ten years old but new to me

[rmd]

'granny gets a vibrator' has a post full of links that led me to this 10 year old article about 'new racism' or 'aversive racism'. it's interesting reading and looks at some of the ways racism manifests in white folks who consider themselves egalitarian and not-racist.

i may have to go poke around and see if things have changed over the past 10 years.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/cgull_/]

Oh yeah. Just making choices about who you associate with is a fine form of racism. I fully admit to being Imperfect in this area.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

yep. although they seem to think that what happens is that white folks just find *other* reasons rather than "oh, because they're $RACE" to make decisions. or, "well, it's not that they're bad. we're just better."

it makes for interesting reading, i think.

[firni.livejournal.com]

"the rightness of whiteness"?

[dpolicar]

I think I'd find it easier to figure out what to do with this article if they also talked about white nonracists, by way of comparison.

For example, talking about a white school administrator does everything by the book when faced with black parents, and more informally when faced with white parents, leaves me going "Well... OK... but maybe he's concerned about being considered racist and wants to cover his ass... or maybe... or blah." But if you contrast him with a white school administrator who treats everyone equally informally and show what the differences actually are... (shrug) y'know?

I dunno. Maybe I'm just aversively racist in this area.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Interesting article. The trend pointed out in the article, of "not more negative, less positive", makes a lot of sense to me, because I see a lot of it: the desire to believe that one's own group is better/more virtuous/more deserving/more enterprising than others. The way I see this playing out isn't entirely race-based -- there's a great deal of class division here, too -- but race is a big, obvious, in-your-face "like me/not like me" divider. Class is nearly as big and obvious, though, and I'm sure that many so-called "upper middle class" (read: affluent) whites feel a certain virtuous glow for feeling more kinship with people of color who are in their social class than they do for working-class whites. Anyway, I think that when faced with disparities, people who are relatively advantaged need to believe that their advantage is entirely the product of their own virtue...or that it's a matter of factors beyond their control. They have to believe one or the other, or they have to struggle with their own self-image as people who believe in basic fairness.