Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America

Social scientists tend to use terms like “race” and “racism” as though they were self-evident. They tend to promote the idea that race as a concept exists naturally and that racism exists because of perceptions of superiority. Thus, a few bad apples create racism. The problem with this is that it is historic and continues to reinforce the idea that “race” is fixed rather than an invention of Europeans following interactions with groups outside of Europe. Racism became embedded in society following these interactions, and racism became (to continue the metaphor) the apple tree itself. Systemic racism, more simply, created races out of people who were not racialized before in human history.

Systemic racism should be conceived in a materialist rather than an idealist way. The structure creates material advantage for some groups and disadvantages for others, and this difference leads the advantaged people to naturally want to perpetuate the relationships that produce those advantages. This means, logically, that even though race itself does not exist per se, it comes to exist as a “real category” of group identity (58). Race may be socially constructed and able to evolve so various nationalities that make up Europe can become merely “white” and various tribes of North America “Native Americans,” but in people’s daily lives, race is fixed as a real concept that involves material realities. It makes no difference, then, if a person argues race does not exist when the concept has an experienced realness. Bonilla-Silva makes a joke about a Black person being pulled over by a police officer and arguing he ought not to be profiled racially because the Human Genome Project has proven that he is not different from the cop; for the cop, of course, race is very real. As such, race ought not to be discussed purely as an individual action perpetuated by racists (or groups like the Proud Boys or the Klan) but instead as one of the principal factors of social cleavage. Throughout the work, Bonilla-Silva is quick to reject a counterargument, and he notes that he emphasizes that race is one (albeit particularly large) factor, but gender, class, etc. also play a huge role.

Further, people tend to reinforce the systemic racism of their era. When Jim Crow existed, white people (including a quoted newspaper columnist) would freely declare their belief in the inferiority of Black people. However, in the color-blind era of the present, people will note they are not racists while saying biased things about how Black people are lazy (one woman from Bonilla-Silva’s study is quoted as saying she’s not “prejudiced or racial or whatever” but she notes how many Black people choose not to work and stay on welfare (62)). This also helps explain why he uses the term “ideology” instead of “prejudice.” An ideology is something manifested at large and that also connotes the power dynamics discussed by Marxism. The ideology of dominant powers justifies racial projects and reinforces the status quo. It also has the effect of making Black people feel inferior and internalizing the ideology; this leads to health problems and depression for those who suffer from it, while also making them docile and unwilling to fight the powers that be and change society. That is, there is also an emotional element of systemic racism, one that leads white people to lock their doors instinctively in a Black neighborhood (the segregated neighborhood itself is of course proof of the systemic aspect of racism) and Black people to feel anxiety at entering a space dominated by white people. Still, anyone can be a race traitor if they are willing to endure the enforcement mechanisms of the system.

This section opens with Bonilla-Silva saying he is taking a different approach and writing “candidly, directly, and in a personal way” to have a direct conversation with “you, white reader of this book” (66). In doing so, he once again quite literally singles out the reader and makes them feel involved in the project of changing the racial status quo. This helps serve as a call to arms, so to speak, and it encourages the reader to read the book actively rather than passively. In blending in his own personal experience, Bonilla-Silva leaves the world of theory for a minute and into the personal. His stated goal is to make all readers understand systemic racism and to make white readers especially appreciate how systemic racism changes the souls of white people. All of us, he notes, participate in systemic racism involuntarily.

Race and racism have been central factors of social division for the past 600 years. Most historians believe racism itself was born in the Age of Exploration, as explorers saw people who did not look like them and became colonists trying to extract natural resources and enslave the local populations. Though this slavery existed for centuries, the labor pool became too small as European diseases killed the native populations. So, the colonists imported Black people from Africa, who had immunity from the diseases due to earlier (similarly poor) interactions with Europeans. The slavery that was created in the Americas was different from earlier slavery in that the enslaved were incorporated as “lesser” beings due to the perception of race, and then racial laws were passed to ensure this racial order.

After the Civil War, Jim Crow laws were passed to maintain the new racial order. Beyond the laws, murders and attacks on Black people (sometimes directed by legal authorities) continued in large numbers, and, as the Equal Justice Initiative has noted, a racial etiquette evolved. These were unspoken rules of segregation and behavior. After the Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow died, but systemic racism did not. The “New Racism” (the subject of Chapter 3) emerged.

Bonilla-Silva assumes readers have some background in American history and that they do not need more-in-depth analysis. His abridged version is confirmed by many historians though. A recent book that takes an in-depth look at one aspect of law rooted in maintaining racial order is The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson (author of White Rage). She argues that the origins of the Second Amendment are in protecting the rights of slave owners who wanted to be able to call up well-armed militias to hunt fugitive slaves. Guns continue to play a role in the deaths of Black people today, often at the hands of the police who still play the same role as the militias then. This specific subcategory of American history corroborates much of Bonilla-Silva’s larger point. 

Next, Bonilla-Silva turns to the personal story he promised two sections prior. First, he notes once again that most Americans agree with the basic story of past racism in America (the theft of land from Indigenous people, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, etc.) but that too often today most Americans see racists as one group of people, such as the ones in Klan hoods or the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Few are willing to admit the comparatively subtle Jim Crow tactics still used today. Bonilla-Silva recounts a landlord in Madison, Wisconsin who told him he had to pay two months’ rent and a larger than normal security deposit to rent an apartment and that the landlord told him he did not like people who partied or played loud music. Though this was illegal, Bonilla-Silva did not have the legal resources or money to sue. He also notes he has been profiled in shopping settings where he either gets followed by store employees asking him too politely if they can help him or gets ignored altogether. Another time, he notes, he went to see a psychiatrist in North Carolina, who told him that foreigners often use bigger words than necessary and he should speak more simply even though she knew he was a college professor (also, he’s from the US, not another country). Though he has not been the victim of police brutality, he has been pulled over more times by police than most white people, and the police never treat him respectfully.

However, some of these interactions, he notes, would not even be perceived as racism by most people. After all, one cannot sue because a store clerk was too polite to them or because they did not get a job offer. The legal system requires a racist “smoking gun” to prove discrimination, as the legal system is still rooted not in the new racism but in Jim Crow racism.

He addresses the white reader directly again, saying that “you follow whites’ dominant racial script, blame racism on the ‘racists’” and keep taking the benefits of white privilege (75). Most white readers live in segregated neighborhoods and associate primarily with white people. This behavior reinforces systemic racism. For example, by staying in certain neighborhoods, white people sustain the racial wealth gap since homes in white neighborhoods have higher value than others. Additionally, white people live in an echo chamber in which their racial views are reinforced so that, for example, white people cannot understand the racial connotation of being worried about inner-city crime. Systemic racism helps white people feel the need to correct Black people in public or, worse, discipline them while also denying that they are racist. The point is that what Bonilla-Silva calls “normal whiteness” is more important for maintaining systemic racism than the uglier racist version is (78). , However, that does not mean the white reader should give in to apathy. Change can occur but only if the white reader (especially the white college student he singles out as a presumed reader) chooses to reflect on their own behavior and change it.

Bonilla-Silva makes a demand that the reader become antiracist. But one cannot do this merely by changing individual behavior; one has to connect to a social movement. If the reader is mad reading this chapter, he notes the reader has not yet done the necessary work to make change and implores them to do the right thing: betray whiteness and join the uprising for racial equality.