the world we live with regards to things “racial” today, however, is one where no wants to feel responsible for racial inequality. for these reasons i empathize with the words of Attorney General Eric Holder: we are a “nation of cowards”.

another way of looking at this, however, is to note that no one wants to be called a “racist” explicitly or implicitly, especially people who feel they themselves are well-intentioned. this is position the Scatterplot poster, i feel, felt the sociology blog had been put in by the “trauma” post.

nonetheless, if we are to move beyond our cowardly/colorblind/faultless society, a new understanding of racism must gain currency in contemporary America: racism is not about intentions. in fact, the most virulent forms of racism occur invisibly, as an inert structural force. this inert structural force embodies both cultural symbolisms of whole peoples (e.g., blacks as monkeys (see Joseph Grave’s The Emperor’s New Clothing), Jews are rats (see Maus), or Muslims as terrorists) and the context of lived realities (e.g., racial residential segregation, racial differences in the quality of educational opportunities, racial profiling).

yes, some racism is rooted in intention, but if we narrow the definition of racism as such we miss out on the transinstitutional and multidimensional nature and consequences of race and racial hierarchy. even in the Jim Crow era (and before then), this kind of institutional/structural racism was at work. See DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro and Omi and Winant in Racial Formation in the United States for earlier articulations of this perspective.