Donald Sterling is “a Racist”: Feel Better Now?

• • backstage racism, racism, sports, systemic racism, white elites, white privilege, whites

[This post was written by Joyce M. Bell & Wendy Leo Moore]

On April 25th, 2014, TMZ released an audio recording of Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers chiding his girlfriend for posting photos of herself with Magic Johnson on “The Instagram.” Pleading with her that she can spend her whole life with black people as long as it’s in private and she doesn’t bring them to his game, his tirade sounds like something from another, earlier, less enlightened period of U.S. history. The Internet lit up with calls for Sterling’s head: Clippers players should go on strike and we should boycott the NBA. Prominent musicians and artists spoke out against him and the Los Angeles branch of the NAACP pulled the Lifetime Achievement Award he was slated to receive. Even President Obama, who has been conspicuously silent on issues of race commented on the issue.

Almost all of the commentary has treated Donald Sterling as an anomaly, as an aberration—a throwback to Jim Crow racism. Even President Obama, who, in his response said, “The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that’s still there, the vestiges of discrimination,” falls into this trap. Assuming that Sterling’s comments represent the normally silent and marginal remains of a bygone era that will “percolate up every so often,” is either a misunderstanding of contemporary race relations, or a disingenuous attempt to mischaracterize them.

In reality, we live in a society that is fundamentally structured by race and characterized by persistent racial inequality. Many social scientists have argued that contemporary racism is more subtle, institutionally embedded, and behind the scenes, than the in-your-face, “Negroes need not apply”, racism of the Jim Crow era. Therefore, when “old-fashioned” racism rears its ugly head, scholars and pundits alike seem shocked, or at least disgusted. Incidents like the release of Sterling’s openly racially hostile comments to his girlfriend, Paula Deen’s admission that she uses the n-word and the discrimination suit against her, and the racist comments of Nevada rancher Clive Bundy who suggests African Americans were better off a slaves than they are today, all become the stuff of headlines, media and scholars alike rush to comment and denounce the remaining racist expressions of a bygone era.

We would like to first of all suggest that attitudes like Sterling’s are not rare. Rather, they offered a glimpse into a backstage that many whites witness but rarely speak of. This is the backstage where white daughters are forbidden to date black boys, black jokes are still funny, and private dinner table conversations include the casual use of racial epithets. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the media spectacle around incidents like this create a racist boogey man that average white people can point the finger at, a tactic that serves to tacitly define “racism,” provides white people with a deviant racist other from which they can disassociate, and simultaneously obscures the multiple ways in which whites participate in color-blind and institutionalized racism.

The self-righteous indignation that the media has shown and that is filling up many Facebook and Twitter feeds in the last couple days about Donald Sterling says, “look, he’s the real racist.” Sterling offers well-meaning liberal white people an opportunity to feel good about themselves for actively denouncing the racist, and gives them an example of “real racism” that they can point to and distance themselves from. As a result, the Sterling incident diverts the attention away from the more pernicious aspects of structural racism; the racism that is embedded in the institutions we all interact in, and shapes the life chances and lived daily lives of people of color.

So while Donald Sterling will face the consequences of his speech, as we all must, we cannot let this occasion pass without pointing out that, for one, he is not a lone aberration. He does not represent a “vestige” or a left over “legacy” of slavery and segregation. On the contrary, Donald Sterling is much more representative than we might like to think. But more than this, Donald Sterling does not let the rest of us off the hook. Racism is not simply a set of attitudes to which one can subscribe or not. Rather, racism works in and through all social institutions. So while we point the finger at Sterling, let us also bring the same critical interrogation to all of the social, political, and economic forces that perpetuate racial inequality. Let this also be an opportunity to take responsibility for the less obvious ways that even well-meaning white people engage in colorblind racism and benefit from the status quo subjugation of people of color through inaction.

