Where Do You Fit On the Totem Pole?

From the book, Racism Without Racists, in the last few chapters, Bonilla-Silva gave great details on how whites think and feel about other people outside of their race, especially blacks. He did interviews on whites and asked if they associate with blacks. If they do associate with blacks, how did they feel about them? He also asked if they did not associate with blacks, what were their opinions about them? From these interviews, he mentioned white racial progressiveness. White people, who either had working class backgrounds and/or lived in the same neighborhoods as blacks or other minorities, had a different outlook on them as a race. White people, who did not associate with blacks, had different opinions about them and majority of their interview responses were negative. The people who were responding positively about blacks were actually white women from working-class backgrounds or poor. Whites from the middle-class also experience what blacks had to go through as a racial group. Many of them responded as making positive statements about blacks because the ones that lived in the same neighborhood, worked at the same jobs, or were in an interracial relationship with someone who was outside of their race, proved to white people that blacks are not always bad and lazy people. The white people, who did not associate with blacks, were known to be raised in a predominantly white neighborhood, did not experience being around people of other races at their jobs, or do not consider themselves being involved in a interracial relationship. To them, the only way to express themselves whenever they see a person of another race, majority of the time their thoughts about them would be negative. When a person of another race appearance, physique, lifestyle, religion, and culture is totally different from their own, they feel that they know nothing about that person and cannot relate to them because they were not raised in a diverse community. Races being segregated from each other in neighborhoods play a big part in how people can become discriminated against because they look and act different. Majority of the white working-class women believed in affirmative action and believed that color-blindness will play into effect in the near future. The working-class women also believed that blacks can become just as successful as whites, but there will always be white racial progressiveness, that would cause them to be held back. Whites think any minority race, can receive the same benefits as white people, but they would never be on their level and the white race would always stay as the most dominant. Bonilla-Silva mentions how blacks accuse discrimination as the reason why their chances in society are at a minimum, they totally support affirmative action, and do believe that whites have the better position in society. The only blacks that are well known and are successful in society are considered “honorary whites”. For example, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Shelia Johnson, and a few others are known to be honorary whites. It is not common for blacks to be as successful as whites, but there are a few who are outcasts from that belief. Even though whites have their own beliefs about blacks, other races have their own beliefs about other nationalities as well and it does not matter what their status is in society.

Here is an article of some of the well-known “honorary whites” in the U.S:

http://www.techscio.com/richest-african-americans/

Here is a recent article of someone who wants to be an “honorary white” but will NEVER ever be one:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/chief-keef-the-insta-obscene-neighbor-from-hell.html