Talking Our Way Out of a Racist Society
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4867701 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mary Romero (0000-0002-9866-8193, Arizona State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 608-611 |
| Publication date | 2005-11-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-3061 • E-ISSN: 1939-8638 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009430610503400608 |
| OpenAlex | W1970956286 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Recent media coverage of the trial of former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen and his sentencing to 60 years in prison for his role in the deaths of three civil rights workers in 1964 suggest that the nation is ready to accept responsibilities for racism. Yet, 41 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, racial inequality and social division continue to be evident throughout our courts, schools, media, corporations, and neighborhoods. Race remains in the forefront of debates over the selection of Supreme Court judges, the use of standardized testing, the building of day labor centers, the imposition of the death penalty, and the rhetoric employed in English Only Campaigns, the No Child Left Behind legislation, charter schools and voucher movements, and welfare reform. New verbal forms of expressing privilege and political correctness, and the widely accepted rational choice and color blindness ideology has camouflaged racist attitudes, actions, and white privilege. Hate crimes have been brushed away as an aberration in social life; racial disparities scientifically explained as the personal failings of the underclass; and our stratified society has been defended as the inevitable production of meritocracy. These arguments are frequently enhanced by benevolent and supportive rhetoric. Finding appropriate texts and approaches to teaching race relations at the political juncture marked by this peculiarly covert racial discourse and multiracial landscape, requires interrogating dominant narratives and examining the concrete complexities of race in specific historical, social, political, and economic circumstances. Research in the field of whiteness studies
Criminology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Racism · Rhetoric · Sociology · Supreme court · Critical Race Theory in Education · Law · Race, History, and American Society
| Highly cited | No |
|---|