Law Partner Tracks & Asian Americans: Struggles to Affirm Positive Self-Identity

• • Asian Americans, Asians, backstage racism, law, multiracial, stereotyping, systemic racism, white elites, whites, women of color

Helen Wan’s The Partner Track is a newly published novel that paints a vivid picture of life inside a corporate law firm and the internal struggles and challenges of a female, Asian-American lawyer seeking to become partner. The book illuminates the ways in which minorities and women are still viewed within hierarchical, white male-dominated organizational structures and highlights the particular embarrassment that can result from being singled out to personify the firm’s diversity initiatives. In situations of high competition, minority and female status can even be seen as a threat, since some may mistakenly presume that such status confers advantage.

Ingrid Yung, the protagonist in the novel, is a descendant of immigrant parents from Taiwan, who knows how to speak Mandarin, but prefers to separate herself from identification with her ethnic roots in the presence of a competing, yet socially awkward attorney from mainland China. The nuances of her relationship with her parents are delicately portrayed. Ingrid’s mother addresses her on the phone as “Ingrid-ah”—perhaps reflecting the difficulty in enunciating the syllables in American names. Ingrid’s parents sacrificed much for her success, and are justifiably proud of her groundbreaking accomplishments. As her mother declares, “Nobody bosses my Ingrid around.” It is this unmistakable sense of pride and independence that accompanies Ingrid as she confronts repeated incidents that question her identity, her right to be at the firm, and her competence.

Without revealing the twists and turns of the plot, the most telling revelation comes when Ingrid realizes that it was not hard work that would land her a partnership and that her mistakes would count more heavily than for others. As Ingrid reflects (p. 238):

I had completely bought into the myth of a meritocracy. Somehow I’d actually been foolish enough to believe that if I simply kept my head down and worked hard, and did everything, everything that was asked of me, I would be rewarded. What an idiot.

The novel also chronicles with subtle humor Ingrid’s interactions with the firm’s diversity consultant who has been hired after a tasteless, racialized skit at the firm’s corporate outing. Later when Ingrid is singled out at the firm’s diversity event designed to repair the damage from the skit at the outing, she is unwittingly made the poster child for the diversity initiative and later suffers consequences for her required participation.

Ingrid describes her valiant efforts to stay at the corporate law firm for eight years, hoping that “all of these little humiliations and exclusions amount to something.” As she reflects,

More than anything, I wanted, once and for all, to shake that haunting suspicious that, while my record impressed and my work made the grade, I was ultimately not valued (p, 164).

The themes of the book underscore the research perspectives shared by Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin in Two-faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage.

This study identifies the spatial nature of modern-day discrimination based on the review of the diary accounts of 1000 college students. Based on this extensive research data, Picca and Feagin conclude that performances or comments made by white actors in the frontstage when diverse individuals are present significantly diverge from closed-door backstage performances that occurred when only whites are present. Similarly, Ingrid struggles with her own identity as she gains glimpses of the backstage while she is simultaneously paraded as a model of diversity in the frontstage.

Yet at the same time, there are hopeful notes sounded in Helen Wan’s beautifully narrated story. The novel has much to offer in terms of charting the progressive pathway toward a self-affirming identity for women and minority professionals and leaders. And as Alvin Evans and I highlight in The New Talent Acquisition Frontier, from an organizational perspective, talent is the most important strategic asset necessary for success and survival in a globally interconnected world. As a result, empowering diverse and talented employees and eliminating the spatial separation between frontstage and backstage performances are essential steps in the attainment of social integration and genuinely inclusive workplaces.

The Paula Deen Scandal: White Racial Framing in Action

• • African Americans, backstage racism, black boys and men, media, white elites, white racial frame, youth

Professor Tricia Rose of Brown University has an interesting and savvy op-ed piece on the Paula Deen racism scandal. She makes this key set of points:

With each heartfelt tearful statement, Deen seems completely uninterested in the broader contexts of her comments, missing ample opportunities to address the reality of racism today both in the form of cultural and social interactions, but even more powerfully by policies and actions.

