Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Book, Racism Without Racists

Race has been an issue in North America for many years. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva discusses the new racism in his book, Racism without Racists. Bonilla-Silva classifies the new racial discrimination as color blind racism. Color blind racism is then structured under four frames (26). Color blind racism is believed to have lead to the segregation of the white race from other minorities called white habitus. Color blind racism and white habitus has affected many people, whom don’t even realize that they are, have been or will be affected.

Color blind racism is an “ideology, which acquired cohesiveness and dominance in the late 1960s, explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics,” according to Bonilla-Silva (2). In order to analyze color blind racism, Bonilla-Silva relies “mostly on interview data (11)” through a 1997 Survey of Social Attitudes of College Students and a 1998 Detroit Area Study (DAS) (12). Bonilla-Silva then breaks down the analysis of color blind racism into four central themes to convey how whites explain a world without racial issues: abstract liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, and minimization.

Abstract liberalism is “ideas associated with political liberalism and economic liberalism” (28). Abstract liberalism is used for a wide range of issue therefore Bonilla-Silva gives a few different examples of when this frame is used. Rationalizing Racial Unfairness in the Name of Equal Opportunity was used when asking white students “if minorities should be provided unique opportunities to be admitted into universities” (31). Most whites will state that everyone should have an equal opportunity. Those whites, “ignored the effects of past and contemporary discrimination on...

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...with other races and eventually it will become second nature. Obviously, the government cannot make those integrated communities communicate but I believe that with time neighbors will start to talk to one another or if nothing else some type of promotion for community block parties, similar to when I was a kid, would assist in the communication process. That is how I remember meeting the neighbors. Community block parties are non-existent now days but I believe they are beneficial to everyone! With a little effort from everyone, we can make it happen, a life without racism!

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2003). Racism without racists. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.

Charles, Camille (2003). The dynamics of racial residential segregation. Annual Review of Sociology, 167. Retrieved from http://jstor.org/stable/30036965.