/race.html


The Reality of Race (Sally Lehrman reporting on Troy Duster,
Scientific American)
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?SID=mail&articleID=0002A353-C027-1E1C
-8B3B809EC588EEDF


The Human Genome (Science magazine)
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol291/issue5507/


Human Genome Project Newsroom
http://genome.gsc.riken.go.jp/hgmis/resource/media.html


American Sociological Association

Read the ASA's official statement
 http://www.asanet.org/media/ASA_Race_Statement.pdf


Read the ASA's Press Release, August 2002
http://www.asanet.org/media/race.html


American Anthropological Association

Race, Genes, and Anthropology (contains many great links)
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/misc/race.html


Read the AAA's Statement on Race
http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm


1964 Civil Rights Act

http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/laws/majorlaw/civilr19.htm

Federal Housing Act

Text: (Citation for hardcopy: 48 Stat. 1246)

History of the Federal Role in Housing
http://www.mhc.gov/FRH.doc


A Brief History of Federal Housing Policy
http://www.nclihc.org/issues/history.shtml


History of Black Ghettos
http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_010200_blackg
hettos.htm


Major Federal Housing Acts and Agencies
http://rhol.org/rental/fedact.htm


More info on federal housing laws and executive orders
http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/FHLaws/index.cfm


Wagner Act (aka National Labor Relations Act):

Text
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/content.php?page=document&doc=67


African Americans and the labor movement
http://www.freepress.org/fleming/flemng75.html


Social Security Act

Text
http://www.usconstitution.com/SocialSecurityActof1935.htm


1935 Senate Finance Committee Report
http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/35senatereport.html


Demographics

US Census Bureau
http://www.uscensus.gov


Miscellaneous

Great link for essay on historic black/white relations
http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/4_022900/black_white.htm


Reference Books with Publisher's Comments

(Publisher's Comments from Powells.com)


# Barlow, Andrew. Between Fear and Hope: Globalization and Race in the
United States. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

This book is an original contribution to the study of race. It
provides a structural analysis of race, and a methodology for
connecting global to national and local racial processes. Written in a
lively and down to earth style, this book is a call to action in a
time of fear and hope.


# Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism
and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

Racism is alive and well although it has changed its clothes.
Color-blind racism combines elements of liberalism in the abstract
with anti-minority views to justify contemporary racial inequality.


# Brown, Michael et al., Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Colorblind
Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UC Press, 2003.

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. If the experience
of most black Americans says otherwise, an explanation has been sorely
lacking - or obscured by the passions the issue provokes. At long last
offering a cool, clear, and informed perspective on the subject, this
book brings together a team of highly respected sociologists,
political scientists, economists, criminologists, and legal scholars
to scrutinize the logic and evidence behind the widely held belief in
a color-blind society - and to provide an alternative explanation for
continued racial inequality in the United States. While not denying
the economic advances of black Americans since the 1960s, Whitewashing
Race draws on new and compelling research to demonstrate the
persistence of racism and the effects of organized racial advantage
across many institutions in American society - including the labor
market, the welfare state, the criminal justice system, and schools
and universities. Looking beyond the stalled debate over current
antidiscrimination policies, the authors also put forth a fresh vision
for achieving genuine racial equality of opportunity in a
post-affirmative action world.


# Conley, Dalton. Being Black, Being in the Red: Race, Wealth and
Social Policy in America. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UC Press, 1999.

Being Black, Living in the Red demonstrates that many differences
between blacks and whites stem not from race but from economic
inequalities that have accumulated over the course of American
history. Property ownership - as measured by net worth - reflects this
legacy of economic oppression. The racial discrepancy in wealth
holdings leads to advantages for whites in the form of better schools,
more desirable residences, higher wages, and more opportunities to
save, invest, and thereby further their economic advantages. Dalton
Conley shows how factoring parental wealth into a reconceptualization
of class can lead to a different future for race policy in the United
States. As it currently stands, affirmative action programs primarily
address racial diversity in schooling and work - areas that Conley
contends generate paradoxical results with respect to racial equity.
Instead he suggests an affirmative action policy that fosters minority
property accumulation, thereby encouraging long-term wealth equity, or
one that - while continuing to address schooling and work - is based
on social class as defined by family wealth levels rather than on
race.