I heard her speak very little about the extraordinary injuries and injustices black people face, I have not heard her show alliance with those who fight racism nor show solidarity with or compassion for black people based on the profound impact racism has on their lives.

I grew up in similar circumstances to those of Deen, the assertively and comprehensively Jim Crow South. That is a central part of that “broader context” of her comments. Virtually all white southerners (and most in the North too) then grew up with, and had drilled into them, a very aggressive version of the white racist framing of society—replete with many thousands (and I do mean thousands, empirically speaking) of references by older whites, parents and others, to black southerners of all ages and conditions as N-words. Virtually all young white southerners used that word, as they unreflectively mimicked parents and peers. And a dozen other antiblack words.


(Image Source)

 

The even more important point missed in almost all discussion I have seen of Deen is that the overtly and brutally racist language of the southern (and northern) white racial frame was not isolated, for it was (and still is) connected to many dozens of antiblack and other racist stereotypes, ideas, narratives, images, interpretations, and inclinations to discriminate. It has been now for nearly four centuries.

The real issue is this white racial frame, this white worldview, not just one major racist word, or two. As a white person drilled in the white racial frame, you do not just give up using one word (and often just in public, too) and, suddenly, become a virtuous non-racist. You have to work constantly and aggressively to deframe and reframe away from that dominant white racial frame in the antiracist direction–and that takes much effort. And that effort is never finished over any white lifetime.

So, where is the public discussion of this broad and deep white way of looking at society, a framing that in some version is the backbone perspective for most white Americans today–and most especially in many of the racist performances of a great many prominent and not-so-prominent white conservatives today.

Central to the common white defensiveness on these issues is the heart of that centuries-old white racial frame – the sense that white people are the most virtuous, civilized, and intelligent Americans. Yet these “virtuous” whites created systems of racial oppression in the form of 246 years of slavery and nearly 100 years of Jim Crow that rival the worst systems of oppression created over long centuries of world history. And widespread contemporary racial discrimination as well.

In her piece Professor Rose raises a very good question about why Deen does not just come out and take an anti-racist stand. In my view that would be one that accents and condemns the current discriminatory treatment African Americans and other people of color still receive in this country–and emphasizes the need for this country’s white leadership to aggressively confront their own racism and that imbedded across the institutions of this still racist society.

That seems an elementary response, at least looking from outside the dominant white racial frame critically–for example, from the perspective of those people of color oppressed by it for so long.

Racist Framing and Action by White Progressives: Some Hard Questions

• • Americans of color, anti-racism, backstage racism, people of color, white privilege, white racial frame, whites



I am slowly revising my book, The White Racial Frame, for a second edition. A new white activist acquaintance in Minnesota sent me this comment in response to my questions to some folks of diverse backgrounds up there working in several effective anti-racism groups. She first made some kind comments on the book’s virtues, but then noted a discussion in the book that needs much more amplification and discussion:

Your research regarding the level of continuing negative stereotyping of people of color, through purposefully coded front-stage communications and through blatant back-stage communications, is most compelling. White readers of The White Racial Frame come away from the book much more able and motivated to interrupt these racist performances. What I would also hope to see more of in the second edition is articulation of the ways in which progressive/liberal/radical social justice activists (some likely readers of your book) act out of the white racial frame, making their organizations and themselves toxic to people of color. Why are almost all the liberal progressive organizations in Minnesota (environmental activists, child care advocacy groups, affordable housing lobbying groups, etc) virtually exclusively white?

