Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America

Bonilla-Silva presents survey data showing that his interviewees overwhelmingly supported the idea of a Black person moving into their neighborhood or interacting with them, but he notes that a vast majority of them actually had not invited a Black person to a meal recently or even could say they had a close Black friend. The paradox between what white people say and do is the first topic of this section.

“It Was a White Neighborhood”: Facts of Whites’ Segregation and Isolation

Bonilla-Silva notes that his interview data corroborates the survey results. Even half of those who grew up in mixed neighborhoods noted no interaction with Black people. Even fewer of the total applicants could describe having Black friends in their neighborhoods. Bonilla-Silva notes though that white people often inflate their relationships with Black people (as noted in Chapter 6), and he offers two examples to prove his point. The first is a student named Sally who, though she said she had a Black friend growing up, admits that the Black friend did not hang out with her and her other friends on weekends; the second is Pauline, a retired woman in her 70s, who conflated being friendly to Black girls with being friends with them. Other studies have confirmed that fewer than one in 10 white people have Black friends while about double that will say they do.

The author asks a rhetorical question about what would happen if white people were integrated instead of hypersegregated. It turns out it does not make a difference: Even for those that attended integrated schools, practically none of his own interviewees reported having Black friends. This is likely because desegregated schools do not lead to significant cross-racial relationships because tracking guarantees that white people end up in classes full of similar students. Second, school integration usually occurs late in white people’s lives by which point white people have already developed emotional and cultural attachments to white people only. This trend continues in college and the workforce.

Still, Bonilla-Silva quotes his interview subjects as claiming they have more Black friends than they do. One college student, Emily, when pressed by the interviewer to list her Black friends noted that she sometimes associated with Black students as part of a group but that none were actually close friends. Similarly, Jannis, a manager at a manufacturing firm where the majority of workers are Black, claimed to be friends with a “certain amount" of Black coworkers (254). When pressed, Jannis admitted to not seeing them outside of work, where she preferred to gather with people who were like her.

There are three noteworthy aspects to these inflated reports of Black friendship. First, Black people often get “other-ized” by the speaker (meaning the speaker refers to “them” or “those people”); second, superficial contacts (saying hi to a girl down the hall in the dorms or occasional chitchat at lunch) gets used as clear evidence of a deep friendship; and third, the supposed friendships always end after the reason for the interaction ends (meaning school ends or two people stop working at the same company).

The most significant finding in this section is that white people do not interpret their hypersegregation from Black people as being a racial phenomenon but instead normalize it as being just the way things are. Most of the college students described their all-(or mostly all)-white hometowns as being either “great” or “fine” or something they didn’t think about (256). This is not surprising. As the psychologist Beverly Tatum has argued, dominant identities do not articulate their statuses because they are seen as the norm and can reach adulthood without ever confronting the realities of their racial group. This also explains why so many of Bonilla-Silva’s subjects did categorize Black neighborhoods as being segregated while not having any comment on their own neighborhoods. Even students who did seem aware of their segregation often justified it as being simply a product of location (such as being friends with the people who lived next door) or the fact that their schools were not integrated. As one student, Ray, put it, Black people just lived in different neighborhoods, so he couldn’t be friends with them as he didn’t even know them. It was “just the way things were” (258). These attempts to naturalize racial isolation were a strategy that most of Bonilla-Silva’s student subjects used to rationalize their limited contact with Black people. The adults responded in much the same way.

Some, however, took another approach. Rita, an underemployed worker in her 20s, stated that she didn’t have a problem with Black people; rather, they never socialized with her. This is an example of racial projection and one that students such as Kara also made when she noted that Black students tend to be in cliques and self-segregate, whereas white people do not. Mickey, another student, also noted that Black people tended to eat together in the cafeteria but that this is not true of other racial groups. Dan, another student, noted that Black people tend to have their own clubs. Of course, none of them noted white cliquing, whites-only tables, or whites-only clubs. The adults too noted such self-segregating but only from people of color.

