Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations

440 Pages·2019·4.7 MB·English

by  Joe R. Feagin, Kimberley Ducey

Racist America
This fourth edition of Racist America is significantly revised and updated, with an
eye toward racism issues arising regularly in our contemporary era. This edition
incorporates many recent research studies and reports on U.S. racial issues that
update and enhance the last edition’s chapters. It expands the discussion and data
on social science concepts such as intersectionality and gendered racism, as well
as the concepts of the white racial frame, systemic racism, and the elite-white-
male dominance system from research studies by Joe Feagin and his colleagues.
The authors have further polished the book and added more examples, anecdotes,
and narratives about contemporary racism to make it yet more readable for un-
dergraduates. Student objectives, summaries, key terms, and study questions are
available under the e-Resources tab at www.routledge.com/9781138096042.
Joe R. Feagin is Distinguished Professor and Ella C. McFadden Professor in
Sociology at Texas A&M University. Feagin has done research on racism and
sexism issues for decades. He has written or co-written 70 scholarly books and
200 scholarly articles and reports in his research areas, and one of his books
(Ghetto Revolts) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His numerous Routledge
books include Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (Routledge, 2006); The
White Racial Frame (second edition, Routledge, 2013); Racist America (third
edition, Routledge, 2014); and Elite White Men Ruling (Routledge, 2017), with
Kimberley Ducey. F eagin is the recipient of the Soka Gakkai International-
USA Social Justice Award, the American Association for Affirmative Action’s
Arthur Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Sociological Asso-
ciation’s W. E. B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the
American Sociological Association’s Cox-Johnson-Frazier Scholarship Award. He
is a past president of the American Sociological Association.
Kimberley Ducey is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Winnipeg in Manitoba. Her research, teaching, and activism focuses on race,
ethnicity, Indigenous relations, class, gender, and masculinity. She is a recipient
of Québec’s Forces AVENIR Scholar-Activist Award, the University of Windsor’s
Students Special Needs Campus Community Recognition Award, and various
Teaching Excellence Awards from the U niversity of Windsor and Université
McGill. Her books include Liberation Sociology (Paradigm, 2015), with Joe R.
Feagin and Hernán Vera; Elite White Men Ruling (Routledge, 2017), with Joe R.
Feagin; and Systemic Racism Theory: Making Liberty, Justice, and Democracy Real
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), edited with Ruth Thompson-Miller.
With the rise of Trump, ethno-nationalism has become a tolerable perspective amongst far too many
scholars and universities. This newly updated edition of Racist America explains why the racist climate
in the United States is a deliberate and historically designed pattern of domination intimately tied to
American democracy. The racism of America requires an unflinching and courageous analysis like that
offered by Feagin and Ducey. The additions to the text exploring the racist backlash against the Obama
presidency and the organization of white society around this political event offer readers much too
think about. Much like the timelessness of white violence against Blacks, Feagin and Ducey have shown
the enduring accuracy of, and need for, their analysis.
Dr. Tommy Curry, Philosophy, Texas A&M University
Racist America is simply the most comprehensive, concise, and useful textbook on systemic racism in
the United States. With its direct and explicit focus on systemic racism, this classic in racism studies
boldly navigates students beyond the confusing discursive maze of racism-evasive language like “race”
and the “race issues.” For more than a decade now, I have used previous editions in my racism courses
with great success. I look forward to the many new insights of this new fourth edition of Racist America.
Noel Cazenave, Sociology, University of Connecticut
Racist America offers a timely, accessible, and engaging overview of the intersections of race and power
in the United States. It provides both a comprehensive history of racism and a dynamic survey of con-
temporary issues. Of particular value, the new edition augments its established account of systematic
racism with the notion of racial framing, a powerful tool for understanding the interplay of structure,
ideology, and identity.
Richard King, Columbia College Chicago
Racist America forces readers to take a hard look at the schizophrenic worlds we live in regarding race.
Through use of historical analysis and current sociological research Feagin develops a “white frame”
that decodes contemporary racist practices. Feagin and Ducey’s book is modern day Rosetta Stone for
understanding why and how racial inequality is maintained and reproduced.
Charles A. Gallagher, Professor and Chair, Sociology and Criminal Justice, La Salle University
Racist America provides multi-disciplinary analysis of “systemic racism” for my classes (Race and Racism).
I wholeheartedly endorse this new edition with its addition of examples in family wealth racial disparities,
institutional reformulation, “other Americans of color”, and symbolic racism in sports media, with “fram-
ing” emanating from “founding fathers” and “constitutional” racism.
James V. Fenelon, Sociology, Director of Center for Indigenous Peoples Studies, California State
University, San Bernardino
The creative and consistent narratives of Racist America draw attention to the prevalence and subtlety
of systemic racism in contemporary U.S. With highly informative and insightful updates, the authors
once again chart a superb and fascinating critique of the production, reproduction and operation of
systemic racism in the U.S. This powerful book is a must read.
Anita Kalunta-Crumpton, Administration of Justice, Texas Southern University
In what has become Joe Feagin’s classic book in the sociology of race and critical studies of racism,
Racist America carries out one of the most thorough and compelling portraits of racial inequality that
exists in any discipline. From housing to education, the labor market to civil rights, the pervasiveness
of racism provided here should put to rest the suggestion that racism is a deviance from the democratic
norm. Both systemic and systematic, racism is thus understood as central to U.S. nation creation and
the maintenance of a racialized order. Using analytic rigor and evidence, and now ably helped by
co-author Kimberley Ducey, Feagin’s book remains the authoritative book for all students and schol-
ars who are serious in taking on the academic study of race and racism.
Zeus Leonardo, Professor and Associate Dean of Education, UC Berkeley, and Author of Race
Frameworks
In clear and accessible prose, Feagin and Ducey summarize the latest research on discrimination in em-
ployment, housing markets, and the criminal justice system. Anyone inclined to believe that the United
States is fast becoming a “color-blind” society will be disabused of that notion after reading this book.
Matthew Nichter, Sociology, Rollins College
Racist America
Roots, Current Realities, and
Future Reparations
Fourth Edition
Joe R. Feagin and Kimberley Ducey
Fourth edition published 2019
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First edition published by Routledge 2000
Third edition published by Routledge 2014
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ISBN: 978-1-138-05487-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-09604-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-14346-0 (ebk)
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Visit the eResources: www.routledge.com/9781138096042
To Roy Brooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Hernán Vera, Ronald
Takaki, and Thomas Pettigrew, pathbreakers all

