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Summary: Chapter 3: Racism After the Civil Rights Movement

Jim Crow laws may have been declared illegal by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but according to DiAngelo, Black people continue to be held back as a result of cultural socialization by a dominant white society. There may no longer be overt policies in America dictating the separation of races, but inherently racist structures continue to reproduce racial disparity, and simultaneously distance white people from taking responsibility for it. White people complacently choose to ignore this dominance and how it manifests in various types of racism. This is yet another aspect of white fragility: the refusal to know.

Color-blind racism emerged as a result of the televised violence during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Confronted by violent racism on television, white people turned to the words of Martin Luther King, who suggested that people focus on the content of people’s character, rather than their skin color. Unfortunately, the idea of color-blindness gives whites the cover to deny race and ignore inequality. Instead of white people acknowledging other races, and the unfairness perpetrated upon them, whites can say that all races are equal. Whites can assume that they and their Black colleagues experience the workplace in the same way, thus making it more difficult for whites to recognize any discrimination that might be going on. Discriminatory situations must be acknowledged if they are to be changed. 

When Black people do try to call out discriminatory practices in the workplace, they most likely are told there was no intentional bias. This shows a lack of understanding of implicit bias on the part of whites, who may not fully understand the level of negative socialization they have received about people of color. As a defense, white people will engage in “aversive” racism, saying they have many friends of color, or have a person of color as a partner, or grew up with lots of people of color. These facts do not fully counteract socialization they received growing up that makes them immediately wary of people of color, which can make them act or react in ways that colleagues of color consider racist. This negative socialization is evidenced when white people make subtle comments about where the good neighborhoods are located. When interviewing for a job, DiAngelo herself was given advice about which neighborhoods would be good to live in. The underlying context was that the good neighborhoods were majority white, and the bad neighborhoods majority Black.

As laws have changed, and advocacy has helped people learn more about how racism manifests within American society, there is hope that the younger generations will be less racist. The idea of color-blindness, however, undermines this progress. Many younger people have also internalized the idea of color-blindness, and examples abound of younger white people arguing for acceptance on meritocratic rather than racial grounds. Research shows that young whites still engage in racist talk, but usually behind closed doors without people of color present. When people of color are present, whites simply hide the racist talk. 

Until the culture starts rewarding white people for learning about and challenging racism, the dominant white culture will continue to produce segregated outcomes, like those in the South in the Jim Crow era.

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