Covert racism

Covert racism, or racial bias, refers to a form of racial discrimination practiced within society that is subtle as opposed to obvious. Covert racism can be either unintentionally or intentionally constructed and is systematically maintained through societal acceptance. Covert racism is often disguised, and is not always apparent to either the actors or the targets. Covert racism can range from microaggressions (small repeated, common transgressions) to larger socioeconomic biases practiced in business, education, employment, housing, journalism, the media, and law enforcement.

Some analysts argue that race has decreased in importance in contemporary America. Other social scientists maintain that a new racial structure has developed in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in which discrimination based on assumed racial biases through passive methods and coded racial appeals has been accepted and unquestioned by society at large, thereby constructing debilitating barriers that oppress certain racial groups.

Background

With a history of slavery and immigration that predate the formation of the country, the United States has always faced issues of racism. Even in contemporary times, overt racism has been espoused by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist movements.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed legal explicit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin within the United States. It officially ended the unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and by facilities that served the public. The act nullified Jim Crow laws, or racist, segregationist laws previously adhered to in the American South. Subsequently, in most places expressions of overt racism—such as use of racial slurs or support for white supremacy—also became considered socially unacceptable.

Even with the dismantling of overt racist laws, however, covert racism has developed a framework in which to exist. Inequity occurs when the conditions and opportunities provided to minority groups are not equal to those provided to the majority of Americans. One notable area in particular is in the field of law enforcement, where covert racial profiling has led to abuse of power. With the advent of video technology, gross discrepancies in police conduct toward African Americans have come into public view. In 1991, the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers was videoed by bystanders and broadcast globally. This brought local and federal law enforcement practices into question. Documentation of the deaths of citizens including Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland has continued to lead to investigations regarding racial bias, unreasonable force, and other practices against African Americans.

The death of Michael Brown by the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, and subsequent civil unrest led President Barack Obama to create a commission to make recommendations for broad police reform. On March 4, 2015, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report that concluded that police officers in Ferguson consistently violated the constitutional rights of the city's residents. The department was found to discriminate against African Americans, rely upon racial stereotypes, and violate the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. The DOJ stated that Ferguson police practices disproportionately harmed Ferguson's African American citizens and that these practices were driven by racial biases.

The successful 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and his subsequent time in office drew much attention to issues of race in the United States, including covert racism. Trump campaigned on a strongly anti-immigrant platform, and many observers argued that he frequently used coded language and other hallmarks of covert racism to rally his base of white, conservative voters. Both before and after his election he criticized protests against racial injustice and police brutality by athletes such as football player Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement, claiming that they were unpatriotic. These and other comments earned Trump much support from overt white supremacists, and, though he eventually disavowed such supporters, many human rights advocates noted that his language emboldened and mainstreamed hate groups. For example, he implied an equivalence between white supremacists demonstrating in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and counterprotesters. In another incident, Trump was widely criticized for stating in 2019 that four Democratic congresswomen of color should "go back" to the countries they came from—a common racist trope—despite the fact that three of them were born in the US.

In 2020 protests broke out once again following the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The widespread and long-lasting demonstrations were seen by many as a turning point in debates over covert racism and systemic discrimination, especially in law enforcement. Many activists characterized silence or apathy by white citizens on issues of racial injustice as a form of covert racism.

Impact

Covert racism has a significant adverse impact on American culture in many areas. Covert racism constructs barriers that over time debilitate and oppress minority racial groups and relies upon the unconscious participation of both aggressors and their targets. Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, more overt forms of racism were largely replaced with subtle, covert racist socioeconomic tactics, allowing racial inequalities to persist in areas of consumer markets, credit, employment, and housing.

According to David Amodio, professor of psychology at New York University, brain science research using an implicit association test suggests that implicit bias, or unconscious racism, can inform most people's thinking processes and shape their actions. A 2001 study in the Journal of Attitudes and Social Cognition found that video game participants consistently shoot armed black men faster than they shoot armed white men, and are less likely to shoot armed white game villains at all. A 2002 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that this implicit bias existed in participants regardless of their racial background, affecting black and white participants equally.

Microaggressions, including being ignored or treated differently, are pervasive forms of covert racism that reflect larger socioeconomic biases within society. Microaggressions are everyday verbal and nonverbal slights, remarks, questions, negative messages, or insults that rely on stereotypes and target people in minority and marginalized groups. These brief, commonplace exchanges can be intentional or unintentional. Often the people perpetrating the microaggressions are unaware that the behavior is racist or discriminatory and would feel surprised or offended for it to be labeled as such.

Opinions on how to react to this kind of covert racism vary. Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning argue that microaggressions are best ignored and that discourse relating to the issue leads to a "culture of victimhood." Others, including Derald Wing Sue and colleagues, argue that microaggressions subtly demean minority groups over time. Sue identified eight distinct areas of racial microaggression, including assumptions people from the dominant culture make about minorities. According to a 2010 study conducted by Professor Alvin Alvarez published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, denying or ignoring racial discrimination can lead to psychological distress, including anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Sociology professor Meghan Burke argued, in her 2018 book Colorblind Racism, that treating race as if it does not matter denies the realities of racism in this way and can end up perpetuating systemic inequalities.

Covert racism includes many other ways in which individuals are singled out, overlooked, ignored, or otherwise discounted based on race, including racial profiling, stereotypes, and coded racial appeals. Mortgage lending discrimination has continued to demoralize minorities, as was evidenced in 2015 when the US Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs had proliferated segregated housing patterns by allocating too many tax credits to housing in predominantly black inner-city areas and too few in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods. In addition to law enforcement and mortgage lending discrimination, racial bias inequities for minority populations continue to exist in access to quality education, health care, employment, and media coverage. Though some researchers point to various other social factors behind such disparities, many experts suggest that the complexities of covert racism play a significant role.

Bibliography

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