Language & Racism

The Everyday Language of White Racism

·         How racism plays out in the everyday speech of white Americans.

·         racism is not a thing of the past but, rather, a current social and political fact.

·         white racism is inherent in U.S. culture and is found in and reproduced through the everyday language of white, middle-class Americans

·         most white people in the United States are disturbed by these matters and resist seeing themselves as racists.

·         Three key premises or assumptions are held by white common sense thinking on race.

o   First, folk theory holds races to be biologically valid. This assumption persists, even though biological anthropologists and geneticists long ago demonstrated that there is only one race, the human race. An example of how this nonscientific, white, common sense assumption persists is found in the argument that racial intermarriage will erase racial difference and conflict. In other words, the common sense assumption advances a genetic solution to a non-genetic, social construction.

§  Hill also cites numerous articles in news media that treat the scientific consensus as an “astonishing novelty,” as if the common sense assumption held scientific validity. Another way the erroneous biological view persists is in the “one drop rule,” enforced during Jim Crow that held that any trace of African ancestry made a person African-American. This “one drop” assumption can be seen in the way that Barack Obama was described as the “only black in the U.S. Senate” and the “first African-American” president even though he describes himself as a son of a white, Kansas mother and Kenyan father.

o   A second assumption of white folk theory holds that racism is entirely a matter of individual belief and that the ignorance of this individual view can be corrected by education. This view is commonly communicated in opinion pieces that rightfully desire an end to racism and decry the use of racial epithets. While Hill agrees the anti-racist intention is good, the proposed solution of educating individuals who are ignorant is completely inadequate to the task of addressing institutional and systemic racist practices.

§  A November 20, 2009, op-ed piece by a Louisiana State University senior in the New Orleans Times-Picayune is an example of Hill’s point. The op-ed, entitled “Tackling Bigotry at Ole Miss, LSU and Other SEC Schools,” rightly criticizes common racist talk and practices at SEC football games. However, like folk theory, the major assumption of the op-ed is that “it’s unfortunate for the individuals ignorant enough to believe such behavior is ok.” After all, “hopefully,” white racism is not “in the majority. ” Although the behavior widely persists in the institutional and societal context of SEC football games, the proposed solution is to educate individuals to overcome “intolerance,” ignoring the systemic breadth of the problem.

§  Critical race theorists do not deny that individual attitudes and beliefs figure in racism; rather, critical race theorists, like Hill, demonstrate how collective human interaction, including everyday language, produces and reproduces racial inequality. Hill’s analysis details the ways that well-intentioned whites still talk and behave in ways that advance systemic white advantage and disadvantage for people of color.

o   A third key assumption of white common sense or folk theory is that prejudice is part of the human condition, a view that is commonly described in the statement that “all people prefer to be with their own kind.” Critical race theorists demonstrate how whites use the premises of common sense knowledge to deny or distort the fact that societal resources, and benefits and burdens, are allocated so unequally. Hill points out that the distinctiveness of white social and political racism is “the magnitude of White power, and the enormity of [its] distortion.” 

Chapter 1

·         racism is embedded in American history, institutionalized in daily life, and therefore often invisible to white people

·         two theories of race and racism—

o   folk theory

o   critical theory

·         Hill’s analysis explains how racism persists in white “folk theory,” or “common sense” knowledge that takes things for granted as the way things are. folk theory of race erases what is really important, attends to the irrelevant, and creates traps and pitfalls in the face of intellectual contradiction.

Chapter 2

·         white, middle-class Americans form their own racist language ideologies portraying language minority populations as inferior and backward. These language ideologies, permeated with racism, are designed to camouflage racist discourses from white Americans

o   white virtue—the idea that whites are highest in a racialized hierarchy because of their biological, cultural, and moral qualities.

chapter 3,

·         racial slurs as well as a variety of interesting examples of slur usage and the involvement and reaction of some white people.

o   people are most likely to utter explicitly racist statements in their own voices when they are protected by anonymity” (p. 177).

o   the legal status of slurs based on the First Amendment, international law, and Critical Race theorists.

o   proscription of racial slurs needs to be effected.

Chapter 4

·         gaffes-racist slurs claimed to be unintentional by American society.

o   reproduce negative stereotypes and harm people of color.

·         social alexithymia-where whites reject the feelings of people of color who object to racist language.

chapter 5

·         covert racist discourses- forms of racism that, although invisible to whites, reproduce negative stereotypes and are perceived by people of color with hurt and frustration on many occasions.

o   Mock Spanish-how whites parody Spanish terms in their conversations in ways that convey inferiority.

o   examples found in television, newspaper articles, and artifacts such as illustrations of greeting cards and mugs.

chapter 6,

·         linguistic appropriation-how whites carry out this discourse,

o   terms appropriated from from African Americans, Native Americans, and Spanish speakers.

o   produces negative consequences for minority languages and their speakers.

chapter 7

·         current ills of racism in U.S. society, and realistic solutions to eradicate racism and create harmony among all citizens