In “The Sum of Us,” McGhee (2021) tells us the story of the “resplendent public swimming pools” that once “graced the American landscape” (p. 23). Though these pools were intended to be a public resource, the only group who were allowed access were white people. As the NAACP fought for integration and won several court battles, the pools began to close. Some were privatized; others were simply filled in because the concept of sharing the pool with another race was more abhorrent than losing the public benefit altogether (McGhee, 2021, p.23-25).
Zepeda-Millán and Wallace tell us that “contrary to common belief, race is not a biologically fixed and static concept, but a dynamic and continuously evolving phenomenon.” So, if race is just a social construct, how does a particular group become racialized? And who invented this system of racial hierarchy to begin with?
Whiteness is often seen as the “norm and standard for human,” with people of color being viewed as “a deviation from that norm” (DiAngelo, 2018, p. 36). One woman from Dow’s Whiteness Project (2014) describes white people as “kind of like a chair in the room that’s always just been there.”
Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult to pin down what it means to be white—it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that from the moment of birth, a person could be granted an immediate genealogical advantage. Even though a white person may be Jewish, Irish, Italian, German—the list could go on—these ethnic groups have all been racialized into one group over time—white, the majority race in America.
Despite this majority, research during the first Obama administration shows that white people were more likely to perceive anti-white bias than anti-Black bias, rating the two 4.7 and 3.6, respectively (McGhee, 2021, p. 6). From affirmative action to the perceived increased reliance of minorities on social safety nets like welfare, whites view themselves to be getting a smaller piece of the pie than everyone else. Even the celebration of Black History Month leads to grumbling and eye rolls in certain social groups.
What if we did decide to integrate Black History Month into American history more broadly? DiAngelo (2018) uses Jackie Robinson as an example. We celebrate Robinson as the first African American to play major league baseball, but a more apt description would be that he was the first allowed to by the white majority. He could only be first because those who came before him were denied that opportunity by whites, which paints a much darker picture of history (pp. 37-39).
Would we celebrate Rosa Parks for sitting in the front of a bus if she hadn’t been arrested afterward by a white police officer? Would we celebrate Ruby Bridges for moving to a different school in first grade if her move hadn’t necessitated an escort by federal marshals to protect her from white protesters?
Perhaps it’s more convenient to keep the prettier, squeaky-clean version of our history intact than to admit our country’s past sins.
W. E. B. Dubois describes being born Black as being born with a “double-consciousness […] simply wish[ing] to make it possible to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spat upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face” (Meer, 2014, pp. 14-15).
The racialization of Black people has been happening throughout American history, from slavery to the civil rights movement—the beating of Rodney King to today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Of all racial groups, they are the most likely to hold a sense of linked fate—the idea that what happens to members of their racial group will affect them personally in their day-to-day lives (Cox, 2019).
A 2019 Pew Research Poll tells us that this notion of linked fate is not singularly felt by Black people, rather among all racial groups in America—white, Black, Hispanic, and Asian—particularly among individuals who have faced racial discrimination (Cox, 2019). An individual’s racial identity may inform the TV anchor they choose to trust, the candidates they campaign for, and the political issues which drive them the most.
In 2006, as the Senate began debate on an anti-immigration bill, racialization in action could be seen throughout the Latino community. Although the Latino race is comprised of people from a diverse group of cultural backgrounds, Mexicans are the largest subgroup. And as hate crimes and discrimination rose against them, Latinos as a whole mobilized in protest against the bill, regardless of immigration status. “The marches showed that Latinos—immigrants or not—are united and [wouldn’t] put up with discrimination any longer” (Zepeda-Millán & Wallace, 2013, pp. 511-512).
One might think that the inflammatory speech that followed former President Trump’s golden escalator descent—in which he implied immigrants from Mexico were rapists and murderers—would lead to a rapid departure of Latinos from the Republican party. But as the 2020 election showed, viewing them as an entirely homogenous group is a mistake.
