The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing

The white racial frame : centuries of racial framing and counter-framing

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Would you also like to submit a review for this item? You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded. Write a review Rate this item: Preview this item Preview this item. The white racial frame: Joe R Feagin Publisher: English View all editions and formats Summary: This volume explores how public space can be a facilitator of civil order, a site for power and resistance, and a stage for art, theatre, and performance. Find a copy online Links to this item Table of contents bvbm2. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private.

Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Internet resource Document Type: Joe R Feagin Find more information about: Extends the systemic racism framework by developing the white racial frame, which encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology accented in other theories of 'race', but also the visual images, array of emotions, sounds of language, interlinking interpretations, and inclinations to discriminate.

Publisher Synopsis "Joe Feagin's book could not be more timely or important. User-contributed reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers.

Similar Items Related Subjects: Race discrimination -- United States. African Americans -- Social conditions. This one lifts me. In light of the NFL taking on a major role in white nationalist politics, its new policy aims to censor the voices of those actively fighting against racist sport systems. However, athletes and activists alike will not be quelled so easily, as many look to continue resisting systemic forms of oppression hidden behind the veil of white patriotism. If anything, it seems as though the new coercive NFL policy has provided more justification for athletes protesting or withholding their labor altogether.

Counter-framing was at the heart of the Royal Wedding. As sociologist and social theorist Joe Feagin explains:. Counter-frames are grounded in counter-system thinking and have been very important for Black Americans in surviving and resisting oppression over many generations. In these anti-racism counter-frames whites are defined as highly problematical, and strategies on how to deal with whites and white institutions are expressed and foregrounded.

As observed by anti-racist leaders and media pundits in the immediate aftermath of the Royal Wedding, thanks to Markle, counter-framing was distinctly conspicuous during the ceremony. He said to a British newspaper:. The multi-cultural future of Britain is contested.

The ceremony was hopeful. It spoke both of our Commonwealth past, our history, but also of a future. What symbols did Meghan Markle draw on in her counter-framing? What was her approach to the expression and foregrounding of whites and white institutions? Martin Luther King Jr. The first black female chaplain to a British monarch. I got hair inspiration for days from these three minutes.

Another anti-establishment symbol on the wedding day came compliments of Queen Elizabeth II herself, who bestowed the titles Duke and Duchess of Sussex on Harry and Meghan. In so doing, the newest member of the Royal Family became the first legal Duchess of Sussex.

Table of Contents: The white racial frame :

That she is the first is not even what is most significant. He refused to obey the Royal Marriages Act of and married who he wanted hence, there was no legal Duchess of Sussex before Markle. He advocated for the emancipation of Roman Catholics. He fought for the elimination of civil restrictions on Jews and dissenters. He supported parliamentary reform. And he was an anti-slavery advocate. It remains uncertain whether the Queen considered his anti-slavery advocacy when selecting the title for the newlyweds. Regardless, it is a fitting designation because not only has Markle long been an advocate for democratic causes; like the first Duke of Sussex, she is a counter-framer of white Anglo-Saxon tradition.

We can only hope she will continue to buck white royal traditions and the centuries old and still dominant white racial frame in the process. Or Herman Ouseley , a former executive chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, who like Lammy noted that the ceremony will not, of course, rid Britain of racial and class oppression.

There is also Stafford Scott , a consultant on racial equality and community engagement, who did not watch the wedding. Even less enthusiastic about the significance of the wedding than Lammy and Ouseley, Scott remarked:. I heard there was a black choir and some people felt that was very symbolic. I just think it was that we have got some really good black choirs.

The history of white racism in Britain is extensive and deep-seated; an understanding of this fact is largely lost on most whites and some others. Yet over the course of years, white British traders forced three million Africans onto ships and into slavery in the British colonies. Systemic racism, as Feagin explains , is a highly developed, well-institutionalized, structurally embedded, historically deep, white-defined racial oppression that significantly shapes virtually every facet of society.

It will take far more than a Royal Wedding or a biracial Duchess to change a systematically racist society like Britain. It will take, among other things, the following:. Eradicating exploitative and discriminatory practices that target Britons of color. Eliminating the dominant British white racial hierarchy and its defence of white privilege and white power.

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Eliminating the British white racial frame WRF that rationalizes and implements racial oppression, including racial prejudices, stereotypes, images, ideologies, emotions, interpretations, and narratives. Ending racial inequalities long-ago established in Britain by social reproduction apparatuses. Like in the U. Perhaps then, but certainly not because of a Royal Wedding, we will be able to genuinely rejoice in progress on race relations in Britain. He went on for 30 minutes. Bishop Curry spoke for 14 minutes, not 30 minutes. This is a high church of England service in St.