Finally, various respondents made statements that implied they regarded being white as normal and, as such, nonracial. Rick, a student, stated he does not see race the way Black people do; because he grew up in a white neighborhood, he says, he does not care about racial differences the way they do. (Of course, the fact that he did not see race in his white neighborhood implies that he simply only sees race when it is not white.) Lee, who grew up near Washington, D.C., complained that white people did not have a culture like Black people and Latinx people do, implying that culture itself is racialized. Similarly, several adults used the term “racial children” to refer to others at their schools, implying once again that only one group is racialized to white people (262).

Recognizing that white people do not realize their own race helps Bonilla-Silva understand the way color-blindness works for them. Adding on to his point, one might note it is a privileged position to say you do not see color when in fact you are seeing color only in others. There is also a historical argument about how whiteness itself is socially constructed, just as Blackness is. In the classic history book How the Irish Became white, Noel Ignatiev traces the way ethnic clans that used to be discriminated against (namely the Irish) slowly transitioned into being accepted by white people as their own. This has meant that most Americans whose families came from places like Italy and Ireland now can choose to accent their own ethnicity or not (for example, Irish people might celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and promote their Irishness and then return to merely being white the next day). For people of color though, there is a perception of racial othering from the dominant white majority, who will never accept them as being white.

Though white people often claim to be color blind, they are (in surveys) more likely to oppose interracial marriage than any other form of interracial relationship. College students were more likely than the adults surveyed to support it (80% for college students vs 57.5% for the adults), suggesting, as does other data, that educated people are more likely to express approval for integration. Those who did say they were against it still tended to say they believed that love was blind. Those who supported it tended to qualify their support (Bonilla-Silva reminds the reader of the discussion in Chapter 4) or simply seemed critical of Blackness at other points in the interviews, suggesting that they did not actually fully support interracial marriages. The author provides a table of data compiled during the interviews that contradicts the survey results. For example, only about an eighth of interviewees from either group provided interview statements that said they actually supported interracial marriage and that they lived an interracial lifestyle, which is far from the 80 percent who said they supported it in a survey. The most common response was to express some reservations about interracial marriage from people who lived in primarily white social networks. He provides several examples of the different responses.

One student, Kay, was dating a Black man at the time and said she obviously had no problem with interracial marriage. Her lifestyle suggested to Bonilla-Silva that this was true. Others provided more problematic responses with variations of the phrase “as long as they’re happy…” while adding verbose qualifiers. Scott, a mechanical drafter in his 20s, provided a problematic response about how attracted he was to Asian women (who he seemed to fetishize) as a reason he would support interracial marriage. Even he qualified his responses though when asked about those who oppose interracial marriage, saying he himself actually wanted to “stay with” his “nationality” to protect his “deep home family values,” giving him “mixed emotions” about the subject (266).

Those who approved of interracial marriage but associated mostly with white people had more diverse responses. Some were in interracial marriages while others supported the concept in principle but preferred to date white people. Those who expressed some reservations about interracial marriages represented about 50% of total respondents. All of them said they had no problem with interracial marriage but then gave reasons why such marriages would be more difficult. Some, like Olga, a 40-something software salesperson, worried about the children of those couples (this is something cited repeatedly in other chapters) while others, like the 60-something Joann, worried that young people do not realize the difficulty they will face as an interracial couple due to the discrimination of others. College students answered in pretty much the same fashion.

Finally, the reasons given by those who opposed interracial marriage more overtly varied by age. College students such as Janet accused interracial couples of being selfish because (once again) of the children that might theoretically be born. Older adults tended to use “Jim Crow tenets” to justify (without hesitation) their beliefs (270). For example, Jim, a retired man in his late 70s, appealed to scripture to say it was wrong and worried that the children would be beaten up by members of both races. Similarly, Rhonda, another adult, worried the children would not know where they belonged racially and would be confused.

Three things become clear looking at these answers. First, even though the respondents use color-blind language, they reveal their opposition or at least reservation to interracial unions in their language choices. Second, a large number of white people admit they would prefer to date white people, implying that they are not truly color blind. Third, even when white people have little contact with Black people, they reject interracial marriages because they presume some kind of problem will arise between the spouses or, more commonly, the hypothetical children. Bonilla-Silva posits that these answers reveal a consequence of the white habitus: Because they only associate with white people, they do not see interracial marriages as being normal. This makes sense—how can someone love a person they never see at all or do not see as being part of their world?