# Doane, Ashley. Whiteout: The Continuing Significance of Racism.
Routledge, 2003.


# Feagin, Joe. White Men on Race. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.

Based on the revealing and provocative testimony of approximately one
hundred powerful, upper-income white men, White Men on Race shows how
white men see racial "others, " how they see white America, how they
view racial conflicts, and what they expect for the future of the
country. Covering a range of topics, from how they first encountered
black Americans to views on black families, interracial dating,
affirmative action, immigration, crime, and intervening in
discriminatory situations, these hundred white men enlighten us on the
racial perspectives of the country's white male elites as we enter the
twenty-first century. These white men, mostly baby boomers ranging in
age from thirty to sixty-five, reside in a variety of cities and
states. Some are at the top of powerful economic and government
organizations and are members of the small national governing class,
while others are a tier below the top level. Others are executives in
corporations, influential academics and administrators, important
physicians, attorneys, and local businesspeople. The authors closely
analyze the racial experiences and attitudes of this powerful group of
white men and argue that the ideas they express are not isolated
notions but part of a larger, troubling perspective on race in America
that continues to shape white lives and actions and, ultimately, the
course of the nation.


# Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations Black and White: Separate, Hostile and
Unequal. Ballantine Books: New York, 1992.

Why does race remain America's deepest and most enduring division?
Despite all efforts to increase understanding and expand
opportunities, black and white Americans still lead separate lives,
continually marked by tension and hostility.

In his bestselling analysis of a divided society, Andrew Hacker
explains why racial disparities persist. He clarifies the meaning of
racism, conflicting theories of superiority and equality, as well as
such subtle factors as guilt and sexual fears. Using completely
updated statistical data to paint the stark picture of racial
inequality, Two Nations depicts the realities of family life, of
income and employment, as well as current controversies affecting
education, politics, and crime, including the role of race in the
Simpson trial. This startling look at the facts that so many choose to
ignore is balanced by the voices of African Americans, and shows how
race influences the attitudes and behavior of all Americans. Reasoned,
accurate, and devastating, Two Nations demonstrates, better than
emotional appeals can, how this great and dividing issue has defined
America's history and, as Hacker forecasts it, will play a pivotal
role in the coming century.


# Jacoby, Tamar. Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle
for Integration. New York: The Free Press, 1998.

In this detailed history of relations between blacks and whites in the
post-civil rights era, journalist Tamar Jacoby looks at how the ideal
of integration has fared since it was first advocated by Martin Luther
King, Jr., arguing that though blacks have made enormous economic,
political, and social progress, a true sense of community has remained
elusive. Her story leads us through the volatile world of New York in
the 1960s, the center of liberal idealism about race; Detroit in the
1970s, under its first black mayor, Coleman Young; and Atlanta in the
1980s and '90s, ruled by a coalition of white businessmen and black
politicians. Based on extensive research and local reporting, her
vivid, dramatic account evokes the special flavor of each city and
decade, and gives voice to a host of ordinary individuals struggling
to translate a vision into a reality.


# Lewis, Amanda. Race in the Schoolyard: Reproducing the Color Line in
School. Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies, 2003.

The way race and racial inequality are reproduced in day-to-day
interactions in American schools is frequently invisible to even
well-intentioned teachers and administrators, argues Lewis (sociology
and African American studies, U. of Illinois). She uses Pierre
Bourdieu's notion of social capital as an analytical tool in her
ethnographic study of three schools set in urban and suburban
contexts. She describes how differing levels of social capital are
reproduced by schools, thereby reproducing social inequality.
Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)


# Oliver, Mel and Shapiro, Tom. Black Wealth, White Wealth. New York:
Routledge, 1997.

The award-winning Black Wealth/White Wealth offers a powerful portrait
of racial inequality based on an analysis of private wealth. Melvin
Oliver and Thomas Shapiro analyze wealth - total assets and debts
rather than income alone - to uncover deep and persistent racial
inequality in America, and they show how public policies fail to
redress the problem. Compelling and informative, Black Wealth/White
Wealth is pioneering research. It is a powerful counterpoint to
arguments against affirmative action and a direct challenge to our
present social welfare policies. (Copyright 1995-2003 Muze Inc. For
personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved)


