Race and Racism Problems of race and race relations—particularly issues concerning the status of African‐Americans—have played a prominent role in American political life since the colonial era. Given the place of the Supreme Court in the political structure, it was almost inevitable that the Court would be called upon to take an active role in resolving these problems. Thus it is not surprising that the Court has often been a significant participant in controversies over race relations.

The response of the Court has been shaped by a variety of factors. The most obvious is the attitudes of the individual justices toward the race problem itself. These attitudes typically reflect the attitudes of white society as a whole toward blacks. As the position of white society as a whole on racial issues changed over time, so too has the position of the Court. Further, where there has been no consensus in society on a particular issue, the justices themselves have often been split.

The approach of the Court to racial questions has also been complicated by questions of federalism. Where federal action on racial matters has been challenged, the justices have been forced to consider whether the challenged action was within the powers granted to the states or the federal government by the Constitution. The doctrine of states' rights has also had a significant impact on the resolution of challenges to state governmental action (see State Sovereignty and States' Rights). The attitude of the Court toward these issues has changed substantially in recent years, contributing to a change in the pattern of decisions on racial issues.

Antebellum Era.

Federal law played only a relatively limited role in debates over the status of blacks prior to the Civil War. The general primacy of state law was a function of both the basic philosophy of the Constitution and specific provisions relating to the slavery issue. First, the general theory of federalism underlying the antebellum Constitution left to each state almost complete power to regulate the relationships among its inhabitants and purely domestic affairs generally. Moreover, the Constitution contains a number of specific provisions—most notably the Fugitive Slave Clause, Slave Trade Clause, and the three‐fifths compromise—which plainly recognize the existence of the institution of slavery. In the face of such evidence, it is not surprising that only a small group of the most radical abolitionists—well out of the political mainstream—argued that Congress had the power and duty to attack directly slavery in the states.

Nonetheless, federal law became important in a number of contexts. One group of problems involved the interstate movement of slaves or free blacks generally. Such cases involved the sovereign interests of the nation (or at least those of more than one state) and therefore provided an arguable basis for federal control. Thus, for example, federal constitutional arguments appeared in discussions of the obligation of free states to admit free Negroes and to respect the property rights of slaveholders in transit. In both of those situations, however, nonfederal considerations remained the central force (see Comity). By contrast, with respect to the problem of fugitive slaves, the federal law became dominant.

In response to the demands of the representatives of southern states, the drafters of the Constitution had specifically included a provision dealing with the problem of fugitive slaves. Article IV, section 2 provided that
[n]o person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Clearly, this provision constitutionalized the common‐law right of “recaption”—the right of the master to retrieve his slave through self‐help. But by its terms, the Fugitive Slave Clause does not define the respective roles of the state and federal governments in implementing and regulating this right.

The potential conflicts between state and federal authority in this area emerged soon after the adoption of the Constitution. The federal government passed the first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793. A few northern states responded by adopting personal liberty and antikidnapping laws, which significantly restricted the right of recaption. The issue of the constitutionality of these laws reached the Supreme Court in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842).

Justice Joseph Story's majority opinion took a middle ground between the antislavery position, which denied federal power to pass legislation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Clause, and the proslavery position, which posited both a federal and a state duty to adopt enforcement legislation. Story recognized the owner's right to resort to self‐help and the unconstitutionality of any state law that interfered with the right; the authority of Congress to enact legislation that aided the owner; and the lack of any power in the states to enact additional enforcement legislation. Story also suggested that Congress could not constitutionally require state officials to assist in the enforcement process.

As intersectional tensions over the issue of slavery escalated sharply in the 1850s, the issue of fugitive slaves returned to the Court in Ableman v. Booth (1859). The abolitionist Sherman Booth was a Wisconsin resident who had been arrested and charged under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 for obstructing the return of a fugitive slave. While in federal custody, but before his trial, Booth applied to the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. A justice of the Wisconsin court freed Booth on the grounds that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional, and this judgment was affirmed by the entire state supreme court. While an appeal from this judgment to the United States Supreme Court was pending, Booth was rearrested and convicted in federal district court. Once more, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a writ of habeas corpus ordering his release from federal custody. In one of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's most famous and well‐respected decisions, he overturned the writs and forcefully asserted the principle of federal judicial supremacy. Although it clearly had implications for the struggle over slavery, Taney's opinion might be viewed as a simple defense of the supremacy of federal law.