Active political groups in Arizona, in part motivated by the 2010 “show me your papers” law, managed to successfully flip the state blue for the first time since 1996. Messaging in Florida painted the Democratic party as supportive of socialist and communist ideas, appealing to Latino immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The state was ultimately secured for Republicans. Despite the racialization of Latinos, their vote is not monolithic—it is influenced by a variety of cultural experiences and backgrounds (Press & McCauley, 2021).
Conversely, Black voters were more united in their attitudes towards the Republican party following Trump’s first term in office. A November 2019 poll showed that 80 percent felt that people were more open to expressing their racist views after Trump was elected. The same poll also found that 40 percent of Black people’s top reason for voting in 2020 was to defeat Donald Trump (Pougiales & Fulton, 2019).
From Trump’s infamous “fine people on both sides” commentary following the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville to more subtle racist dog-whistles in which he labels primarily Black protesters—motivated by a rash of police shootings perpetrated again Black people—as “thugs,” the former president’s controversial language has brought race to the forefront of today’s politics.
Trump’s response to the coronavirus further highlighted the identity politics plaguing us today. From labels such as “Chinese virus,” “Wuhan virus,” and “Kung flu,” his attaching a specific ethnicity to the new illness directly impacted the perception of Asians. A UC San Francisco study examining over 700,000 tweets following his use of “#chinesevirus” found that those using this hashtag were significantly more likely to express anti-Asian sentiment than those who simply used “#covid19” (Salcedo, 2021).
Could this rising stigmatization of the Asian-American population be a precursor to the increased racialization of that group? Often recognized as the “model minority” in the United States—viewed to be hard-working and more likely to assimilate—they may have “less reason to engage in group solidarity to achieve political ends” (Junn & Masuoka, 2008, p. 735). But if history is any indicator, this racially inflammatory language may drive a new sense of linked fate among this population—only time will tell.
Much like the swimming pools filled in during the Civil Rights Era, exclusionary policies and ideas still haunt the American public. This otherization of the minority groups doesn’t only deny them benefits—it affects Americans of all races and ethnicities. McGhee (2021) argues that if we could move past this “zero-sum paradigm,” in which one group can only succeed on the backs of another, we could move towards increased prosperity for all (pp. xii-xxiii). Perhaps the first step towards achieving a less racialized future isn’t a colorblind society, but one in which we can acknowledge those differences without being defined by them.
References
Cox, K. (2019, July 9). Most U.S. adults feel what happens to their own racial or ethnic group affects them personally. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2019/07/11/linked-fate-connectedness-americans/
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.
Dow, W. (Director). (2014). Whiteness project: Inside the white/Caucasian box. Retrieved from https://whitenessproject.org/
Junn, J. & Masuoka, N. (2008). Asian American identity: shared racial status and political context. Perspectives on politics, 6(4), 729-740. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592708081887
McGhee, H. (2021). The sum of us: What racism costs everyone and how we can prosper together. One World.
Meer, N. (2014). Blackness. In Key concepts in race and ethnicity. Sage Concepts.
Pougiales R. & Fulton J. (2019, December 30). A nuanced picture of what Black Americans want in 2020. Third Way. https://www.thirdway.org/memo/a-nuanced-picture-of-what-black-americans-want-in-2020
Press, J. (Producer), & McCauley E. (Editor). (2021, January 12). ‘We don’t even eat the same type of rice’: How Latino voters shaped the 2020 election from Florida to Arizona [Video]. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/latino-voters-election-trump-biden-2021-1
Salcedo, A. (2021, March 19). Racist anti-Asian hashtags spiked after Trump first tweeted 'Chinese virus,’ study finds. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/19/trump-tweets-chinese-virus-racist/
Zepeda-Millán, C. & Wallace, S.J. (2013). Racialization in times of contention: How social movements influence Latino racial identity. Politics, Groups and Identities, 1(4), 510-527. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2013.842492
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