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

“My hope is that the book remains a tool to understand the slippery way most race transactions operate in the place we called just a few years ago ‘post-racial America.’”

After the election of President Barack Obama, several commentators (mostly white people) described America as being “post-racial” since the election of a Black president proved that Americans were no longer racist. To Bonilla-Silva, that framing was not valid in 2008 and seems even less valid after the return of old-style racism from President Trump. This quotation uses irony and humor (which Bonilla-Silva uses at various points in the text) to introduce his main goal: Reading this book will help people change America’s racial structures.

“How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most Whites claim that race is no longer relevant? More important, how do Whites explain the apparent contradiction between their professed color blindness and the United States’ color-coded inequality?”

These are the main questions Bonilla-Silva poses in the book, and he asks them almost immediately in the first chapter. His answer to the question is that white Americans speak in color-blind phrases that obscures their racist beliefs. This quotation offers the bluntness that Bonilla-Silva uses throughout several chapters, bluntness that is in contrast to the slippery language he says white people use.

“And the beauty of this new ideology is that it aids in the maintenance of White privilege without fanfare, without naming those who it subjects and those who it rewards.”

Bonilla-Silva argues that both the Jim Crow era and the current era created ideology to reinforce the racial oppression that existed or exists currently. Unlike the language of the Jim Crow era, though, the language of the new era is not overt, allowing white people to receive the benefits of their whiteness without having to be associated with the ugly racism of the past. In fact, the ideology allows them to deny racism exists altogether, as they can point to the Jim Crow era to show examples of what they define as racism in contrast to what people of color might describe as racism.

“Whereas for most Whites racism is prejudice, for most people of color racism is systemic or institutionalized.”

Bonilla-Silva argues that racism in America is systemic. White people, however, tend to define racism only as acts of bigotry or exclusion, similar to the flagrant type of racism that is associated with the Jim Crow era. This quotation establishes, however, that the very notion of what is and is not racist is not something on which Black and white people can agree.

“For example, if you are regarded as a Black person (and visually fit the construction), you gain precious little by telling a police officer treating you disrespectfully during a traffic stop, ‘Sir, you and I are both members of the homo sapiens species and are, as the Human Genome Project has clearly documented, species brothers.’”

Bonilla-Silva agrees with most sociologists that race is a social construct, but he argues that it does not matter in the real world. That is, even an artificially constructed concept can have devastating real-world effects. This quotation uses humor to prove that point, as it suggests that a police officer whose job it is to uphold the racist system will not let a fact disrupt his understanding of race.

“Systemic racism, then, is you, White lawyer, doctor, plumber, college student, or teacher saying, ‘But I have never used the N-word,’ thinking this is clear and convincing evidence of you not having a racist bone in your body.”

In Chapter 2, Bonilla-Silva speaks directly to white readers, using the second person pronoun to grab their attention. In this quotation, he explains in clear terms what systemic racism is and why it does not matter that the reader considers themself to be not racist. This quotation also makes use of the overused (by white people) trope of a racist bone, as if that is the part of human anatomy that would determine whether or not a person uses the N-word.

“You are either fighting the system or supporting it in some fashion. Will you seek racial salvation by betraying Whiteness or will you stay in the corner waiting for the uprising to end so that you can return to Whiteness as usual?”

The “you” in this quotation is white readers, who Bonilla-Silva directly speaks to in Chapter 2. His goal in writing Racism Without Racists is to galvanize white readers into understanding color-blind racism, learning to move past it, and joining the movement to end racial injustice and systemic racism. In this quotation, he gives a clear choice for white readers to make and suggests something like a proverbial call to arms.

“Hence, for the elite, what mattered was not black and white, but green!”

In this clever quotation, Bonilla-Silva argues that Jim Crow ended because of financial considerations. He notes that racial exclusion and segregation in the South scared away capital investments in the 1960s, forcing white leaders to embrace integration. In short, this means that business leads decisions to challenge racism because money is more powerful than whiteness in a capitalist society.

