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

Bonilla-Silva opens with a metaphor comparing wearing a suit to subscribing to an ideology: they are ways of presenting yourself to the world. An ideology’s style refers to the linguistic manners and rhetorical strategies used by its adherents. Thus, like a garment that can be tightly stitched or poorly stitched, the style of an ideology can come out as carefully coded. This chapter is all about the style of color blindness, including language that is slippery, at times contradictory, and often subtle. As such, it has often been difficult for scholars to understand what is meant behind these rhetorical mazes, but Bonilla-Silva has tried to offer as much data as possible to prove what is really being stated. He notes that he will discuss five main aspects of the style of color-blindness: avoidance of direct racial language, the verbal parachutes white people use, the use of projection, the use of diminutives, and the incoherence that results from deeper incursions into taboo subjects. He reminds the reader that he is not attributing intentionality to white people because racism is (as Chapters 1 and 2 argue) a problem of power and beyond the individual.