There is something I've been thinking about, reading through Bonilla-Silva and Gallagher. Unquestionably, there is a common theme to both. Both shed light on the attitudes and perceptions and realities of race relations. The especially vivid portrayal of Bonilla-Silva's frames of the color-blind glasses paints a good picture of race relations today.
But to me, it is not enough to just paint. There are two sides to the appreciation of any work of art: the perception of the observer, and the intent of the artist. Every opinion lands on that spectrum of perception-intent. Bonilla-Silva, just like the rest of us, looks at the modern racial landscape and sees the products and results of years of (what seems like) labor, and it's..... casually fucked up. Like a perpetual hurricane that everyone somehow ignores. What's the idiom? "Elephant in the room"? I'm getting lost in the metaphor here. Reading this book, listening to lecture, we are all looking at the painting/hurricane/elephant; it's all racism, but... "normal."
Society is a normal distribution. A bell curve. Whatever. The tail ends- extremes- are the so-called "radicals." People who are willing to act because they believe that their active participation in movements, politics, communities, etc., is important. They feel like by acting visibly, loudly, sometimes violently, they are changing society, and guiding it towards the "light" (definition of "light" may vary).
The rest? What, my stats teacher taught, falls within two standard deviations? They are passive. The majority of the citizens of Earth are passive participants, who "go with the flow." They have their individual values and beliefs; lean left or right; capitalist or socialist. But their opinions are influenced by the visible, loud, violent radicals. The extent to which they relate to the radicals, may eventually push them to express themselves too, but they're more concerned with more pressing matters; paying the bills, staying healthy, watching sports. If you talk to them, like Bonilla-Silva has done, you'll see that they'll gladly voice their opinions when provoked (like with an interview), but out there, in the world, they will not act on those opinions. Or, at least, not in the way that they think they don't.
This is who color-blind racism is for. For the passive masses. They don't see themselves as heralds of progress, or even bastions of the good ol' days. In psychology, there is the "status quo" effect. When given the option to do nothing, people will do nothing. Status quo is much easier to maintain because you don't really have to do anything except what you've always been doing. To cite Sweffer, it's one of those "no shit" phenomena; it seems obvious, but until you see the experiments and the numbers, it doesn't really hit you.
At the end of the book Bonilla-Silva notes that the reason the Civil Rights movement even happened, is because people were exposed to the physical, active, atrocities that were happening at the time. The visibility prompted the passive people to act; it pushed them over the line. After the Civil Rights movement was over, and legislation was passed, some people seemed to intuitively understand that in order to maintain the racial and class hierarchy, they need to maintain the racist, classist, sexist attitudes that were already embedded thanks to hundreds of years of ignorance, and code them under a more rationalist tone. "Duh", the races wanna keep with their own kind. "Duh" the poor just don't want to work hard. "Duh", women are more emotional than men, so they shouldn't be taken seriously. They saw they didn't really have to resort to calling people "niggers" and "cunts"(though many still do, you know, because it's "funny"). Masses can maintain these boundaries themselves, if they're given a good reason not to do anything; which isn't that hard. This is the intent.
Thus people are constantly caught with these dissonances. They don't wanna look racist, but the normative things they do every day contribute to racism(oh and they get so defensive when challenged about it! "How can it be! I'm a hard working American! How can the way I treat the Starbucks barista affect larger society!? Stop being so sensitive, you liberal faggot!"). They admit racism is still real, but they aren't contributing(it exists out there! You know! In the South!). They never confront themselves as part of the problem. And so they keep perpetuating it. They just run away.
Hope this made sense. Peace!
-Mikhail
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