Race Lesson 7: Implicit Individual Racism and becoming Race Conscious (Bonilla-Silva Racism Without Racists)

Reviewing Yesterday:

What is implicit racism?

What is Dubois' "Wages of Whiteness"?

What is McIntosh's "White privilege"?

In our last lesson, we learned about how racism indirectly affects people through institutions by allowing dynamics like accumulating wealth and segregating housing and schools.  But implicit racism can also show up in more mundane ways.  Dubois' wages of whiteness and McIntosh's privilege show up indirectly in everyday interaction.  As Americans became aware of the damaging effects of racism, many Americans sought to become "colorblind" in terms of race.  The idea was that not seeing race would get rid of the race-based institutional policies that shaped racism in the US from 1619-1970.  Additionally, because racism was so stigmatized, many Americans were afraid to talk about race at all.  Many people felt that by not seeing race, they would treat everyone equally.  Consciously trying to ignore race became an intentional goal of American culture. 

From Color-blind to Race-Conscious

However, the sudden taboo of race in American culture did not change the racist effects of the previous 350 years.  Sociologists responded to this new trend by noting the ways that race continues to shape our everyday interactions in subconscious, implicit ways.  

Duke University Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva spoke about "color blindness" in his 2001 speech to Texas A&M here.  And he wrote about the effects of implicit racism in his 2003 book, Racism Without Racists.  Bonilla-Silva noted that turning a blind eye toward race actually exasperated racial inequalities because now society could appear well-meaning while ignoring and even increasing inequalities.   Bonilla-Silva argued that instead of being "color-blind" we should seek to be race-conscious.  

Click here for the Google form for this lesson.

1.  What is Bonilla-Silva's important contribution to race theory?

As you complete this lesson, think about the examples below and how they might allow inequality to exist if we ignore race.

The same year that Bonilla-Silva published his seminal work on race (2003), The Ohio State University opened the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity to study implicit bias.

The institute publishes a yearly review of the state of implicit bias research.  You can find that here.

Kirwan Institute's 2017 research also shows that even doctors and patient health are affected by implicit bias.  The research is supported by the American Association of Medical Colleges.  You can download it here.

Besides the scholarly examples of implicit bias published by the Kirwan Institute, implicit bias that ignores race shows up in more everyday examples as well.

2.  What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?


This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress.  Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh?  I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored.   This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors".  If we see society through a color-blind lens, then we implicitly accept that white skin is normal skin in the U.S.  

 

Here is another example from Johnson and Johnson.  Note that the bottle says, "Normal to Darker skin," implying that there is normal skin and then there is darker skin which is implicitly abnormal. 

3.  How are the two examples above examples of implicit racism?

   

Police Surveillance and Implicit Bias from the Sociologist Toolbox

Part of the privilege of being white and implicit bias of not being perceived as white is the idea of belonging.  Similar to Nina Davuluri who was perceived as not American, here are a number of examples (A NY Police Lt., Harvard U. President, State Senator Obama) of Americans who are perceived as black being treated as they don't belong.  Sometimes, they are seen as not belonging in the U.S. or not being American, but in other instances, it is that they do not belong within a more micro-sociological context such as living in a certain house or neighborhood.   Below are examples of this from 2018.

In 2018, police across the United States have been urged to investigate black people for doing all kinds of daily, mundane, noncriminal activities. This year alone, CNN has reported on police being called on African-Americans for:

Operating a lemonade store

Golfing too slowly

Waiting for a friend at Starbucks

Barbecuing at a park

Working out at a gym

Campaigning door to door

Moving into an apartment

Mowing the wrong lawn

Shopping for prom clothes

Napping in a university common room

Asking for directions

Not waving while leaving an Airbnb

Redeeming a coupon

Selling bottled water on a sidewalk

Eating lunch on a college campus

Riding in a car with a white grandmother

Babysitting two white children

Wearing a backpack that brushed against a woman

Working as a home inspector

Working as a firefighter

Helping a homeless man

Delivering newspapers

Swimming in a pool

Shopping while pregnant

Driving with leaves on a car

Trying to cash a paycheck

And these are just the incidents that CNN has reported!  There are no doubt many others.  A review of news headlines this year shows that police were also called on other people of color. But it seemed to happen most often to black people: black people just going about their business.

