Exam 3: The White Racial Frame- a Social Force

Describe the Cold War's link to anti-segregation discourse. Explain it in terms of Derrick Bell's theory of "interest convergence."

By the late _________, colonial accounts refer to the unusual "complexion" of the slaves as making an impression on the "white" mind.

By the late ________, hierarchical racial relations were increasingly explained in overtly bio-racial terms.

A fully developed concept of "race" as a pseudo-biological category was developed by Europeans and European Americans in the late __________, and was codified in the work of leading European and American intellectuals around the time of the American Revolution.

Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey write: "Seen comprehensively, all the mental images, prejudiced attitudes, stereotypes, sincere fictions, emotions, racist explanations, and rationalizations that link to systemic racism make up a white racial frame, a racist worldview, one deeply imbedded in the dominant U.S. culture and institutions. The system of racism is not something that only affects Americans of color, for it is central to the lives of white Americans as well. It determines how whites think about themselves, their ideals, and their country." Illustrate what Feagin and Ducey mean.

Discuss how since the colonial era, educational institutions have been critical to the transmission of the dominant anti-black framing.

__________, who had been linked to the Klan, rejected any "suggestion of social equality" between whites and blacks.

In line with earlier Christian usage, "black" was used by the English colonists to describe __________.

Prior to English colonization of North America and much of the globe, negative ideas about non-English peoples overseas had NOT previously spread across England.

In Chapter 3, Joe Feagin and Kimberley Ducey examine how the white elite and its supporters have insistently fostered a racial framing rationalizing the everyday realities of unjust impoverishment and enrichment across the color line. Explain how this effort is a major source of the racist framing held in the minds of the non-elite population.

Which president once commented on what he called the "naked savages," saying "It is vain to deny that they [black Americans] are an inferior race - very far inferior to the European variety. They have learned in slavery all that they know in civilization"?

Between 1878 and 1923, a series of federal court cases decided that the following Americans were closer to the "black end" of the white-to-black racial desirability continuum than to the "white end":

Who is Jason Richwine? Compare his work to the work of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

Occasionally, the U.S. Supreme Court has pursued aggressive and comprehensive enforcement of civil rights laws in numerous major areas, including housing and employment.

According to Joel Kovel, why do many whites often react negatively and viscerally to the presence or image of the black body, especially that of black men?

Recall that systemic racism involves social alexithymia, which is the learned inability and/or unwillingness of whites to understand the lived experiences of people of color. Meaningful transformation is possible, however. It is not easy and typically involves at least three stages: sympathy, empathy, and autopathy. Do you have hope for white elites who engage in fear mongering and negative racial framing of immigrants and the so-called "browning of America" given what meaningful transformation requires?

With the demise of legal segregation from the 1950s to the 1970s, the dominant version of the white racial frame was altered in certain significant ways, especially by softening some racist imagery.

In the nineteenth century the leading French anatomist Paul Broca broke new ground in understanding how the brain works, yet he was also a leading racist thinker who argued that:

Over his lifetime, __________ owned hundreds of African Americans, even though he periodically, and hypocritically, asserted that he disliked slavery.

Drawing on the example of Steve King, a long-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, explain how over recent decades, versions of arguments about superior white intelligence, culture, and civilization have periodically been used by white members of Congress and other officials for various political purposes.