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

Stories are central to life and reveal how we make sense of the world. We tell stories as though there is only one way to tell the story, and they thus help reinforce the status quo. Most researchers have focused on the stories people tell about race but not on the storytelling itself, especially the ideological functions of stories. This chapter focuses on stories interview subjects told freely, stories that were not direct responses to questions asked. As in most chapters of the book, Bonilla-Silva opens by defining key terms as a lens he will use to examine his central points. He identifies two kinds of stories: story lines and testimonies. The former are fable-like stories that incorporate a common phrasing and structure. These are vague constructions in which the character usually lacks a name (they might be “the Black man” or “the welfare queen”), and they are often stories similar to all tellers and re-tellers, reinforcing the dominant narrative. Testimonies, on the other hand, are accounts in which the narrator is a central participant. They seem more authentic because they are firsthand, but they still rely on certain rhetorical tricks.