4.  Have you ever had the cops called on you for doing something that was just your normal life (and not illegal)?  If so, what was it?  If not, are these examples surprising?

A 2020 study by White, Stuart and Morrissey, published in The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity shows that,

Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles (n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim (n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy.

Here is another example of disparate news coverage: 

Here is a story from public radio about a study of basketball announcers:  

Here is an excerpt of the story which features sociologist Rashawn Ray:

two sociologists recently published a study that looked at a decade's worth of March Madness broadcasts, and they found that sometimes racial bias sounds like this:

"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."

"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white."

Same Action, Different Description

Dr. Ray and his co-author Dr. Steven Foy, of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, transcribed 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They were looking at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.

5.  How do the three examples above implicitly affect Americans who are perceived as black?

An amazing example of implicit racism (and white privilege) was highlighted on the TV show What Would You Do?  You will be astonished at the difference in how the two men are treated.  Watch this video  (embedded below).

 


Sociology of Education and School Discipline

Edward Morris and Brea Perry's research found that discipline in school for subjective offenses might be shaped by implicit bias.  Read the abstract and try to answer the question below.   Please don't guess.  Either read it and actually try or skip the question.  See their research published in the ASA's journal here or here.

6.  What did the researchers conclude about who gets punished and why in high school?

A Girl Like Me

The implicit bias throughout American society affects all Americans living here including the minorities who are most negatively affected by the bias.  Watch the following video and look for the ways that kids are affected by subconscious bias.  https://youtu.be/YWyI77Yh1Gg

7.  Where was the explicit and implicit bias in the video?  


The Police Officer's Dilemma from the University of Colorado at Boulder 

If minorities themselves can be socialized to see their own race as something less desirable then obviously it can apply to everyone in the U.S.  That means teachers, doctors and yes, police officers too.  But because police officers are authorized to use deadly force, the impact of implicit bias has much more serious consequences when it come to policing.   The University of Chicago's Joshua Corell has research showing that unconscious bias results in split-second differences in all people (not just police) who are confronted by either a white person or a black person.  Soc Images explains it here.  You can try the study by clicking here for a link to the game and conclusions.

In short, the findings are that we live in a society that teaches us all to have implicit bias.   This includes police and even includes other minorities.  

For more on policing and bias, see:

Focusing 2020 on Protests for George Floyd

Whose Lives Matter? (A History of Black Lives Matter Movement)

A Knee into the Gut of America (Colin Kaepernick)

Ferguson
Why Don't People Protest When the Violence is Not Because of a Cop? (They Do!)

 
8. Can you understand how implicit bias might result in police shooting more black men than other groups?  (And that acknowledging that is not being anti-police, it is just being realistic about race in America)

University of Chicago School of Economics and Labor Market

Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a study of implicit bias and the labor market in The American Economic Review called Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination?

Labor Market and Felonies

From the NY Times, When a Dissertation Makes a Difference shows not only how unconscious bias can play a role in hiring in a most inequitable way, but also how sociology can make a difference that influences policy.

As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Devah Pager studied the difficulties of former prisoners trying to find work and, in the process, came up with a disturbing finding: it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than for a black person whose record is clean.

9. What are some of the evidence that implicit bias makes it harder for Americans who are perceived as black to get a job than Americans who are perceived as white?






Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is.

For more on implicit bias:

Implicit bias as "microaggression"

Sometimes these subtle instances of racism are called "microaggressions".  

Here are 25 microaggressions from buzzfeed.

Using the link above, what microaggression stood out as particularly racist?  Can you see how that small microaggression might make someone feel like they don't belong or shouldn't have power?

This article from American Psychologist explains microaggressions and the implications of them for clinical therapists.  See the table below for an explanation of different microaggressions.

Look at the chart above and find a microaggression (from the middle column) that you have either said or that you have had said to you.  What theme does it fall into?  What is the message that it sends?  

And, here are some privileges related to Christmas.