Tacit Racism

de Anne Warfield Rawls, Waverly Duck

"Waverly Duck and Anne Rawls propose in this book that when "tacit" racism becomes institutionalized in the expectations of ordinary interaction-in what the authors call "Interaction Orders of Race"--it creates vast amounts of largely invisible and unconscious inequality. Because of this, interactions can produce race inequality whether the people involved are aware of it or not. The resulting divisions and exclusions divide the nation, providing fertile ground for political manipulation around issues associated with race (e.g. welfare, health care and government as the guarantor of equality). The growth of tacit and overt racism that followed the election of Barack Obama, the first African American President, ushered in a level of intolerance that most Americans thought they had left behind in the distant past. It has been a nation-wide display of how overlooking tacit racism and supporting the fiction of a "color-blind" society damages not only the least advantaged but threatens the majority; it encourages the expression of overt forms of racism that deprives society of the contributions of minorities, and it threatens democratic public spaces. As such, the authors argue, tacit racism is a clear and present danger to the survival of our nation, the public civility it depends on, the autonomy of its sciences, and its democratic institutions as a whole"--