Racism

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Racism Further Readings Gilje, Paul A. Rioting in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Godshalk, David Fort. Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Gordon, Michael A. The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870–1871. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Hirch, James S. Riots and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. Lumpkins, Charles. American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Riot and Black Politics. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008. Mumford, Kevin. Newark: A History of Race and Riots in America. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Tuttle, William M. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Vintage, 2011. Williams, Lee E. Anatomy of Four Race Riots: Racial Conflict in Knoxville, Elaine, Tulsa, and Chicago. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.

Racism A widely accepted definition of racism does not exist. Instead, significant historical changes in U.S. race relations over the course of the 20th century, particularly the civil rights movement, have given rise to different conceptions of racism. Although nearly all scholars believe that racism still exists in the United States, there is considerable disagreement about its nature and extent. Some of the definitions of racism are complementary; others are incompatible. Even as the nation becomes increasingly multicultural, the topic of racism remains an important and widely debated concept. The Historical Context As early as the 18th century, European philosophers argued for the existence of separate races

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based on certain physical differences. Physical anthropologists furthered the notion of racialism in the 19th century. As recently as the mid20th century, a not insignificant number of wellrespected members of the medical and scientific establishment maintained the belief in scientifically discernible, superior and inferior human races. This perspective, called scientific racism, placed non-Europeans between Europeans and primates on the evolutionary scale. At the dawn of the 20th-century civil rights movement, this sentiment still prevailed, as most white Americans believed that blacks and other racial minorities were biologically (i.e., intellectually) inferior to whites, and were therefore not entitled to the same rights and privileges as members of the dominant group. Today, most white Americans no longer openly endorse such beliefs. Exceptions include hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and skinheads, who remain committed to the anachronistic tenets of scientific racism. The civil rights movement was largely successful in discrediting claims that Americans of color were biologically inferior to whites. Prior to that point, the prevailing understanding of racism was one of overt racial prejudice based on the claim of essential biological difference. These purported differences were then used to justify widespread racial oppression, through both law and custom, throughout the United States. Landmark court rulings and civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s finally eradicated overt, state-sanctioned racial apartheid and over time made public expressions of racial prejudice by individuals and groups socially unacceptable. Differing interpretations as to the meaning of these historical changes have caused significant disagreement among scholars. Emergent conceptions of racism in the contemporary period find their origins here. The Traditional Perspective on Racism Fifty years of public opinion polls show a significant decline in whites’ self-reported racial prejudice. Over a similar period of time, Americans of color have increased their representation in the top half of the income and wealth distributions; they attend elite institutions of higher education in record numbers, sit at the heads of Fortune 500 companies, and serve at the highest levels

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Racism

The November 1979 Iranian hostage crisis precipitated a wave of anti-Iranian sentiment in the United States. Even though most of these racist sentiments have gradually declined over the years, some Iraniam immigrants in the United States distance themselves from their nationality and identifiy themselves instead by their ethnic or religious affiliations.

of elected office. The number of interracial marriages continues to grow as well. Millions of white Americans voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Scholars who endorse a traditional definition of racism cite these types of examples as incontrovertible evidence of a widespread decline in racism. These traditionalists view racism as solely an individual-level phenomenon. Here, racism is conflated with racial prejudice. That is to say, the nature or character of racism in, say, 1812 or 1912 is essentially the same as in 2012. The major difference is that whereas racism was common and widespread during the earlier periods, it is now rare and for the most part isolated in the southern United States. Those in this camp define racism as an irrational belief concerning the biological inferiority of racial outgroup members. Therefore, individuals of any race may espouse racist beliefs. For example, this

perspective suggests that whites and blacks may be racist toward one another. Since racism is said to reside solely in the realm of individual ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, the traditional perspective suggests that the best way to address racism is through education. One must learn that racially prejudicial beliefs are irrational, wrongheaded, and no longer socially acceptable. Emergent Perspectives on Racism The social customs and conventions that had stipulated a second-class citizenship for Americans of color, particularly black Americans, abated in the wake of the civil rights movement. Despite being free from the strictures of state-sanctioned racial discrimination in the areas of voting, housing, education, and the labor market, however, most Americans of color still found themselves with grossly unfavorable life chances relative to

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Racism white Americans. As a consequence, some scholars began to reexamine the traditional perspective of racism as overt racial prejudice. These individuals developed an understanding of racism that encompasses the interpersonal and the institutional, the overt and the subtle, and the intentional and the unintentional. Also fundamental to those in this second camp is the claim that racism can mutate across different historical periods and sociopolitical contexts. This highlights a principal difference between traditional and emergent definitions of racism. The latter are more encompassing and structural; the former are more limited and psychological. Most definitions of racism within the emergent perspective tend to be sociological in nature; that is, racism is seen as a structural, group-level phenomenon. As such, racism can be a characteristic of groups, organizations, and institutions as opposed to solely one of individuals. At the tail end of the civil rights movement. Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) and Charles Hamilton published the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967), in which they introduced the term institutional racism. Ture and Hamilton argued that overt, interpersonal forms of racism did not sufficiently account for the totality of racial oppression experienced by blacks. Rather, whites’ racial prejudice could explain only the micro-level racism borne by blacks. For instance, being a victim of vitriolic racial epithets or racially motivated violence was disturbing and unacceptable, but fundamentally an individual-level phenomenon. While acknowledging the terrorizing nature of this variety of racism, Ture and Hamilton claimed that the life chances of Americans of color were also routinely constrained by laws, policies, and procedures throughout the country. They argued that the dominant interpersonal understanding of racism (that is, racism equated with racial prejudice) needed to be augmented with a more sociological (or macro-level) understanding of whites’ use of power within institutional settings (public and private) to ensure that the life chances of all Americans of color (particularly blacks) remained severely limited. Today, social scientists, as well as other scholars who study race and racism, continue to document institutional policies and practices that result in racially disparate outcomes for people of