Problems of federalism were also involved in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). In Dred Scott, however, issues of race relations were more clearly at the center of the case. Scott had been held as a slave in Missouri, a slave state. His master brought him into a portion of the federal territories in which slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise and into a free state. Scott brought a diversity action in federal court, arguing that he should be considered a free man by virtue of having been brought into a free territory and state. The case raised two critical issues of race relations. The first was whether Scott could be considered a citizen of the United States for purposes of determining diversity of citizenship. The second was whether Congress could constitutionally prohibit slavery in the territories.

Rejecting Scott's claim, Chief Justice Taney answered both questions in the negative, although whether he spoke for a majority of the Court on every issue raised in the case is questionable. Taney first concluded that the federal courts lacked jurisdiction over the case because, under the Constitution, descendants of slaves could never become citizens of the United States. He then argued that, in any event, the portion of the Missouri Compromise banning slavery in the northern territories was unconstitutional. Primarily, this contention was based on the theory of enumerated powers; in Taney's view the congressional power to “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory … belonging to the United States” (Art. IV, sec. 3) did not include the authority to outlaw slavery. In addition, Taney made a substantive due process argument, concluding that the prohibition on slavery in some of the territories deprived slaveholders of their property without due process of law.

While it cannot be considered a primary cause of the Civil War, the Dred Scott decision did exacerbate sectional tensions over the institution of slavery. On one hand, the decision reinforced Republican claims that the federal government was dominated by a “slave power” committed to the advancement of southern interests at the expense of the values held by northern society. It also raised fears that the Court might require free states to allow Southerners to bring slaves into their jurisdiction. At the same time, Dred Scott bolstered the proslavery contentions that the extension of slavery to the territories was not only just but also mandated by the Constitution itself. But in any event, the doctrinal framework of Dred Scott did not survive the constitutional changes wrought by the Civil War and the Reconstruction period.

Reconstruction Amendments and Their Aftermath.

The constitutional changes that took place following the Civil War substantially changed the role of the federal courts in defining the terms of race relations in the United States. Concerned about the conditions of blacks in the defeated southern states, Congress adopted three constitutional amendments and essentially forced their ratification. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment conferred both national and state citizenship on blacks. In addition, section 1 required that the states confer on all citizens the privileges and immunities of national citizenship and required that the life, liberty and property of all persons be protected by due process of law, and that all persons be granted equal protection of the laws. Finally, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting rights. Each of the amendments contained a clause granting Congress enforcement authority. Purporting to act pursuant to this authority, Congress enacted a series of civil rights statutes intended to protect the newly freed slaves from racial discrimination.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court faced a variety of issues related to the interpretation of the Reconstruction amendments and the statutes adopted under their enforcement authority. The difficulty was that, at the margins at least, the intentions of those who drafted the Reconstruction amendments were unclear. Clearly, the members of the Reconstruction Congresses intended to prohibit certain specific abuses and to arm Congress with the authority to reach those abuses. Beyond those specific problems, the intended impact of the constitutional changes on the states and the powers of Congress was controversial and remains so today.

Occasionally, the Court took a fairly broad view of the scope of the amendments. For example, in Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), the Court found a statute limiting jury service to whites inconsistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, although a plausible historical argument could be made in favor of a contrary result. In a variety of other circumstances, however, the Court gave a relatively narrow construction to the Reconstruction enactments.

Once again, consideration of federalism played an important role in many of the Court's decisions. The concept of states' rights and its corollary, limited national government, were critical to the Court's approach to civil rights issues. Focusing on these principles, the Court often imposed strict limitations on the scope of both the Reconstruction amendments themselves and the civil rights statutes adopted by Congress.

