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

A quotation from Albert Memmi’s Racism opens the chapter. It notes that racism is real but that no one wants to see themself as being racist. Bonilla-Silva opens by noting that this is true, with most white people (excepting those who are members of white supremacist organizations) stating that they “don’t see color” while also arguing that Black people often play “the race card” and simply can’t get over the past (29). Even Trump claimed to be the “least racist person” one could meet (29). Bonilla-Silva calls white’s beliefs “sincere fictions” before listing (well-sourced) statistics about how much Black people and Latinx people lag behind white people in earnings, home ownership, and quality of education while also noting (again, with sources for each claim) that Black people often are treated impolitely in stores and profiled by police. He asks two questions he will attempt to answer in the book: how is it possible to have such racial inequality in a country where most white people no longer believe race is an important issue? And how do white people explain the contradiction between their stated color blindness and the color-coded inequities of the US. The answer is in what he labels “color-blind racism” through which white people blame the socioeconomic status of Black people not on biological inferiority (as was the case under Jim Crow racism) but rather as the product of the marketplace, naturally occurring events, and the cultural limitations of Black people.