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

Hegemony is a philosophical idea traced to Ancient Greece but reintroduced by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. To Gramsci, hegemony referred to the cultural dominance of a ruling class; specifically, he argued that the ruling class manipulates the culture of society in such a way that their viewpoint becomes the worldview of the whole society. To Bonilla-Silva, color-blind racism is an example of hegemony as white becomes the default race and color-blindness the default ideology.

The idea of an ideology comes from Karl Marx, who used the word to describe a set of ideas and beliefs that are dominant in society and are therefore used to justify the ruling class’s powers and privileges. Bonilla-Silva defines color-blind racism as the dominant ideology of America.

Liberal frames are the ways Bonilla-Silva classifies the ideology of color-blindness. Bonilla-Silva identifies four main components: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization of racism. These frames are used by white people, he writes, to argue in favor of the racial status quo in the US.

Bonilla-Silva coined the term “New Racism” in other academic works of his. New Racism involves bigoted and discriminatory practices that are subtle, institutional, and seemingly nonracial or color-blind. They are contrasted with the overt mechanisms of the Jim Crow era when laws expressly limited the powers of Black people, yet the New Racism creates the same outcomes: segregation and oppression.

Race is a category that defines and divides humankind on the basis of physical traits or shared ancestry. Bonilla-Silva embraces the sociological conception of race, which argues that the concept is manmade and not one that naturally occurs but that, nevertheless, has real consequences. Racism is, as such, an unnatural process, but Bonilla-Silva argues that white people see racism as mere prejudice or bigotry, while people of other races see it as systemic. 

A social structure is a system by which societies are arranged, and it includes the totality of all social relations and practices that reinforce the hierarchies and rules of a society. A racial structure is a structure that awards systemic privileges to different racial groups. Bonilla-Silva argues that the racial structure of the US upholds white privilege in America.

Systemic racism is the discrimination or unequal treatment of people of one ethnic group or race that arises from the structure or systems of society or an institution itself. Bonilla-Silva argues that racism in America is not based on individual racists but rather on racist systems. As such, he argues that Black people are the victims of systemic racism.