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We could improve overall health if we would address economic and racial inequality. That is the message of new documentary, “Unnatural Causes,” directed by Larry Adelman, and airing beginning tonight on PBS stations throughout the U.S. This short post is just a programming alert for those interested in viewing, recording or teaching about the series. I’ll be back after it airs with a post or two about individual episodes. You can check your local listings here.

         We talk a lot here about the ideas of systemic racism and the white racial frame. Let me develop these ideas a bit, mainly from several recent books. See here and here and here and here . The North American system of racial oppression grew out of extensive European exploitation of indigenous peoples and African Americans. It has long encompassed these dimensions: (1) a white racial framing of society with its racist ideology, stereotypes, and emotions; (2) whites’ discriminatory actions and an enduring racial hierarchy; and (3) pervasively racist institutions maintained by discriminatory whites over centuries. White-generated oppression is far more than individual bigotry, for it has from the beginning been a material, social, and ideological reality. For four centuries North American racism has been systemic–that is, it has been manifested in all major societal institutions.

        The white racial frame is a generic meaning system that rationalizes the system of material oppression. The white racial frame has long been propagated and held by most white Americans–and even, in part, accepted by many people of color. For most whites, the racial frame is deeply held, with many stored “bits,” including stereotyped knowledge, racial images and understandings, racial emotions, and racial interpretations. Not all whites use the dominant frame to the same extent, and in everyday practice there are multiple variations. By constantly using selected bits of the dominant racial frame to interpret society, by integrating new items into it, and by applying its stereotypes, images, and interpretations in many discriminatory actions, whites imbed their racialized frame deeply in their minds.

        Take this key example from the early development of the dominant white racial frame. Among the self-named “whites,” who also named “black” and “Indian” Americans, were US founders Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. They had conceptions of black Americans as very inferior to white Americans, who were seen as greatly superior in civilization. In Jefferson’s only major book, Notes on the State of Virginia, the white framing of African Americans is fiercely racist: enslaved black Americans smell funny, are natural slaves, are less intelligent, are uglier in skin color, are lazy, are oversexed, not as sophisticated in serious music, cannot learn advanced knowledge, and can never be well-integrated into white America. Significantly, most of these racist elements are still operative in much current white thinking. (See also here.)

       This frame was, and still is, designed by whites to rationalize an extensive system of racial oppression, with its central racial hierarchy, one with whites on top. The old racial hierarchy is rooted in coercive exploitation and resource inequality and is rationalized by the deeply held white racial frame. First centered on African Americans, and to some extent Native Americans, the white racial framing placed later groups of color–such as Chinese Americans after the 1850s and Mexican Americans after the 1840s–well down the already dominant racial hierarchy. Whites were central from the beginning to creating the North American system of racial oppression and its dominant racist frame, including all key words (“white,” “black,” and almost all racist epithets) and interpretations in that frame. Today, as in the past, the white racial frame is not just in the United States, but is fundamentally constitutive of it.

        Another key idea I suggest we need to analyze US racism is that of resistance and counter-framing. Counter-frames are grounded in counter-system thinking and have been important for groups of color to survive and resist oppression over many generations. Certain leaders and thinkers in racially oppressed groups, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, have developed articulated counter-frames, but so do ordinary people, the “organic intellectuals” in these oppressed groups. In these resistance/anti-racism counter-frames whites are defined as problematical, and ideas and strategies on how to deal with whites and white institutions are developed. Among other things, a developed counter-frame includes understandings of how discrimination and racial hostility work, examples of dealing with discriminatory whites from family and friends, and teachings about safety and various passive and active strategies of resistance to a variety of white discriminators.

The National Urban League released a report yesterday on “The State of Black America” (SOBA).   The report, published each year since 1976,  is designed to serve as a kind of barometer and offers an annual measure of African Americans’ conditions, experiences and opinions.   The SOBA numbers offer some evidence of progress, their ‘inequality index’ inched up; but overall the evidence confirms the persistent racial inequality of the U.S.  For example, three times as many U.S. blacks as whites live below the poverty line; and, while the racial disparity in unemployment narrowed slightly, blacks were still twice as likely to be jobless.  In an interview with Reuters news service, Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League, characterized the findings this way:

“The disparities between black and white Americans remain consistent, nagging and substantial. The next (U.S.) president has to take the bull by the horns and change the nation’s priorities and focus on domestic initiatives.”

It remains to be seen whether or not the next U.S. president, whoever that may be, will be able to galvanize the political will necessary to address these persistent racial disparities.


Refreshingly, this year’s report highlights perspectives of Black women which it rarely does.   The report is authored by Valerie Rawlston  Wilson, Senior Resident Scholar at the National Urban League, and includes essays from a dozen or so prominent African American women, including Julianne Malveaux, Johnetta Cole, and Kimberly Alton.    Unfortunately the National Urban League chose  rather totalizing language for the the title, calling it “In The Black Woman’s Voice,” instead of something more suggestive of a multivocal chorus.  Still, this is a minor quibble with a report that offers a glimpse at the toll extracted by our national system of racial inequality particularly for Black women.  Here’s a snippet from Malveaux’s essay:

“Race and gender are inextricably linked for African-American women, and their economic, social, political and educational statuses are affected simultaneously by both racial and gender oppressions.  But it should also be noted that the intersection of race and gender creates an additional ‘third burden’ for African-American women: an oppression that is a function of the majority of society’s marginalization and demonization of African-American men.


The labor market presents the most striking example of the third burden.  Black men and women both experience higher unemployment rates than the general population.  However, the unemployment and underemployment of black men shifts a disproportionate economic responsibility onto the shoulders of African-American women,  who then must support households and children without sufficient contribution from spouses, partners or fathers.   The failure of public policy to create jobs and access to employment in the wake of urban de-industrialization puts African-American men at a particular disadvantage, and thereby places the burden of family survival on African-American women.     ….


The third burden created by patriarchy and economic oppression translates into demeaning images of African-American women in popular culture.  The infamous Don Imus illustrates the extent to which these images have informed the perception of African-American women by the majority society.  Less attention-grabbing, however, are the many ways in which stereotypes of African-American women as lazy and dependent have adversely affected African-American women’s ability to find jobs and opportunities.”

Compelling reading from my perspective, and not a view that’s offered much in the prevailing zeitgeist of false dichotomies that implicitly pose an either/or relationship between race or gender as if these are not inextricably linked.    You can read an abstract of Malveaux’s essay, and order the entire report, here.