Individual racism
Individual racism refers to the actions and behaviors of individuals, typically from a dominant racial or ethnic group, that intentionally harm or discriminate against individuals from minority groups. Defined initially by activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton in their work on Black Power, and later expanded by sociologist Fred L. Pincus, individual racism encompasses a range of discriminatory behaviors, from subtle intolerance to overt hate crimes. Examples include employment discrimination, hate speech, and violent acts such as assaults and property destruction. This form of racism is distinct from institutional racism, which involves systemic practices that enforce discrimination at an organizational level.
In contemporary society, individual racism manifests in various ways, including scapegoating of minority groups during economic downturns and spikes in hate crimes following significant political or social events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the 9/11 attacks. The interplay between individual and institutional racism reveals a cyclical relationship where discriminatory actions reinforce social inequality and perpetuate stereotypes. Understanding individual racism is crucial for addressing its impact on social dynamics and fostering inclusive communities.
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Individual racism
Activists Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967), defined individual racism as “individual Whites acting against individual Blacks.” Sociologist Fred L. Pincus, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (1996), entitled “Discrimination Comes in Many Forms,” renamed and expanded Carmichael and Hamilton’s concept “individual discrimination,” which he defined as “the behavior of individual members of one race/ethnic/gender group that is intended to have a differential and/or harmful effect on the members of another race/ethnic/gender group.” Individual racism is distinguished from institutional racism, which is, according to Pincus, the intentional harm of minority groups by institutional practices such as the enactment of Jim Crow laws and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Individual racism is here specified as actions by members of a dominant group that are intended to harm members of other racial and ethnic groups.
A range of individual racism prevails in American society, from intolerance to hate crimes. Included are incidents such as not hiring minority members in one’s place of business, scapegoating minority groups for economic problems, stereotyping that leads to anti-Semitic and nativist prejudice and de facto residential segregation, and hurling racist insults and slurs. This last problem, now called hate speech, erupted on many college campuses in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Universities enacted hate-speech codes to protect minorities, but such codes were later found unconstitutional. Violent hate crimes include intimidation, harassment, assaults, beatings, church and synagogue burnings and bombings, cross burnings, destruction of personal property, lynchings, and police brutality. Police brutality, if isolated within a department, is an example of individual racism. However, if it is widespread with lax norms and unenforced formal sanctions against it, then, according to Pincus, it is an institutional harm. In the late 1990s, a flare-up of church burnings, reminiscent of those in the 1960s, terrorized the rural South. Another documented series of church burnings took place across the country after the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president in 2008. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Klanwatch Project, White supremacist hate groups—skinheads and those adhering to movements and groups such as Christian Identity, White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and militias of various types—retain adherents in some parts of the country.
Many sociologists argue that an increase in acts of individual racism stems from the growing racial diversity of American society and the intensifying competition for scarce resources, such as jobs, in a global economy. With frustration escalating due to mounting class stratification, individual racism is a classic example of scapegoating, that is, displacing one’s anger at the economy onto minority groups. Several examples of individual racism are often recorded after world events that spark fear and cause people to look for someone to blame. For example, an increase in hate speech and violent attacks on Asian Americans was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, after the terrorist attack of 9/11, the United States saw an increase in hate speech and attacks on Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.
Social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, in An American Dilemma (1944), argued that a moral dilemma, or contradiction, flourishes in American society between the American creed (freedom, equality of opportunity, and justice) and discrimination. Inequality is maintained through a vicious cycle whereby dominated groups are despised, engendering discrimination. Discrimination, whether individual or institutional, perpetuates minority groups’ inferior social circumstances and engenders ideologies and stereotypes that blame minority groups for their deprivation and justify dominant group advantages. Thus, individual and institutional racism are inextricably intertwined.
Bibliography
Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. 1967. Vintage Books, 1992.
Clair, Matthew, and Jeffrey S. Denis. "Racism, Sociology of." International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2nd ed, vol. 19, Elsevier, 2015, pp. 857–63.
Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. 2 vols. Transaction Publishers, 1996.
Pincus, Fred L. "Discrimination Comes in Many Forms: Individual, Institutional, and Structural." The American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 40, no. 2, 1996, 186–94.
Rodriguez-Knutsen, Ana. “Types of Racism: Internal, Interpersonal, Institutional, and Structural.” YWCA, 1 Mar. 2023, www.ywcaworks.org/blogs/ywca/types-racism. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.
“Violent History: Attacks on Black Churches.” The New York Times, 18 June 2015, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/18/us/19blackchurch.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.