Week Four: Chapters 5 & 6: Readings, Questions and Videos

 Racism is a systemic, societal, institutional, omnipresent, and epistemologically embedded phenomenon that pervades every vestige of our reality. For most whites, however, racism is like murder: the concept exists, but someone has to commit it in order for it to happen.

– Omowale Akintunde

The dominant paradigm of racism as discrete, individual, intentional, and malicious acts makes it unlikely that whites will acknowledge any of our actions as racism.

– Robin DiAngelo

In this country, “American” means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate.

– Toni Morrison

Reading Overview

This Week’s Reading

Chapter 5 (pages 71 – 87)

Chapter 6 (pages 89 – 98)

Reading Summary

Chapter 5

Following the civil rights movement era, many people believed that only intentionally malicious acts of extreme prejudice were classified as racist and that only bad people committed those acts. Thus, according to the author, the most effective adaptation of racism—the good/bad binary—became a cultural norm. The good/bad binary made it effectively impossible for the average white person to understand— much less interrupt—racism. The chapter ends by looking at some of the most popular claims within the good/bad binary and providing counter narratives to the claims.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the not racist side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do.” (p. 73)

Chapter 6

White supremacy impacts all people of color, however, black people represent the ultimate racial “other,” leading to a uniquely anti-black sentiment integral to white identity. In this chapter, the author explains that anti-blackness is rooted in misinformation, fables, perversions, projections, and lies about African Americans. As a result, white racial socialization causes many conflicting feelings toward black people, including benevolence, resentment, superiority, hatred, and, most fundamentally, deep guilt about past and current systematic transgressions against black people.

Optional pre-reading question:

• Reflect on this quote from the book: “Creating a separate and inferior black race simultaneously created the ‘superior’ white race: one concept could not exist without the other. In this sense, whites need black people; blackness is essential to the creation of white identity.” (p. 91)

Supplemental Resources

Debunking The Most Common Myths White People Tell About Race

Implicit Association Test (Scroll to the bottom and click I wish to proceed, then click Race IAT on the following page. Feel free to Decline to Answer any of the survey questions before and after the test.)

Discussion Questions:

• How does the understanding of racism as "a structure, not an event” impact your perspective?

• Which of the color-blind or color-celebrate narratives connected to the good/bad binary have you used (p. 77), either in the past or in the present?
  For example:

• I was taught to treat everyone the same

• Focusing on race is what divides us

• I have friends or family members who are people of color

• We don’t like how white our neighborhood is, but we had to move here for the schools

• I marched in the sixties

• What is it like for you to hear someone acknowledge their own racism? What is it like for you to acknowledge it in yourself?

• Where do you see the influence of anti-black messages in your own thinking?