Eduardo bonilla-silva

Duke University | DU · Department of Sociology

In this article, I urge family scholars to anchor their race work on the structural racism perspective. First, I provide some limitations of the prejudice problematic used by most family scholars. Second, I discuss the basic components of my structural theory, which I call the racialized social system approach. Third, I bolster my original theoriza...

Mainstream physics teaching and learning produces material outcomes that, when analyzed through the lens of Critical Race Theory, point to white supremacy, or “the systemic maintenance of the dominant position that produces white privilege” (Battey & Levya, 2016). In particular, the continued, extreme underrepresentation of People of Color in physi...

In this paper, we examine the academy as a specific case of the racialization of space, arguing that most colleges and universities in the United States are in fact historically white colleges and universities (HWCUs). To uncover this reality, we first describe the dual relationship between space and race and racism. Using this theoretical framing,...

The election of 45 brought significant questions about race (and race-class) that merit theoretical consideration. My goal in this article is to discuss how racial theory applies to three main themes that followed the 2016 election: (a) dealing with the “racists”?, (b) the anxieties of the poor and White working class, and (c) hegemonic racism in T...

In this presidential address, I advance a theoretical sketch on racialized emotions—the emotions specific to racialized societies. These emotions are central to the racial edifice of societies, thus, analysts and policymakers should understand their collective nature, be aware of how they function, and appreciate the existence of variability among...

In this address, I challenge dominant narratives explaining the rise of Trumpism in America. Specifically, I dispute four ideas that have emerged to account for Trump’s election. First, I suggest that understanding his election as the product of the political activities of the “racists” severely limits our understanding of racism as a collective ph...

In this reply, I accept Professor Fenelon basic critique: that I, as most “race scholars,” fail to take seriously Indigenous accounts in my theorization. However, I challenge several of his specific arguments about my work as well as some of his historical claims. I also include in this reply an unrelated section to Professor Fenelon’s critique of...

In this article, I describe the racial order of America in the post-Civil Rights era. First, I discuss what racism is all about and emphasize the centrality of conceiving the phenomenon in a structural way. Second, I argue that the “new racism,” or the set of mostly subtle, institutional, and seemingly nonracial mechanisms and practices that compri...

Racism has always been “more than prejudice,” but mainstream social analysts have mostly framed race matters as organized by the logic of prejudice. In this paper, I do four things. First, I restate my criticism of the dominant approach to race matters and emphasize the need to ground our racial analysis materially, that is, understanding that raci...

In 2008, many Americans as well as people all over the world believed the election of Barrack Obama represented a monumental change in American racial history. In this presentation, I will argue that his election was predictable and in line with the recent (last 40 years) racial history of the country. To make my case, I will do three things. First...

Until the 1960s, few faculty of color worked at HWCUs (historically white colleges and institutions). In the late 1960s, the doors of these institutions were opened albeit slightly so that today minority representation in most of these places is between 10 to 15%. But working in the “white house” of academia does not mean having equality or power....

Racial domination, like all forms of domination, works best when it becomes hegemonic, that is, when it accomplishes its goal without much fanfare. In this paper, based on the Ethnic and Racial Studies Annual Lecture I delivered in May 2011 in London, I argue there is something akin to a grammar – a racial grammar if you will – that structures cogn...

This essay tackles the Obama “phenomenon,” from his candidacy to his election, as a manifestation of the new “color-blind racism” that has characterized U.S. racial politics in the post-civil rights era. Rather than symbolizing the “end of race,” or indeed a “miracle,” Obama's election is a predictable result of contemporary U.S. electoral politics...

In this special section of Political Power and Social Theory, we present the work of scholars from various disciplines documenting and analyzing the Obama phenomenon. The work in this section, including both theoretical and empirical analysis, is an early step in the much-needed academic discussion on Obama and racial politics in the contemporary U...

It has become accepted dogma among whites in the United States that race is no longer a central factor determining the life chances of Americans. In this article, the authors counter this myth by describing how the ideology of color-blind racism works to defend and justify the contemporary racial order. The authors illustrate three basic frames of...

In this paper we address some of the major limitations of the human rights tradition (HRT) in addressing issues of racial inequality. We contend that the universalist and individual-based framework of HRT fails to appreciate the significance of society's racial structure. More importantly, HRT ignores how race fractured the world system creating di...