“Nevertheless, the visibility of something does not make it primary and the evidence reviewed here suggests that Blacks and other minorities should fear less the angry men with white hoods than the White men and women with suits and their ‘smiling discrimination.’”

Bonilla-Silva notes that, especially in the post-Trump moment, old-school racism has never gone away. He notes that the overt expressions of racial dominance have never totally left American life but that, nevertheless, Black people have less reason to fear members of the Ku Klux Klan than the color-blind white elites who have the actual power in American society. This is a point he makes throughout the text, as one of his secondary goals in writing is to make sure white people understand that all white people are at least partially complicit in racism and that it is not just the Klan, the Proud Boys, the Nazis, etc. who are responsible.

“Whereas rulers receive solace by believing they are not involved in the terrible ordeal of creating and maintaining inequality, the ruled are charmed by the almost magic qualities of a hegemonic ideology.”

Bonilla-Silva argues that the dominant powers in society create hegemonic ideologies that reinforce and maintain the status quo. Here, he explains that the elites like to pretend that they are not responsible for these ideologies, yet, regardless of responsibility, the masses end up intoxicated by them anyway. It is his argument that these ideologies spread regardless of intent so that everyone in society learns the ideology and learns to think through it, meaning every view or discussion of race is shaped by the hegemony. 

“Subscribing to an ideology is like wearing a dress or a suit. When you wear it, you also wear a certain style, a certain fashion, a certain way of presenting yourself to the world.”

An ideology is a set of beliefs that helps reinforce a power structure in a society. An ideology spreads to the masses and becomes just something that everyone in a society knows and that, thus, shapes everyone’s worldview. In this simile, Bonilla-Silva simplifies the complicated concept by comparing it to something everyone can see, but it is important to note an ideology is not actually visible nor something (like a suit) that one can choose to wear—rather, it is learned.

“People of color are the problem; Whites are not.”

At the end of his discussion on the ways white people project their beliefs onto Black people, he quotes W.E.B. Du Bois, who asked the question “How does it feel to be a problem?” He concludes in a clever and succinct turn of phrase that white people always perceive the other side as the problem and will never confront the reality of race in the United States. 

“Kara does not see White cliquing, Mickey does not see White tables, and Dan does not see White anything!”

In Chapter 7, Bonilla-Silva discusses what he calls the “white habitus,” the world inhabited by white people that teaches them from a young age to use and support the color-blind racism the book describes. This often means that white people end up seeing “color” only when the color is not white. In this quotation, Bonilla-Silva notes that three of his college student respondents only notice self-segregation when Black people do it and do not notice the same behavior done by white people as self-segregation, since white is, to them, not a race.

“How can Whites fall in love with people whom they never see, whom they regard as ‘different’ (lesser), and with whom they hardly associate?”

In Chapter 7, Bonilla-Silva notes that white people tend to live lives segregated from people of color, a condition that blocks them from being able to challenge or change the racial order in American life. As association is the first step to integration, this is an especially large hurdle to overcome and helps explain white people’s reluctance to embrace interracial marriage, for example. In this quotation, the author uses “see” literally and figuratively: white people never see Black people in their personal lives and thus cannot see the reality of Black life that exists below the surface (as they also claim to not see color at all).

“Once again, I am not suggesting she is guilty of racism by association. However, my point is to underscore a sociological truism: that networks of social interaction matter whether actors are aware of it or not.”

In describing the stories of white racial progressives, Bonilla-Silva notes several contradictions. In many of the cases, he especially emphasizes that the women he interviews note that they know racists but that they do not use those stories to suggest anything positive about themselves. With Sue, an adult who says her boyfriend is prejudiced, Bonilla-Silva hammers home the point he makes throughout the book: the fact of being white and interacting with mostly white people does not make one a racist, per se, but it does impact the way white people view the world.