Such white folks disavow any racist thinking on their own part and decry it in others. But in what ways are they reproducing the white racial frame in their personal interactions and within these progressive organizations? Clearly they are acting out of the frame, but they are (seemingly) completely unaware of this. On page 128, you point out that highly-educated whites often think and write, unreflectively, out of a strong and unexamined version of the white racial frame. “Holding that [white] racial frame in their heads, but trying to suppress overt actions reflecting it, whites frequently send powerful nonverbal signals, as real feelings … leak out into cross-racial interactions. “ (p. 135)

What forms do such subconscious performances of dominance and assumed superiority take? How do whites typically manifest the power and privilege of their social location in unconscious ways? What is being communicated non-verbally, and how is that being done? What assumptions are controlling our behaviors? In what multitude of ways on a daily basis do we assume that the white experience is also the experience of people of color, with that assumption informing our perceptions, feelings and understandings?

In the social networks I am part of, people of color tend to find these subconscious white behaviors more damaging than the explicit racial references whites engage in.

She and a Black colleague she works with then added that they

have found very little in the literature naming, surveying or researching such subconscious performances. So anything you could contribute to the understanding of this would be appreciated. Your book, with its articulated focus on the White Racial Frame, provides and ideal time and place for those of us who are white to consider such issues.

Because of her (and their) insightful, and on target comments, I have been thinking a lot about this way liberal/radical/progressive/anti-racist whites do conscious, half-conscious, or unconscious racialized and white-framed performances that alienate people of color and make organization difficult or impossible across the racial lines. Indeed, in a request earlier today about examples of what she is talking about, one of my Latino graduate students sent me this response as I was finishing up this post:

[She] raises an interesting point of the lack of interracial organizing. From my own experiences organizing in the Logan Heights (predominantly Mexican/Chicano) community in San Diego, white leftist/radical organizations and individuals such as C.P. USA, ACORN, labor unions (i.e. S.E.I.U), American Friends Service Committee often approach issues as “leaders” and don’t do enough to understand/involve the perspectives/concerns of the minority community. In essence, white progressives often (my own experience) have a difficult time relating to a non-white constituency, I suspect it due to race and class and the power/status discrepancy they create. Blee’s (2012) Democracy in the Making study of grassroots in Pittsburgh, PA also notes the lack of interracial organizing, and it resulting from white progressives who often talk about diversity/expanding their base. The book does not do enough to investigate the reason behind the lack of cross-racial outreach (but did cite in one case how white activists did not feel safe flying in minority communities.)

Very good points, indeed.

I would also welcome your thoughts on these matters (in the comments, for example), and any existing research or discussions you may have seen on these very important issues. Thanks.

Governor Perry’s N-Word Problem

• • backstage racism, media, political parties, politics, white racial frame



Who do I have a grudge with this week? Of course, it is with the U.S. government. In particular, my emotions are directed at the United States Board on Geographic Names. In 1967, they were charged with changing the word “nigger” at 143 locations to “Negro.” How dare they have the chutzpah to forget about “Niggerhead” in Paint Creek, Texas? This is the same property owned by the family of poor debating tongue-tied Ricky Perry, Republican presidential nominee and current governor of Texas.

It seems the government run geographical board did not forget about “Negro Bill Canyon” (formerly known as Nigger Bill Canyon, Utah), or “Negrohead Mountain,” which is a peak above Santa Monica, California (renamed in February 2010 to Ballard Mountain). Poorly handled media demonization forced Perry to respond by saying,

When my Dad joined the lease in 1983, he took the first opportunity he had to paint over the offensive word on the rock during the 4th of July holiday…It is my understanding that the rock was eventually turned over to further obscure what was originally written on it.

See, he had to do the job of the federal government on his own. Well, yes it took him three years after the property was bought to paint over it. But still he rolled up his Texas sleeves and did the job. And yes I am aware of the fact that some have reported to the media that they have been guests of the family while hunting on the property and seen the rock that depicts the name at the entrance to the property displaying the naughty name. But come on, who can blame the guy. He has been very busy. When defending his morality, he stated,

I judge folks by their character and ethics. As Governor, I represent a big, fast-growing and diverse state. My appointments and actions represent the whole state, including our growing diversity, such as appointment of the first African-American Supreme Court Justice — whom I later appointed to Chief Justice — and the first Latina Secretary of State.