United States v. Cruikshank (1876) exemplified this trend. Cruikshank arose from an incident in which several hundred armed whites surrounded a courthouse in which blacks were holding a public assembly, burned the building, and murdered about one hundred people. They were indicted under a statute derived from the Force Act of 1870, which makes it a federal crime for two or more people to conspire “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in the free exercise of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

The Cruikshank Court dismissed the indictment. Following the analysis of the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite closely circumscribed the definition of rights secured to persons by the Constitution. He argued that all of the rights described in the indictment, including the right to assemble peaceably and the right to bear arms, derived from state citizenship and thus were beyond the ambit of federal protection. The scope of congressional authority to protect blacks was thus sharply curtailed.

The Court's treatment of the state action problem during this period reflects a similar attitude. The Civil Rights Cases (1883) provide a particularly striking example. These cases involved the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which outlawed racial discrimination by operators of public accommodations and public conveyances. Such facilities had traditionally been held to be quasi‐public in nature; even prior to the adoption of the Reconstruction amendments, a number of courts had held that the common law prohibited operators of public conveyances from segregating their passengers on the basis of race. Moreover, during the Reconstruction era Congress had specifically banned segregation on street railways in the District of Columbia. Nonetheless, the Court in the Civil Rights Cases held that neither the Thirteenth nor the Fourteenth Amendment granted Congress the authority to pass statutes such as the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Congressional power could control only the actions of states, not of individuals. Together with similar decisions in cases such as United States v. Harris (1883) and United States v. Reese (1876), the Civil Rights Cases effectively curtailed the ability of Congress to improve the condition of the newly freed slaves.

The problem of discrimination in public conveyances returned to the Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In Plessy, the Court was faced with a Fourteenth Amendment challenge to a state statute that required railways to maintain separate carriages for white and black patrons. The Court conceded that the object of the Fourteenth Amendment was to enforce “the absolute equality of the races before the law”; at the same time, however, the majority reasoned that the amendment “could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality” (p. 544). The Plessy majority also rejected the claim that the statute by its nature stamped blacks with “a badge of inferiority,” arguing that “[i]f this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because [the black person] chooses to put that construction upon it” (p. 551). (See Separate but Equal Doctrine.)

Underlying the Plessy decision was an unstated belief that blacks were inherently inferior to whites. This belief was widely shared among whites in the late nineteenth century; indeed, even Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent in Plessy explicitly noted that “[t]he white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. … So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty” (p. 559). So long as the Court was dominated by men with such attitudes, constitutional law would be of little use to those seeking racial equality.

Early Twentieth Century: From Plessy to Brown.

During the early twentieth century, the Supreme Court's record on race relations issues was uneven. In egregious cases, the Court did at times intervene actively to protect the rights of racial minorities; for example, in Guinn v. United States (1915), it struck down so‐called grandfather clauses— voting requirements that were clearly crafted with a view to restricting the right of blacks to vote, while leaving the voting rights of whites unaffected. By contrast, in Gong Lum v. Rice (1927), the Court not only refused to require a state to allow a Chinese‐American to attend school with whites, but also cited with apparent approval lower court cases that applied the separate but equal doctrine to public education generally.

The Court was particularly hostile to wartime challenges to government actions aimed at Japanese‐Americans during World War II. Military authorities issued a number of orders placing severe restrictions on this group of citizens, including curfews, exclusions, and forced relocation. Congress adopted legislation criminalizing violations of these orders. In Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) and Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Court rejected claims that these orders violated constitutional norms. Speaking for the majority in Korematsu, Justice Hugo Black declared that “[a]ll restrictions that curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect” and subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” (p. 216) (see Suspect Classification). Nonetheless, he concluded that the exigencies of the wartime situation provided sufficient justification for imposing restrictions on those of Japanese ancestry.

Despite cases such as these, as the twentieth century progressed the Court showed signs of becoming more sensitive to the plight of minority races. For example, it soon became clear that cases such as Hirabayashi and Korematsu would not be extended to peacetime race‐relations issues. In Oyama v. California (1948) and Takahashi v. Fish and Game Commission (1948), the Court made clear that the states could not impose special disabilities on those of Asian descent.

The Court's decisions also expanded the concept of state action. In one of the most significant cases—Screws v. United States (1945)—the Court gave a broad interpretation to a federal statute that provides for the criminal prosecution of those who deprive persons of civil rights “under color of law.” It held that state officials who wielded government power acted under color of law even when the specific actions for which they were being prosecuted were illegal under state law.