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color. For example, an organization may have a formal policy or informal practice of hiring the family members and friends of current or past employees. Given the historical and contemporary racial privilege of whites, along with the fact that most Americans’ peer groups and intimate relationships are racially endogamous, these policies ensure that a disproportionate number of new hires will be white. Another example of institutional racism is the way in which students of color are significantly more likely than white students to attend schools with fewer resources, less or unqualified teachers, and dilapidated facilities. A final example consists of the large racial disparities in most criminal justice outcomes, such as arrest, conviction, and sentencing. An important component of institutional racism is that it can operate in the absence of overt racial prejudice and discriminatory intent on the part of individuals. The traditional perspective does not acknowledge this type of racism, as its focus is singularly on the conscious racial animus of individuals. In addition to conceptualizing racism as institutional in nature, scholars working within the emergent perspective have also identified subtle or covert varieties of interpersonal racism. Here it is claimed that many whites still harbor a latent animus toward racial out-group members. However, they cannot express it overtly as such. One can no longer claim that specific racial groups have less innate intellectual ability without being stigmatized as a racist. Therefore, in the post–civil rights era, members of the dominant group communicate their racial beliefs and frustrations in other ways, most notably through claims of cultural inferiority. For example, although most whites do not publicly express and may no longer believe that Americans of color are intellectually inferior to whites, they often believe that these groups have pathological or inferior cultures. Drawing largely on negative racial stereotypes, they perceive nonwhites as responsible for their lower socioeconomic standing in society relative to whites because of their endorsement and/or tolerance of destructive behaviors such as crime, anti-intellectualism, laziness, alcohol and drug abuse, welfare dependency, anger, and sexual promiscuity. These moral and cultural attributions have been directed most strongly toward African Americans, Latinos, and reservation-bound Native Americans. This

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practice of espousing negative racial stereotypes is often referred to as cultural racism. Lastly, the failure of most whites to acknowledge the continuing reality of racism in the post– civil rights era, along with their unwillingness to support policies that would meaningfully improve the life chances of Americans of color, is seen by most scholars in the emergent tradition as a new type of racism. These contemporary definitions of subtle or covert interpersonal racism have been referred to as laissez-faire, color-blind, quiet, and symbolic racism. The Future of the Traditional and Emergent Perspectives The opportunities of Americans of color to experience their full human potential remain limited in nearly every socially meaningful sphere, from housing to the labor market, from education to the criminal justice system. Most of these disparities can been observed in data from government sources such as the 2010 Census, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports, and the Departments of Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. Most scholars of race and racism do not attribute all of these racial differences to racism; however, the weight given to the role of racism in producing these racial disparities is strongly dependent on the definition of racism used. A generational shift is occurring among scholars of race and racism across a variety disciplines. This may more strongly disrupt traditional conceptions of racism. The extent and durability of any major change in the prevailing understanding of racism toward the more encompassing variety will likely be mitigated by the theoretical and methodological assumptions of some disciplines. Also, beyond the scholarly debates, there is a strong countervailing sympathy among a majority of the general public, elected officials, and the media for the traditional definition of racism as racial prejudice. Whether the claims and empirical evidence in support of nontraditional definitions of racism will resonate with an increasingly racially and ethnically diverse American public is yet to be seen. Theodore E. Thornhill St. Olaf College

See Also: Black Codes; Civil Rights Acts; Critical Race Theory; Jim Crow Laws; People of Color; Race; Stereotypes/Generalizations. Further Readings Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. “Rethinking Racism Towards a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review, v.62/3 (1996). Brown, Michael K., et al. Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Desmond, Matthew and Mustafa Emirbayer. Racial Domination, Racial Progress: The Sociology of Race in America. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Feagin, Joe R. Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2010. Ture, Kwame and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Wise, Tim. Color-Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat From Racial Equity. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2010.

Radio Commercial radio began in 1920 with Pittsburgh’s KDKA, the first licensed commercial broadcast station in the United States. These first broadcasts were supported not by advertising or listener donations, but by a related product: newspapers operated radio stations to publicize the paper’s brand, while radio manufacturers and department stores operated radio stations to give the public more reason to buy radios. In the early 1920s, radio clubs sprang up on college campuses and through community centers such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and other civic groups. Because most locations for radio clubs were segregated, African Americans formed separate radio clubs, primarily in urban areas. Everett Renfroe was one of the first African Americans in Chicago to get a ham radio license, in 1921, Miles