# Tilly, Charles. Durable Inequality. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UC
Press, 1998.

Charles Tilly, in this eloquent manifesto, presents a powerful new
approach to the study of persistent social inequality. How, he asks,
do long-lasting, systematic inequalities in life chances arise, and
how do they come to distinguish members of different socially defined
categories of persons? Exploring representative paired and unequal
categories, such as male/female, black/white, and citizen/noncitizen,
Tilly argues that the basic causes of these and similar inequalities
greatly resemble one another. In contrast to contemporary analyses
that explain inequality case by case, this account is one of process.
Categorical distinctions arise, Tilly says, because they offer a
solution to pressing organizational problems. Whatever the
"organization" is - as small as a household or as large as a
government - the resulting relationship of inequality persists because
parties on both sides of the categorical divide come to depend on that
solution, despite its drawbacks. Tilly illustrates the social
mechanisms that create and maintain paired and unequal categories with
a rich variety of cases, mapping out fertile territories for future
relational study of durable inequality.


# Thernstrom, Stephen and Abigail, America in Black and White: One
Nation Indivisible. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

A Bancroft Prize-winning Harvard scholar and an award-winning author
and authority on race provide this monumental study of our racial
progress and problems over the last 50 years - the first major work on
race and social policy from a historical perspective since Gunnar
Myrdal's classic "An American Dilemma" more than a half century ago.
America in Black and White demonstrates that we are not splitting into
"two nations" that are separate and unequal, but instead are painfully
groping our way toward a more just and cohesive society. We will reach
our goals faster, say the authors, if we abandon preferential policies
that have failed to accomplish this objectives, but have instead
heightened racial consciousness and conflict. (Copyright 1995-2003
Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved)


# Sleeper, Jim. Liberal Racism. New York: Viking Press, 1997.

Hard-hitting reflections by a political journalist offer a way forward
to liberals mired in ambivalence about race. Conservatism is
faltering; liberalism is poised for renewal. But liberals themselves
are still held in thrall by the contradictions and confusions of race.
Worse still, many of the best-intentioned liberal policies have
promoted not a color-blind society but a country seething with racial
resentments. With uncompromising clarity, Jim Sleeper discusses what
liberals need to do to return their political movement to the vital
center. Along the way, Sleeper punctures liberal pieties to reveal
politicians and journalists still stymied by race, which is still
important in the face of conservative racism, and manacled to a guilt
that neither advances social justice nor supports the millions of
persons of all colors who are struggling to fashion a common American
identity. Sleeper shows how to talk about race with a candor and
compassion beyond color. (Copyright 1995-2003 Muze Inc. For personal
non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.)


# Steele, Shelby. A Dream Deferred. New York: Perennial (Harper
Collins), 1998.

From the author of the award-winning bestseller "The Content of Our
Character" comes a new essay collection that tells the untold story
behind the polarized racial politics in America today. In "A Dream
Deferred" Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom
in the United States - the first one being segregation - emerged from
the civil rights era when the country was overtaken by a powerful
impulse to redeem itself from racial shame. According to Steele, 1960s
liberalism had as its first and all-consuming goal the expiation of
America guilt rather than the careful development of true equality
between the races. This "culture of preference" betrayed America's
best principles in order to give whites and America institutions an
iconography of racial virtue they could use against the stigma of
racial shame. In four densely argued essays, Steele takes on the
familiar questions of affirmative action, multiculturalism, diversity,
Afro-centrism, group preferences, victimization - and what he deems to
be the atavistic powers of race, ethnicity, and gender, the original
causes of oppression. "A Dream Deferred" is an honest, courageous look
at the perplexing dilemma of race and democracy in the United States -
and what we might do to resolve it.


Journalists, scholars and advocates will gather October 2-4 in Palo
Alto to explore issues related to Proposition 54, the California
racial classification initiative. The centerpiece conference at
Stanford University, "Colorblind Racism?: The Politics of Controlling
Racial and Ethnic Data," begins Thursday evening, October 2, and
continues all day Friday, October 3.

The conference and other activities are co-sponsored by USC
Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism, Stanford's Center
for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and the Equal Justice
Society. The Stanford conference will be followed by "Mapping a
Strategy for Social Change" sessions Saturday, October 4, at the
Sheraton Palo Alto. (Information about both gatherings is available at
www.equaljusticesociety.org/colorblind.)

Sally Lehrman, a freelance medical and science writer based near San
Francisco, is an Expert Fellow of the Institute for Justice and
Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School
for Communication. information.