State action was also the central problem in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and Barrows v. Jackson (1953). In those cases the Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of judicial enforcement of private agreements not to sell real estate to blacks. Having held in Buchanan v. Warley (1917) and Harmon v. Tyler (1927) that the state could not directly restrict the right of blacks to live in particular neighborhoods, the Court in Shelley and Barrows had little difficulty in determining that courts could not constitutionally enforce private racially restrictive covenants, finding such judicial involvement to be state action (see Housing Discrimination).

State action again was a key issue in challenges to political party rules that restricted party membership and political participation to whites. Such rules were particularly important in southern states, where nomination by the then all‐white Democratic party was tantamount to election. After initially holding in Grovey v. Townsend (1935) that such rules were not state action and thus not inconsistent with the Reconstruction amendments, the Court reversed itself in Smith v. Allwright (1944), reasoning that by guaranteeing ballot access to the winner of the party primary, the state had in effect endorsed the exclusionary policy. The rule of Smith was expanded in Terry v. Adams (1953) to cover the preprimary election of an association of Democrats whose endorsement was functionally equivalent to selection as the party candidate (see White Primary).

Finally, during the latter part of this period, the Court began to ease the rigors of the principles underlying Plessy v. Ferguson. Ironically, the only direct assault on the separate but equal doctrine did not involve the Reconstruction amendments at all. In Morgan v. Virginia (1946), the Court held that a Virginia statute requiring interstate buses to maintain racial segregation was unconstitutional because it imposed an undue burden on interstate commerce (see Commerce Power).

By contrast, during this era the Court consistently declined invitations to reconsider the application of the separate but equal doctrine to public education. At the same time, however, it viewed with increasing skepticism claims that states were in fact providing members of racial minorities with equal educational opportunity. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), the Court held that a state could not discharge its obligations under the Equal Protection Clause by providing blacks with tuition to attend law schools in other states while excluding them from its own. In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), it concluded that a law school for blacks was not functionally equivalent to a school for whites because by its nature it excluded most of those with whom graduates would inevitably have to deal during their professional lives. And in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (1950), the Court found insufficient a regime under which blacks were allowed to attend the same graduate schools as whites but were kept physically separated from their white counterparts.

In short, the early twentieth century Supreme Court was significantly more active than its predecessors in protecting the rights of minority races. The importance of the Court's shift should not be overstated, however; changes in basic constitutional doctrine took place only at the margins. Revolutionary changes did not come about until the advent of the Warren Court in 1953.

Warren Era.

Under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, after 1954 the Supreme Court mounted an increasingly aggressive campaign to ameliorate the condition of racial minorities in the United States. The campaign began with the landmark decisions in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and its companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe (1954). Unlike the earlier cases dealing with segregated education, Brown focused directly on the applicability of the separate but equal doctrine to education. Focusing on the importance of education, the Court held that the maintenance of government‐mandated segregated schools was inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In sharp contrast to Plessy, the Court also relied heavily on the stigma imposed on blacks by segregation. Some of the language in Brown suggested that decision might have rested on the special place of public education in American society; it soon became clear, however, that the Court would invalidate all state‐imposed racial segregation (see Segregation, De Jure).

The Court's approach to the state‐action problem also reflected its growing concern with the issue of racial equality. While not rejecting the basic proposition that the Equal Protection Clause placed constraints only on governmental action, cases such as Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority (1961) and Evans v. Newton (1966) held that a variety of seemingly private activities such as operating a restaurant in a public building would be considered state action for constitutional purposes. Thus the Warren Court's decisions expanded the scope of Fourteenth Amendment protections.

During the same period Congress also demonstrated a renewed commitment to the concept of racial equality, adopting a variety of landmark laws designed to deal with the problem of racial discrimination. The most important of the new statutes were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Not surprisingly, opponents of both statutes argued that Congress had exceeded the authority granted to it under the Constitution. The Supreme Court uniformly rejected these challenges.

The earliest attack on the Civil Rights Act focused on Title II, which prohibited discrimination in the provision of public accommodations. In upholding the statute, the Court did not rely on any specific constitutional grant of power to prohibit racial discrimination. Instead, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964) and Katzenbach v. McClung (1964) focused on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, reasoning that Congress could have plausibly determined that racial discrimination had an adverse effect on the free movement of goods and people.