“Whereas in slavery or Jim Crow, Blacks had to be ‘stage Negroes’ if they wanted to survive, as a consequence of new norms, Whites now have to be 'stage Whites.’ Therefore, being at the bottom of the racial order in post–civil rights America gives Blacks at least the freedom to speak their minds.”

Throughout the book, Bonilla-Silva compares the Jim Crow era to the present. In this quotation, he describes a reversal; while during Jim Crow Black people felt the need to present themselves in a way that would not anger white people, nowadays white people self-censor to not sound racist. This gives Black people a power to speak in any way they want, one of the few privileges they alone have in the era of New Racism. 

“Therefore, as I argued above, a dominant ideology is effective not by establishing ideological uniformity, but by providing the frames to organize difference.”

In the book, Bonilla-Silva describes the racist ideology that dominates American life. It is an ideology that most do not even realize they have learned but through which they frame everything. Indeed, as he argues here, the ideology is so pervasive not because it makes everyone agree but because it establishes the framework for disagreement, meaning even in discussions of racism, Black people and white people still talk about the same concepts.

“This is the power of ideology in general, and of racial ideology in particular: it works best when it is not direct and seems to represent how everybody thinks.”

Ideology is the beliefs of a dominant culture rendered in such a way that they become pervasive and help reaffirm the dominant culture in perpetuity. In Chapter 10, Bonilla-Silva shows the way the color-blind ideology worked during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that white politicians (in this case Andrew Cuomo) called the virus the “great equalizer” even though nothing about the pandemic was equal. So dominant was the ideology that people did not even realize the absurdity of calling it an equalizer.

"Since I wrote this book in 2003, Curious George–type readers might be thinking, ‘The data for this book are old, so maybe the author’s claims are no longer relevant.’”

In this quotation, as in other parts of the book, Bonilla-Silva seems to anticipate a reader’s reaction. He also uses some (also typical) humorous language to make his point. Of course, he sets up the reader’s complaints only to refute them later on, as he argues his point is still valid.

“Our economy and health care system cannot depend on ‘heroes,’ particularly when so many of them are workers of color.”

In one of the new chapters to the sixth edition, Chapter 10, Bonilla-Silva applies his argument to the COVID-19 pandemic. He notes that the language of color-blindness was used to dismiss legitimate concerns about the inequality of American life. By calling frontline workers “heroes,” the dominant culture made them become something other than human, and that allowed the culture as a whole to continue to treat them as inhuman as well. This meant that there would be no attempt to rectify the inequalities and protect these workers, even though it is absurd for an economy to depend on so many “essential workers” and “heroes.”

“Color-blind silence on potential life-saving policy options is deadly!”

Bonilla-Silva discusses the color-blind statements made by science officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because these science officials were partisan as well as color-blind, they implied that Black people were simply predisposed to the coronavirus due to natural or cultural factors. Framing like this prevented politicians or scientists from actually addressing the inequalities that created the preexisting conditions that made people of color more susceptible to serious infections.

“Nevertheless, as toxic as the color-blind framing of all these issues was, the multidimensional crisis we are living created the largest space in recent history to make demands and frame race matters differently.”

Despite how dire the rampant inequality of American life is, Bonilla-Silva ends his book with a bit of optimism. The pandemic and death of George Floyd were not positives, but they got lots of media attention, which allowed the public to see more stories about that rampant inequality. As such, Bonilla-Silva points out that there is an opportunity in tragedy to recreate the world.

“In general, their accounts can be summarized as follows: ‘Race does not matter that much today, so let’s move on . . . stop complaining, stop being hypersensitive, stop imposing political correctness on us, and stop playing the ‘race card.’’”

In the conclusion, Bonilla-Silva very succinctly summarizes the views of the white subjects of his interviews. This summary very obviously reflects the four framing devices of color-blind racism he identified based on those interviews. At times in the book, his argument can get repetitive, but the benefit of that repetition is that he is able to so clearly summarize his arguments and make them crystal clear to the reader.