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
1 Systemic Racism: A Comprehensive Perspective 1
2 Slavery Unwilling to Die: The Historical Development
of Systemic Racism 35
3 The White Racial Frame: A Social Force 60
4 Contemporary Racial Framing: White Americans 98
5 Racial Oppression Today: Everyday Practice 144
6 More Racial Oppression: Other Institutional Sectors 171
7 White Privileges and Black Burdens: Still Systemic Racism 212
8 Systemic Racism: Other Americans of Color 241
9 Antiracist Strategies and Solutions: Past,
Present, and Future 280
Notes 343
Index 407
vii

Preface
A few years back the prominent radio talk-show host Don Imus made
blatantly racist comments about a successful black women’s basketball
team. He laughingly called these talented college students “nappy-headed
hos.” Imus brought harsh emotion-laden framing of black women usually
reserved for white locker-room banter into the public frontstage. Imus was
briefly fired, but white media executives soon had him back on the radio.
Surveys indicated that the overwhelming majority of African Americans
thought he should have been fired, but less than half of whites agreed.
Apparently, a substantial proportion of white Americans do not see such
viciously racist public attacks as particularly serious. Imus is not unique.
A 2017 national survey of hundreds of African Americans found that half
had experienced racist slurs like this. Half also reported experiencing
other offensive racial comments and assumptions.1
Blatantly racist incidents routinely erupt across a country that many
people now wishfully describe as “post-racial.” In fall 2017, Bob McNair,
the wealthy white owner of Houston’s professional football team, the
Houston Texans, was present at a National Football League (NFL) own-
ers meeting where they discussed punishing the kneeling protests of black
NFL players against police brutality. McNair took an aggressive stance
against the protests, making a racist remark that “we can’t have the in-
mates running the prison.” In response, a majority of the Texans players
knelt, for the first time, in protest during the national anthem at their next
game. McNair soon apologized to his players for this remark. The context
of these NFL events is important too, for a substantial majority of NFL
players are black, yet all but one of the NFL majority owners are white.2
Anthropologist Jane Hill has examined how and why many whites come
to define racist outbursts by white billionaires, celebrities, and politicians
as not serious, as minor “gaffes” that do not reveal a deeper racist framing
of the protagonists. Her research makes clear the central role of the English
language in perpetuating the old and very deep white racial framing of
U.S. society. The widespread character of this “gaffe” racism, and the way
such events get discussed obsessively and circulated extensively around the
society, are an indication that the old-fashioned racism of the past has not
disappeared and has not been replaced by a post-racial society.3
In verbal attacks on black Americans, prominent whites like those above
have used emotion-laden racist words, imagery, and commentary that was
taken out of a centuries-old white-racist framing of black Americans. Such
ix