In some respects the voting rights litigation was even more significant. The Voting Rights Act not only prohibited racial discrimination in voting rights but also provided that federal officials should register voters in areas where conditions indicated that racial discrimination was prevalent; required federal preclearance for suffrage‐related changes in such areas in order to ensure that such changes did not have either the purpose or effect of diluting minority voting rights; and limited the use of literacy tests in some circumstances. By any standard, this legislation intruded deeply into areas that historically had been under state control. Nonetheless, the Court rejected all constitutional challenges to the power of Congress to adopt the Voting Rights Act. Upholding the preclearance provisions in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), the Court declared that “Congress [is] chiefly responsible for implementing the rights created [by the Fifteenth Amendment]” and had broad discretion in devising remedies for perceived violations of voting rights (p. 326). Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966) went even further, holding that in some circumstances Congress could rely on its enforcement authority to prohibit even some practices that the Court had specifically found to be constitutionally unobjectionable. Finally, in Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969), the Court rejected all efforts to read the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act (which were its most controversial elements) narrowly. “The Voting Rights Act was aimed at the subtle, as well as the obvious, state regulations which have the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of their race,” Chief Justice Warren proclaimed. Laws seeking to dilute the voting strength of minorities, therefore, were constitutionally impermissible and subject to Congress' authority in these matters.

The Warren Court not only took an expansive view of congressional authority to remedy perceived racial discrimination but also gave expansive interpretations to hitherto dormant federal statutes in this area. The most prominent example was Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968), in which the Court not only reaffirmed its view that Congress had the power to reach private racial discrimination but also reinterpreted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to prohibit such discrimination.

In short, during the Warren era the Court consistently took an expansive view of Constitutional and statutory prohibitions on racial discrimination as well as congressional power to address such discrimination. The Court's experience with the school desegregation problem, however, reflected the difficulties that can arise when the judiciary attempts to impose its will on a recalcitrant populace. At the conclusion of the first Brown opinion, the Court requested briefing and argument on the question of what remedial action should be taken to dismantle segregated school systems. The following year, in its second Brown v. Board of Education (1955) opinion, the Court recognized the primacy of local officials in formulating educational policy but directed the district courts to ensure that the transition to a unitary school system was accomplished “with all deliberate speed” (see Desegregation Remedies).

Obviously, the Brown II Court hoped for cooperation between the federal courts and local authorities in the desegregation process. Such cooperation was not forthcoming. The judiciary was faced with southern school boards and state governments that were typically committed to the philosophy of “massive resistance” to desegregation. Even when forced by the courts to alter their pupil assignment practices to some degree, local school authorities often adopted policies that might be neutral on their face but were in fact designed to minimize racial integration in the schools. In the most extreme example, the school board of Prince Edward Country, Virginia, attempted to close its public schools and provide tuition grants to students attending private schools, with the expectation that these schools would maintain racial segregation. In Griffin v. County School Board (1964), the Court ordered the public schools reopened, declaring that “[t]here has been entirely too much deliberation and not enough speed” in the desegregation process. The Court's frustration became even more evident in Green v. County School Board (1968). There, rejecting a “freedom of choice” plan for public school students, the Court declared that “[t]he burden on a school board today is to come forward with a plan that realistically promises to work … now … to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch” (pp. 439, 438). Despite such strong statements, the struggle over the proper scope of desegregation orders would continue well beyond the Warren era.

Burger and Rehnquist Courts.

During the post‐Warren era, the pattern of Supreme Court decisions on race relations issues has defied easy characterization. In part, the lack of a clear pattern derives from the diversity among the justices themselves. The Warren Court was dominated by liberal activists, and its record on race relations issues reflected this dominance (see Judicial Activism). By contrast, the Burger and Rehnquist Courts were more ideologically balanced, a factor that has often been evidenced by close divisions on controversial questions. The increased influence of conservatives on the court has been evident in cases such as Patterson v. McLean Credit Union (1989), which limited the scope of the previous holding in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.

