LESSON 7: Optional Ethnicities
and Color Blind Racism
Ethnic Relations, ROBERT WONSER
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Symbolic Ethnicities
• Symbolic ethnicity is a term coined by Germanborn American sociologist Herbert J. Gans in
1979.
• "a nostalgic allegiance... a love for and pride in
a tradition that can be felt without having to be
incorporated in everyday behavior" often
formed by mass media images.
• According to Mary C. Waters, ethnicity is still an
important component of American identity, but
it has become "a voluntary, personally chosen
identity marker rather than the totally ascribed
characteristic" over the years.
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• The phenomenon is attributed to Americans
of European ancestry, most of whom are
influenced and/or assimilated into the White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant community, which
dominated the country's political life since its
creation.
• Why the desire to re(claim) an ethnicity?
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• The phenomenon of symbolic ethnicity is
largely attributed to European
Americans, because "Black, Hispanic,
Asian and Indian Americans do not have
the option of a symbolic ethnicity at
present in the United States" and for them
"in which ethnicity does not matter for
white Americans, it does matter for nonwhites."
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• Gans described symbolic ethnicity the process in which
"ethnic identity is solely associated with iconic elements
of the culture."
• He particularly focused on later generations of Catholic
and Jewish American who "have begun to re-associate
themselves with their ethnic culture."
• According to him "the ethnic associations were mainly
symbolic and that the traditional community interactions
were lost."
• They identified "their ethnic race in a personal
perspective as opposed to a communal one", which
resulted in a "outward ethnic identity that uses superficial
symbols and icons to label and categorize a certain
race."
• People start to identify their ethnicity by media images
as accepted through past associations based on social
and historical judgments.
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Stephen Lee describes the term
• “From unrelenting integration of outside influences,
self-definition becomes less associated with the
community as a collective, and becomes more
associated with personal ethnicity as self. As the
definition of ethnicity becomes increasingly personal,
the need to reassert the community associations
decreases. Ethnicity then becomes a symbolic identity
more than a lifestyle. The definition of ethnicity, as
formed by cinema, follows this symbolic pattern. In
fact, in most cinema that deal with ethnic integration,
ethnic lifestyle is inseparable from its symbolic codes.
Ethnic lifestyle is not an associative or collective
means of existence, but a symbolic code - an icon.”
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• An example of symbolic ethnicity given in 2006
book Identity And Belonging: Rethinking Race
And Ethnicity in Canadian Society is "individuals
who identify as Irish, for example, on occasions
such as Saint Patrick's Day, on family holidays, or
for vacations. They do no usually belong to IrishAmerican organizations, live in Irish
neighborhoods, work in Irish jobs, or marry other
Irish people.“
• The book describes the term as
• “...[an] ethnicity that is individualistic in nature
and without real social cost for the individual.
These symbolic identifications are essentially
leisure-time activities, rooted in a nuclear family
traditions and reinforced by the voluntary
enjoyable aspects of being ethnic.”
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Color Blindness
• Color blindness (also called race blindness) is a
sociological term referring to the disregard of racial
characteristics when selecting which individuals will
participate in some activity or receive some service.
• In practice, color-blind operations use no racial
data or profiling and make no classifications,
categorizations, or distinctions based upon race.
• An example of this would be a college processing
admissions without regard to or knowledge of the
racial characteristics of applicants.
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• Proponents of "color-blind" practices believe that
treating people equally inherently leads to a more equal
society and/or that racism and race privilege no longer
exercise the power they once did, rendering policies
such as race-based affirmative action obsolete.
• As described by Chief Justice John Roberts, "The way to
stop discrimination on the basis of race, is to stop
discriminating on the basis of race."
• Opponents of "color-blind" practices believe that racism
and white privilege remain defining features of
American society and that "color-blindness" simply allows
whites to ignore the disadvantages of the non-white
population.
• Christopher Doob says that white people believe they
live in a world in which "racial privilege no longer exists,
but their behavior supports racialized structures and
practices."
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• The four central frames of color-blind racism used
by whites are abstract liberalism, naturalization,
cultural racism, and minimization of racism.
• These frames create a solid, yet flexible, wall that
permits the current racial reality to go uncontested.
• They create the situation where the current
inequality is almost a taboo subject, but can be
easily justified if challenged.
• The frames are used in combinations and are more
subtle than what most would consider racism.
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Abstract Liberalism
• "The frame of abstract liberalism involves using ideas
associated with political liberalism and economic liberalism in
an abstract manner to explain racial matters." (Bonilla-Silva,
28)
• The basic foundation with this frame is that we live in a society
of equal-opportunity and that each person has the right and
responsibility to make their own choices.
• This allows whites to justify opposition to any policy which
might provide, what they consider, preferential treatment of
certain groups. In many cases, the system ignores the fact that
blacks and other minorities represent a dramatic underrepresentation in good jobs, schools, communities, and
universities.
• This society seems to operate under the delusion that
everybody is born and raised on an equal-footing. But this is
an utter fallacy.
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Naturalization
• "Naturalization is a frame that allows whites to explain
away racial phenomena by suggesting they are
natural occurrences." (Bonilla-Silva, 28)
• This is why many whites believe that segregation in
and between communities and school is not a
problem.
• They believe that it's a natural event because people
just like to be with people who are like them.
• By this philosophy, people can justify segregation, as
well as justify using race as a determining factor with
relationships.
• But social scientists have documented that racial
considerations affect these issues greatly.
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Cultural Racism
• "Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally based
arguments such as 'Mexicans do not put much emphasis
on education' or 'blacks have too many babies' to explain
the standing of minorities in society." (Bonilla-Silva, 28)
• At the core of cultural racism is the belief that cultural
differences rather than biological markers are determinants
of racial superiority or inferiority.
• Bonilla-Silva argues that this is a classic example of blaming
the victim.
• Cultural racism allows whites to argue that colored-people
have only themselves to blame for their standing in society.
• The institutional effects of discrimination in the labor,
housing, and educational markets are completely ignored.
• This failure to recognize the disadvantage that many nonwhites face is actually representative of most whites.
• And they generalize sociological problems of poverty or
crime as being part of a culture, rather than products of 13
inequality.
Minimization of Racism
• "Minimization of racism is a frame that suggests
discrimination is no longer a central factor affecting
minorities' life chances." (Bonilla-Silva, 29)
• This idea does not suggest that discrimination no longer
exists, but that it no longer plays any hindering role for
non-whites and that it just "isn't a big deal."
• Most whites do not look at discrimination as a main
factor in the collective standing of the subordinate
races. But a disparity exists with this.
• When blacks were asked, 60.5 percent said that present
day discrimination is the reason blacks are in the position
they are in, while only 32.9 percent of whites took that
stance.
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