Institutional Racism Revisited: The Role of Institutions in Perpetuating Racism Through Colorblindness

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 18: Theoretical Questions of Race

Abstract

Over the last decades colorblindness has gone from an ideal to a normative, formalized practice embedded in every major institution’s organizational structure. This ideological perspective shapes how institutions perceive, construct, articulate and disseminate the widely held belief that racial equality has been achieved in the United States. Institutional colorblindness is the guiding principle that structures the mission and culture of organizations and connects and ideologically embeds workers to the organizational goals of the institution where they work, are schooled, are entertained, worship or read or view current events. Each institution has its own internal logic and discursive practices that create, put in place, supports and justifies the belief that racist acts are aberrations or anomalies and that colorblindness is organizationally normative.
I argue that a primary reason whites now so readily embrace a colorblind narrative, as indicated in numerous surveys on racial attitudes and perceptions of mobility, is that our major institutions provide what is essentially variations on some theme of colorblindness; each institution has a different ideological message, mission statement, vocabulary and tropes that normalize how and why our nation has achieved has achieved colorblindness and the role that institution has in that narrative. Whites have been socialized into colorblindness through their connection to and involvement in the institutions they inhabit. Each institution has its own internal logic and discursive practice that creates, puts in place, support and justifies the idea that racist beliefs or acts are an anathema to that particular institution and that racist acts that might occur within that organization are aberrations or anomalies. While the institutional logics and story lines of colorblindness vary among and often within specific institutions (law, the courts, mass media, education, corporations…) the overarching narrative is that institutional racism no longer plays a role in shaping life chances, socio-economic mobility or in the discriminatory treatment of racial minorities.

Author

• Charles A. Gallagher, La Salle University