The nature of the issues faced by the Court has also changed substantially. The legality of deliberate state‐imposed segregation and private discrimination against minority races presented the easiest questions for persons committed to the basic principle of racial equality. Unlike their predecessor, the Burger and Rehnquist Courts have been presented with cases that raised more difficult questions about both the nature of racial equality and the proper role of the federal courts in promoting such equality.

School Desegregation.

The influence of all of these factors has been apparent in the continued evolution of the law of school desegregation in the post‐Warren era. The period began with the decision in Swann v. Charlotte‐Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971). In Swann, the Court unanimously upheld a district court order that mandated wide‐scale restructuring of a southern, urban school district in an effort to achieve racial balance by busing. While denying that there was any constitutional right to attend a school whose student body reflected the racial composition of the district as a whole, the opinion concluded that “[a]wareness of the racial composition of the entire school system is likely to be a useful starting point in shaping a remedy to correct past constitutional violations.”

The problem became more complex as desegregation litigation moved to the North. Typically, the laws governing northern school systems did not explicitly mandate the type of racial segregation involved in the cases from Brown through Swann; instead, the systems were generally based on the principle of neighborhood schools. At the same time, however, these schools were often racially unbalanced. The imbalance resulted from two factors. First, demographic factors not directly related to school policies led to the geographic concentration of minority races. Second, boundaries were often subtly adjusted to minimize the mixing of the races in schools. Given Swann’s statement that the constitution did not guarantee to students the right to attend racially balanced schools, distinguishing between the effects of deliberate segregative acts and other factors became an important and difficult consideration (see Segregation, De Facto).

Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1 (1973) provided the basis for widespread judicial intervention in northern school systems. In Keyes, the Court held that where a “meaningful portion” of a school system was found to be intentionally segregated, other racial imbalance in the system would be almost irrefutably presumed to also be the result of deliberate segregative acts. Keyes and subsequent cases such as Columbus Board of Education v. Penick (1979) and Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman (1979) opened the way for Swann‐type orders to be applied to many northern, urban school systems. Milliken v. Bradley (1977) expanded the scope of permissible orders even further, holding that the federal courts could order previously segregated school districts to adopt measures not directly related to racial balance. Missouri v. Jenkins (1990) held that a federal district court judge could order local property taxes raised to pay for such measures.

The power of the federal courts to deal with the problem of segregated schools is not unlimited, however. In the first Milliken v. Bradley (1974), the Court held that in the absence of a showing of segregative acts with intersystem effects, the courts could not impose intersystem desegregation orders. Given that the student population of many city school systems had become increasingly dominated by members of minority races, Milliken was an important limitation on the ability of the federal courts to achieve actual racial balance in the schools.

The job became even harder in the early 1990s when, in what became known as the resegregation cases, the Supreme Court reinforced, and even enhanced, the restraints imposed by Milliken by lowering the threshold of proof necessary to determine that a school system had achieved “unitary” (fully integrated) status. In doing so, the Court sent a clear signal promoting the end of desegregation orders, even when the effect was the resegregation of numerous districts.

First up was Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell (1991) where the justices first noted that a school district could be racially integrated without achieving full “unitary” status. As Chief Justice Rehnquist explained, the key question in determining whether a school district has complied with a court order to racially integrate was whether “the [School] Board has complied in good faith with the [original] desegregation decree,” and thus eliminated all “vestiges of past discrimination … to the extent practicable.” Where this was the case, “such a school district could be called unitary and nevertheless still contain vestiges of past discrimination.” One year later, in Freeman v. Pitts (1992), the Court noted that the Constitution did not require “heroic” measures to insure racial balance in student assignments, at least when the imbalance was attributable to independent demographic forces and not the prior de jure segregation system or subsequent actions by school officials. Finally in Missouri v. Jenkins (1995), the Court applied this view, holding against a district court plan to impose a wide‐ranging desegregation plan built around the use of multidistrict magnet schools in the Kansas City, Missouri, area. “Just as demographic changes independent of de jure segregation will affect the racial composition of student assignments,” the chief justice noted, “so too will numerous external factors beyond the control of the [the School Board] affect minority student achievement.” Yet so long as these “external factors” were not “the result of segregation,” they did not figure “in the remedial calculus.”