One cannot forget the hard work he has displayed while helping his home state to increase the number of Blacks executed on death row either. That is one for the record books of equality, huh? Again, how can we solely blame Rick? He is a slave to the chains of the white racial frame. Perry’s allowances for the rock to exist in the first place are driven by the rationale that drove the operation of U.S. slavery. Moreover, Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin in Two Faced Racism (2007) discuss how Whites have the ability to publicly object or not participate in expressions of racism or bigotry, but in private amongst other whites they have the ability to be overtly racists.

Well those are the pains of the white racial frame. Perry is simply a victim of the “oppression.” So shouldn’t we give him a break? But then again, one has to question the good sense of anyone attempting to run for president while shooting (no pun intended) to gain favor from a select group of special people who cheer during a republican debate regarding the execution of hundreds of inmates, allowing the uninsured to die, and turning back to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy. Oppression of the marginalized is indeed an immortal ideological symbiote that has latched upon the psyche of world consciousness. So do me a favor and leave Perry alone!:)

Elle’s Photo of Gabourey Sidibe: The White Racial Frame is Everywhere

• • academic, African Americans, backstage racism, cyber racism, gendered racism, media, popular culture, white racial frame



Serious public discussion about how magazines and other mainstream media sometimes darken or lighten the skin of black Americans is relatively rare. Periodically magazine covers lighten or darken as that suits the editors’ white racial framing. You may remember how some magazine pictures of O. J. Simpson were darkened to make him fit the white racist framing of black men as dangerous. Now we have Elle magazine significantly lightening the skin of prize-winning actor Gabourey Sidibe on its recent cover. Over at yahoo, there is this commentary(with a very revealing photo backing it up) on that editorial action:

For its special October edition, ELLE produced four separate covers, each one meant to celebrate a different mid-20’s female star–in addition to Sidibe, 27, it included actresses Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox and reality star/fashion entrepreneur Lauren Conrad…. While each of the other three (all oft-used, not to mention skinny and Caucasian) cover girls are shown off in full-body glamour shots wearing stylish clothes, Sidibe is cropped at the mid-chest, with a swath of ruched green fabric hiding her curvy frame. Plus, her skin appears to be [much] lighter than in most photos of the actress we’ve seen, which has stirred reactions on the Web. …. This is the first big fashion magazine cover for Sidibe…. Similar claims about skin lightening were made in 2008 about the possible whitening of Beyonce’s face for a L’Oréal Paris ad and in 2009 for an ad with Indian actress Freida Pinto.

The analysis of this in the mainstream media is amazingly rare and often weak as here, as with “appears to be” and “claims” type language. Such skin lightening and white or whiter skin preference can be found in a great many nooks and crannies of this society. The white racial framing of what is “beautiful” skin color and what is not is centuries old. This racist framing and preference go back well past the racist diatribes on the “lovely white” color that one finds in our founding fathers such as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Such constantly recurring events raise many deeper questions that are not touched in the media, or even by much mainstream social science. Dr. Edna Chun recently mentioned the white racial frame concept that I have been working on for a decade or more. One reason I think that it is important is because we need as social scientists today to move well beyond the white-social-scientist-created and typically individualistic concepts of stereotype, prejudice, bigotry, and assimilation—which are OK for analyses as far as they go but which are ultimately rather weak–compared to the great and deeper ideas from the (mostly black) critical racial tradition, concepts such as institutional racism and racial oppression.

In work since the 1970s I draw on this critical black tradition with concepts of the “white racial frame” and “systemic racism.” In my view the white racial frame idea is far better in making sense out of such things as these media actions, as well as much else about “racial relations,” than “stereotypes” or “prejudice” because it includes not only stereotypes, but also much else. It is a whole white-generated racist worldview that is actually imposed on all folks in the United States and in many other areas of the globe. Systemic racism and institutionalized racism are also much better than those traditional “racial and ethnic relations” concepts because they can make the uninformed to think about the foundation of this society in racial oppression (246 years of slavery and 100 years or so of Jim Crow segregation).