You did not necessarily, normally expect to have an American-style preacher. So they will have welcomed. And the Prince of Wales, by the way, interesting, the Prince of Wales. He has said he wants to be defender of faiths. The sermon, delivered by the Episcopalian church leader the Rev Michael Curry, began with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr before enlightening the congregation on the wisdom of spirituals. The Kingdom gospel choir sang soul classic Stand By Me: But even Hirsch, who has a significant book on racism and the British , did not take them to task.

Future King William V also had a fit of giggles. The WRF also helps explain why so many whites and others are inclined to swiftly dismiss as harmless, or find amusing, or not even notice, such behavior. In the facial expressions of these white royals, the pro-white subframe, firmly reinforcing white superiority, civilization, virtue, and moral goodness, was on full display. According to Feagin, since at least the seventeenth century, this frame has provided the broad white-generated perspective from which whites and others in western countries commonly view society.

Like a typical frame, with its customary edging meant to enhance, display, and protect a photograph or painting, the WRF includes five elements which heightens and preserves white superiority, civilization, virtue, and moral goodness. Within the wider WRF is the pro-white subframe and the anti-others subframe. Would it go unnoticed or be deemed endearing? I doubt that even Queen Oprah could get away with such bad behavior because the difference is this. Mocking the Bishop is in keeping with the WRF; whereas, mocking the Archbishop of Canterbury, a white male Briton with a history of whiteness behind him and who in many ways signifies white Britain, is in direct opposition to the WRF and its pro-white subframe.

Mocking one is acceptable, if not tolerable; mocking the other is not. This was no laughing matter. The address may not have been relatable to the mostly elite white guests at the wedding. However, to the majority of people who occupy the Commonwealth, not to mention planet earth, Bishop Curry surely was more relevant than the elite mostly white and male British establishment. She understood what some of the royals could not. Congrats Harry and Meghan.

Yancy bravely sought to encourage each white reader to, as he summarizes in his disturbing new book Backlash. I wanted you to tell the truth to yourselves and tell it to others. Yancy is writing from what I have termed in the The White Racial Frame book as strong resistance counter-framing. As Backlash illustrates, a well-developed Black counter-frame includes deep understandings of how white racial hostility and discrimination operate and how to deal in everyday practice with white discrimination, including teachings about safety for Black youth and passive and active strategies of anti-racism resistance.

Resistance counter-framing like that demonstrated by Yancy is necessary in this highly racist society. These came as online comments, emails, phone messages, and letters, and have continued to the present. The impact on Yancy and others around him has been severe.

He has feared for himself and family and colleagues, to the present day. His colleagues across the country have circulated large-scale supportive petitions on his behalf. Yet Yancy did not submit to this extreme, often violence-oriented white onslaught quietly. A major countering effort can be seen in his Backlash book, in which he critically recounts and counter-frames many white-racist responses. This book clearly took great personal strength to write and has much that Americans, whites in particular, must read and heed if this country is to survive even remotely as just and democratic. Here he emphasizes the personal impact of everyday racism most African Americans face—some more than others, but virtually all too often, and ranging from subtle, to covert, to blatant discrimination.

What is this horrifying white racial frame to which Yancy has had to respond? It is far more than just prejudice bigotry, animus, etc. Since its development in the 17th century, this white racial frame has been dominant, a framing that provides a generic meaning system for a highly racialized U.

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For centuries this powerful racial frame has provided the broad white-generated worldview from which whites and many others regularly view society. The pro-white subframe aggressively accentuates white superiority, civilization, virtue, and moral goodness. Some of these white racist messengers, often angry white men, use racialized sexual references e. There is a recurring animalizing of Yancy and other Black Americans, including President Barack Obama, something whites have been doing at least since the founding era.

White messages regularly describe African Americans as apes or ape-like. White images of Africans and African Americans as ape-like or ape-linked date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and are another way of portraying Black Americans as racially inferior. Sadly, such ape imagery remains commonplace not just in the attack messages Yancy has received but also all over the Internet. One recent online study of self-proclaimed white nationalists found that, using a scale from zero as ape-like to as human , they rated blacks and other people of color as much more apelike and much less human than whites.

Perhaps most disturbing in these white commentaries to Professor Yancy is the constant threatening of violence against him and other Blacks. Most of these violent verbal attacks appear to come from white men of various ages and classes. There is much anger in their messaging, like this one: Striking too in these hundreds of attack messages is the high level of white emotion. Many whites, especially white men, pride themselves on not being emotional; they reserve emotionality for those who are not white or male.