The results of this shift in doctrine were dramatic. While 43.5 percent of southern black students attended majority‐white schools prior to 1990, by 1998, the percentage of black students in majority white schools had fallen to 32.7 percent. This made southern schools actually more segregated than they had been thirty years earlier. Nationwide statistics reveal a similar level of resegregation nationally during the 1990s.

Discriminatory Impact.

The Warren Court had generally been preoccupied with problems of deliberate discrimination against minority races. In the post‐Warren era, by contrast, race‐neutral actions with discriminatory impact came under increasing attack. Some argued such actions should be closely scrutinized in order to ensure that members of minority racial groups were not arbitrarily denied access to opportunities. Others contended that only deliberate racial discrimination should be proscribed. The issue had both statutory and constitutional dimensions (see Discriminatory Intent).

In Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Court held unanimously that discriminatory impact was an important element to be considered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under Griggs, employment practices with a disparate impact were held illegal unless justified by a “business necessity.” The scope of the business necessity defense became a much‐debated issue. Cases such as Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody (1975) and Dothard v. Rawlinson (1977) suggested that the business necessity criterion would be difficult to satisfy. Washington v. Davis (1976) and New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer (1979) conveyed a quite different impression. Ultimately, in Ward's Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989), the Court modified disparate impact analysis, holding that those challenging an employment practice were required to prove that an employer's proffered justification was in fact illusory (see Employment Discrimination). The Civil Rights Act of 1991, however, curtailed the full impact of Ward's Cove.

The Court's treatment of the constitutional status of discriminatory impact showed a similar ambivalence. In Washington v. Davis (1976) and Mobile v. Bolden (1980), the Court held that a simple showing of discriminatory impact was insufficient to raise the level of scrutiny under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, respectively (see Strict Scrutiny). At the same time, however, in Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. (1977), the Court indicated that discriminatory impact could in some cases raise an inference of discriminatory intent (though it did acknowledge that “such cases are rare” and involve “a clear [discriminatory] pattern, unexplainable on grounds other than race”) and in Rogers v. Lodge (1982) held that impact was particularly important to the evaluation of voting rights claims.

Voting Rights.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Allen v. State Board of Elections (1969)—holding that elections systems could be unconstitutionally exclusionary in their effects even while being seemingly nondiscriminatory in form—initiated a period of intense judicial deliberation on minority voting rights. Very little of this action occurred before the Supreme Court, however. With the exception of White v. Register (1973) and Mobile v. Bolden (1980), very few voting rights cases reached the Supreme Court in the two decades following the Court's Allen ruling. District and circuit courts, on the other hand, heard hundreds of voting rights challenges during this period. Most arose in the South and directly challenged voting systems designed to dilute the impact of African‐American voting. One of the techniques used was to gerrymander districts so as to split minority populations among several voting districts. Another popular technique adopted the use of at‐large voting systems that submerged minority voters into a larger pool of majority voters. In both cases, so long as the majority voted as a group (and in regions such as the South, this was usually the case) the majority could effectively deny the minority a voice in government by simply not voting for minority candidates. Denied the power that localized numbers should have brought, minority voters were thus effectively cut out of the electoral process.

Taking their lead from the Supreme Court's rulings in Allen and White, district and circuit judges overturned these and similar vote dilution techniques as violations under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They replaced them with a district‐based voting system designed to assure minority voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in numbers roughly proportional to their percentage in the population. In practice, this meant the creation of so‐called minority‐majority districts wherein district lines were drawn specifically to assure that minority voters made up at least 60 percent of the registered voters within the district. The result was nothing less than a revolution in southern politics as hundreds of southern cities, counties, and other kinds of jurisdictions shifted to minority‐majority districting with the pay‐off seen in the election of hundreds and even thousands of minority candidates to office.

Minority‐majority voting systems did have a problem, however. Finding enough minority voters to create a minority‐majority district often proved difficult. Unless minority populations were highly concentrated, the creation of these districts required the connection of distant communities into a single district. The result often produced irregularly shaped districts that ambled in snake‐like fashion across the map seeking to link up enough minority neighborhoods to create a district‐wide majority.