In the book Systemic Racism I developed the concept of a white racial frame. I expanded the discussion in a book in last year titled The White Racial Frame. Since its development in the 17th century, this racial frame has been a dominant frame, a pervasive framing that provides a generic meaning system for the racialized society that became the United States. In this racial framing, whites have long combined racial stereotypes (the cognitive aspect), metaphors and interpretive concepts (the deeper cognitive aspect), dramatic images (the visual aspect), deep emotions (feelings), and inclinations to discriminatory action. This frame buttresses, and grows out of the material reality of racial oppression. The complex of racial hierarchy, material oppression, and the rationalizing white racial frame constitute what I term systemic racism.

In our book, Two Faced Racism Leslie Picca and I give many examples of the white racial frame. We collected journals from 626 white students at 28 colleges and universities in various regions. They were asked to record (for, on average, about 6-9 weeks) observations of everyday events in their lives that revealed racial issues, images, and understandings. In these relatively brief diaries these white students gave us got more than 7,500 accounts of blatantly or obviously racist commentary and actions by white friends, acquaintances, relatives, and strangers, much of it in backstage areas. In addition, about 300 students of color at these same colleges gave us another 4000 accounts of clearly racist events that happened to them and their friends or relatives.

Their everyday accounts offer many insights into how the white racial frame works today. Here, for example, is one of thousands of extended racial events from the diaries, this one about an evening party of six white students at a midwestern college. Trevor, a white student, reports on a typical evening gathering:

When any two of us are together, no racial comments or jokes are ever made. However, with the full group membership present, anti-Semitic jokes abound, as do racial slurs and vastly derogatory statements. . . . Various jokes concerning stereotypes . . . were also swapped around the gaming table, everything from “How many Hebes fit in a VW beetle?” to “Why did the Jews wander the desert for forty years?” In each case, the punch lines were offensive, even though I’m not Jewish. The answers were “One million (in the ashtray) and four (in the seats)” and “because someone dropped a quarter,” respectively. These jokes degraded into a rendition of the song “Yellow,” which was re-done to represent the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. It contained lines about the shadows of the people being flash burned into the walls (“and it was all yellow” as the chorus goes in the song).

There is nothing subtle about these racist performances. Trevor continues with yet more performances:

A member of the group also decided that he has the perfect idea for a Hallmark card. On the cover it would have a few kittens in a basket with ribbons and lace. On the inside it would simply say “You’re a nigger.” I found that incredibly offensive. Supposedly, when questioned about it, the idea of the card was to make it as offensive as humanly possible in order to make the maximal juxtaposition between warm- and ice- hearted. After a brief conversation about the cards which dealt with just how wrong they were, a small kitten was drawn on a piece of paper and handed to me with a simple, three-word message on the back. . . . Of course, no group is particularly safe from the group’s scathing wit, and the people of Mexico were next to bear the brunt of the jokes. A comment was made about Mexicans driving low-riding cars so they can drive and pick lettuce at the same time. Comments were made about the influx of illegal aliens from Mexico and how fast they produce offspring.

All white male participants here are well educated. Notice the great “fun” these educated whites are having as part of this recurring social gathering–backstage racism. Racial stereotypes, images, emotions, and action orientations are all on exhibit here. Note too the different roles played by whites in this one racialized evening. There are the protagonists performing assertively for an all-white audience. Some appear also as cheerleading assistants, with the recording student apparently acting as a passive bystander or perhaps a mild dissenter. No one, however, openly remonstrates with the active protagonists. The contemporary white racial frame as revealed in such everyday performances has great implications.

Indeed, much has been made lately about how “liberal” on racial matters the younger white generations are, presumably including numerous magazine editors. But how true is that when you get thousands of examples of blatantly racist joking from just 626 white college students in short diaries they kept for just a few weeks?