Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy

Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition

“…CBT describes ideology like a ready-made set of tools; consequently, researchers chase, document, and reify CBT's established frames (Burke 2016), often with little attention to intersectional analysis (Bonilla-Silva 2015a). Relatedly, because the theory prioritizes declarative culture (i.e., explicit discourse and conscious schema), CBT obscures other, equally important indicators rooted in affect, practice, and tacit schema (Jung 2015;Lizardo 2017;Thomas 2014).…”

“…Of course, racial theorists have long recognized ideological mystification as central to white domination (see Bonilla-Silva 1997;Collins 2008;Omi & Winant 2014), and research sometimes nods to ignorance (see Forman and Lewis 2006;Steyn 2012). Still, sociologists have not developed a full framework for studying racial ignorance, shining light on racial ideology instead (Jung 2015). The appeal is understandable given ideology's Marxist origins, which accent the political nature of consciousness and how groups' relative hold on power shapes which logics gain legitimacy and diffuse through society (Bonilla-Silva 2001;Mills 2007).…”

“…With its emphasis on ignorance, TRI tests the limits of these claims. While ideology attends to people's explicit, if "false" consciousness, ignorance exposes how consciousness is defined not only by presence, but also absence (Croissant 2014;Jung 2015;McGoey 2012); specifically, the presence of false and mystified beliefs and absence of understandings, feelings, and moral judgments that could or arguably should be present (Dotson 2011;Mills 2007;Santos 2014). Though flexible and non-formulaic in principle, as already noted, ideologies appear highly structured and static in most materialist analyses.…”

“…However, TRI establishes that ideological struggles are not simply conflicts between politically different, but equally believable constructions of reality. From TRI's perspective, subordinated races have both greater reason and greater capacity to generate "truer truths" about racial phenomena by virtue of second-sight (that is, interpretations that are more robust and humane), while white people appear committed to "thinking badly" on such matters (Du Bois [1903Bois [ ] 1989Bois [ , [1920Bois [ ] 2007Collins 2008;Feagin 2013;Hammer 2017;Jung 2015;Mills 1997). As such, TRI emphasizes conflict between marginalized group epistemologies inclined toward better, more reliable empirical interpretations of the world and dominant epistemologies that are aggressively deformed (Mills 2007).…”

Confronting Urban Planning Challenges in Chipata District, Zambia: Notes from the Field

“…Discrimination intrinsically draws on power inequalities, in which the perceived "inferior" demographic groups are degraded and marginalized from fairly and equally participating in and accessing resources, which would otherwise be open to them, that enhance one's life (Jung, 2015;Johnson, 2006). Those who discriminate do so because they (personally or institutionally) benefit from such a system.…”