Yet white men are probably the most emotional Americans when it comes to racial issues, especially when their racial status, enrichments, and privileges seem endangered, Coming through the many white verbal attacks on Yancy is stunning white emotionality, including anger, fear, outrage, bitterness, and, almost always, arrogance. Hundreds of the comments have a tone like this: I am a racist. This was far more than a matter of Nazi prejudices.

Today, white racism also involves the deep structures and surface structures of racial oppression. It includes a complex array of white anti-other e. This racism is a material, social, racially framed reality—that is, manifested in all societal sectors, institutionally enabled, and socially reproduced for about 20 generations. White attempts to apply the term racism to yet other groups demonstrates not only ignorance of its history and reality but also, and quite remarkably, that most of these whites actually do understand at some level that racism is undesirable and immoral.

The many racially hostile messages recorded in Backlash further suggest that our contemporary era of overt and politicized white racism has liberated many whites from the necessity of suppressing their extensive white racist framing of society in public settings. Yancy describes an incident when he was growing up in an impoverished urban area.

white racial frame

Having gotten a telescope as a present, a white officer saw him with it, and framing him as a poor Black youngster, almost shot him because he thought it was a weapon. So, given the entrenched reality of persisting white racism, Yancy also concludes he cannot be truly optimistic in regard to the possibility of substantial racial change in this society. Star Wars has never been a bastion of diversity.

Jackson and Jimmy Smits playing large roles, though it mostly forgot about women. So [The Force Awakens] was [J. Tweets posted by white fans to twitter hashtag BoycottStarWarsVII see below typify the white racial frame and its sub-frames. A white racist framing was plainly evident in the whitelash against this casting of Boyega.

It opened with a shot of a Stormtrooper, played by Boyega, abruptly appearing on what appeared to be a desert planet. Shortly after, Boyega posted a message on Instagram thanking supporters of the new film. To those posting to BlackStormtrooper, he simply said: In response, a pop culture critic sort of agreed, writing:. A New Hope in , 99 percent of his cast was either Caucasian, or extraterrestrial aliens covered in prosthetics.

An emphasis on diversity increased as the sequels went on—Billy Dee Williams showed up in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, earning instant legend status. Tweets included the following:. While Internet news media sources extensively reported that the hashtag was genuine, other commentators have surmised it was a ruse contrived to produce controversy. In October twitter user DarklyEnlighten posted a tweet encouraging readers to boycott The Force Awakens because of the alleged absence of white lead characters and because of the casting of Boyega in the secondary lead role.

To some observers, BoycottStarWarsVII was far more troublesome than a few white trolls; it was an exemplification of the poor state of U. African American activist and social commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of numerous books on the black experience in the U. What constitutes a racial micro-aggression and when does it become a macro-aggression? Is the concept of micro-aggression misleading?

Are they really macro-aggressions? Following the Civil Rights era, second generation forms of discrimination replaced more overt, egregious acts of discrimination with subtle, repeated, cumulative exclusionary actions and behaviors. In his seminal work, Micro-aggressions in Everyday Life , psychologist Derald Wing Sue describes micro-aggressions as. Sue introduces a taxonomy of racial micro-aggressions that include three categories: This taxonomy, while valuable in identifying the dynamics of everyday discrimination, does not yet provide clear distinctions by which to evaluate or differentiate the different types of aggressions.

Are micro-aggressions conscious or unconscious?

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The distinctions among the three types of racial micro-aggressions are also unclear. This example, however, seems to be at the very least a micro-assault. He cautions against an overemphasis on micro-aggressions in diversity training, suggesting that such training can produce the opposite effect by increasing defensiveness by majority group members.

In addition, he notes that correlational evidence does not yet sufficiently support the causal link between micro-aggressions and negative mental health outcomes. A new study brings greater clarity to these questions and probes the source and causes of micro-aggressions. The study focuses on whether or not slights or subtle derogatory messages delivered by majority group members to racial minority group members are symptomatic of more deep-seated racial animus and attitudes. Jonathan Kanter and colleagues surveyed a sample of white, non-Hispanic students and 33 black students at a large public university and found a positive correlation between delivering micro-aggressive messages and the presence of racist attitudes.

Feagin indicates that the white racial frame represents the composite of elements that come into play in everyday practice by those white individuals who seek to impose, emphasize, or retain racial identity. No one, in his view, uses the frame in exactly the same way. Each individual invokes a different internal hierarchy of selected racialized images, emotions, and ideas. Individuals can accept certain elements of that white racial frame while consciously or unconsciously rejecting others. In our survey study of diverse administrators in higher education, Alvin Evans and I found that the outcomes of acts of everyday discrimination can have lasting career impact.

One of the most prominent examples is when Claudia, an African American administrator, was singled out by her white male supervisor while he was speaking during a staff meeting about African Americans in general.