Christina A. Sue commented on my 2004 article in Ethnic and Racial Studies on the Latin Americanization of racial stratification in the USA. Almost all her observations hinge on the assumption that racial stratification in Latin American countries is fundamentally structured around 'two racial poles'. I disagree with her and in my reply do three th...

Aside from what exists in the U.S. there is another layer of complexity in Latin American racial stratification systems. They include three racial strata, which are internally designated by “color.” In addition to skin tone, phenotype, hair texture, eye color, culture, education, and class matter is the phenomenon known as pigmentocracy, or coloris...

Despite its focus on the Wisconsin Treaty Rights dispute, Prejudice in Politics is not a book about Native Americans. Albeit readers will learn about our disastrous history of conquest and colonial domination of the Chippewa nation and some of the contemporary extensions of that history on all Native Peoples (e.g., fishing disputes, water battles,...

The residential and social segregation of whites from blacks creates a socialization process we refer to as "white habitus." This white habitus limits whites' chances for developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities spatially and psychologically. Using data from the 1997 Survey of College Students' Social Attitudes and the 1...

Residential and social hypersegregation of whites from blacks furthers a socialization process we refer to as “white habitus.” “White habitus” geographically and psychologically limits whites' chances of developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities. Using data from the 1997 Survey of College Students' Social Attitudes and th...

In this paper we discuss the dominant racial stories that accompany color-blind racism, the dominant post–civil rights racial ideology, and asses their ideological role. Using interview data from the 1997 Survey of College Students Social Attitudes and the 1998 Detroit Area Study, we document the prevalence of four story lines and two types of test...

In this article I argue that the bi-racial order (white vs non-white) typical of the United States is undergoing a profound transformation. Because of drastic changes in the demography of the nation as well as changes in the racial structure of the world-system, the United States is developing a complex, Latin America-like racial order. Specificall...

David Theo Goldberg , The Racial State . London: Blackwell, 2002, 319 pages, ISBN 0-631-19919-5, $66.95. Howard Winant , The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II . New York: Basic Books, 2001, 428 pages, ISBN 0-465-04340-2, $32.00. Most American social scientists interpret racism as an individual malady and miss, ignore, or simp...

Most analysts of racism in the United States rely on surveys to make sense of actors' racial views and are oriented by methodological individualism. In contrast, a minority of scholars study actors' views as part of a racial ideology expressing their collective group interests. Nevertheless, these latter analysts have not developed a conceptual app...

In this article I respond to the criticisms and comments of the authors in this symposium on my Latin Americanization of race relations thesis. After I respond to each participant, I attempt to refine and clarify four central aspects of my thesis, namely, the idea of a tri-racial system, the notion of pigmentocracy, the concept of honorary white, a...

In this paper I argue that color blind racism, the central racial ideology of the post-civil rights era, has a peculiar style characterized by slipperiness, apparent nonracialism, and ambivalence. This style fi ts quite well the normative climate of the country as well as the central frames of color blind racism. I document in the paper fi ve styli...

The academic declining significance of race did not begin with William Julius Wilson’s work in the late 1970s. In this paper, we take a broad look at the methods mainstream sociologists have used to validate Whites’ racial common sense about racial matters in the post-civil rights era. Our general goal is to succinctly examine the major tactics soc...

Although the survey community almost unanimously agrees that Blacks and Whites have vastly different views on central matters, few qualitative studies have validated this claim. Thus, in this study we examine Blacks’ views with interview data from the Detroit Area Study (1998). Specifically, we assess whether Blacks use the frames of color blind ra...

Survey-based research on Whites' racial attitudes in the USA has characterized their views as either `tolerant' or `ambivalent'. We argue that surveys on racial attitudes have systematically underestimated the extent of prejudice in the White population. The legal and normative changes created by the civil rights movement of the 1960s brought a new...

The study of race and ethnic conflict historically has been hampered by in- adequate and simplistic theories. I contend that the central problem of the various approaches to the study of racial phenomena is their lack of a struc- tural theory of racism. I review traditional approaches and alternative ap- proaches to the study of racism, and discuss...

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