An Analysis Of Bonilla-Silva's 'Racism Without Racists'

Even though slavery was abolished Jim Crow laws were made illegal years ago, racism is still not gone, and this is Bonilla-Silva’s central argument in his book, “Racism Without Racists.” While racist practices are not as overt nowadays, the covert, institutionalized ways of today’s new racism are just as discriminatory, he argues. One particular sentence that stood out that sums up the first part of his argument is “that the main problem nowadays is not the folks with hoods, but the folks dressed in suits.” Because of this switch to a more covert way of discriminating against people of color, white Americans have become color-blind to racism. In turn, the country is now home to “racism without racists,” which is the second part of the author’s argument. Because racism has become so internalized in our institutions, it can sometimes be hard to recognize, or at least admit to, the discrimination that is so prevalent in the U.S. Because whites either don’t recognize or admit to this racism, they claim that they don’t see color, and that any inequalities that are at play are due to the minorities not working hard enough in our meritocracy.

2. Bonilla-Silva notes that in the Post-Civil Rights era, white racial attitudes have

The author provides several examples of survey results that illustrate this. For example, while a majority of whites wanted separate schooling, transportation, etc. for blacks, less than 25 percent of whites wanted that in the 1970s. Also since 1940, the number of whites who believe and act on the stereotypes of blacks has decreased significantly (though, it is still high, ranging anywhere from 20-50 percent). Bonilla-Silva provides four trends in which these changes in racial attitudes have changed: racial optimists, racial pesoptimists, symbolic racism and sense of group