These trends concerned the Supreme Court. The justices were uncomfortable with too extensive an application of race‐conscious judicial remedies to voting rights matters. In 1986 the Court hinted at this discomfort in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) when it imposed a new standard in vote dilution cases, one demanding that “the minority group … demonstrate that it is significantly large and geographically compact [enough] to constitute a majority in a single‐member district” (478 U.S. 50). Failing this test, the Court reasoned that “the multi‐member form of the district [could not] be responsible for minority voters' inability to elect its candidates.” And if race was not the cause of electoral failure, then race‐conscious districting was obviously not the proper remedy.

The peak of the Supreme Court's reevaluation of race‐conscious districting came in Shaw v. Reno (1993). Brought in response to North Carolina's Congressional redistricting efforts following the 1990 census, the plaintiffs in Shaw challenged the entire structure of minority‐majority districting. As they saw it, minority‐majority districting was nothing more than gerrymandering. As evidence of their contention, they pointed to the new district's shape, which wandered across the north central region of North Carolina, linking together minority communities with land bridges no wider than the interstate highway that connected them. Writing for a five‐justice majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed with this logic. “It is unsettling,” she wrote, “how closely the North Carolina plan resembles the most egregious racial gerrymanders of the past.” The district under attack, she noted, was simply too “bizarre,” “irregular,” and “egregious” in form to pass constitutional muster. “Reapportionment is one area in which appearances do matter,” O'Connor noted. “A reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, … reinforces the perception that members of the same racial group—regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live—think alike, share the same political interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the polls” (p. 647). This was not constitutionally acceptable. For these reasons, the majority in Shaw concluded that where a state “concentrated a dispersed minority population in a single district, disregarding traditional districting principles such as compactness, contiguity, and respect for political subdivisions,” a red flag of warning demanded a close examination to assure that race was not the only determinant in creating the district.

Although the five justices in the majority did not comment on the justification for the oddly shaped North Carolina district (merely remanding it back to the district court with instructions to explore the facts in this particular situation), Shaw v. Reno effectively imposed a new and complex standard in voting rights litigation, one that made the defense of minority‐majority districts difficult. The new standard in voting rights was race‐neutral remedies judged—at least in the case of legislative districting—as much by aesthetics as by close examination of the realities in race relations and political action. Race‐based districting—and by implication, all forms of race‐conscious remedies—were called into question as an appropriate response to discrimination and exclusion from power. Subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court against minority‐majority districting in cases such as Miller v. Johnson (1995), U.S. v. Hays (1995), Bush v. Vera (1996), and Reno v. Bossier Parish School Board (1997) only intensified this trend. In the process almost thirty years of litigation against race‐based vote denial were placed in jeopardy of constitutional irrelevancy.

Affirmative Action.

The most controversial race‐related issue of the post‐Warren era has been the status of affirmative action programs, described by their critics as “reverse racial discrimination.” The details of these programs vary widely, but all involve the principle of preferential treatment for members of minority racial groups. Opponents claim that affirmative action programs violate the moral imperative that a person's race should not be taken into account in the decision‐making process. Proponents, by contrast, argue that because the long history of racial discrimination in America has a continuing, negative effect on members of minority racial groups, preferential treatment is necessary to provide them with their fair share of benefits and privileges.

The split in society as a whole on this issue has been mirrored in the reactions of the Court when programs granting preferential treatment to minority races have faced legal challenges. Some justices have voted to reject all such challenges. Others have consistently voted to strike down preferential treatment programs. Still others have taken some middle ground. Until quite recently, the middle group seemed to hold the balance of power on the issue. The Court struck down a medical school's reservation of a certain number of places for members of minority groups in Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978). It also found unconstitutional a modification of seniority rights to ensure minority representation among teachers in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986). During the same period, however, the Court rejected a statutory challenge to a private party's affirmative action plan in United Steelworkers of America v. Weber (1979); a constitutional challenge to a set‐aside program mandating minority participation in federal public works projects in Fullilove v. Klutznick (1980); and constitutional challenges to racial quotas imposed by courts as remedies for past discrimination in Local 28 of Sheet Metal Workers International Association v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1986) and United States v. Paradise (1987).

Recent personnel changes have shifted the balance on the Court against preferential treatment programs. In Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. (1989), the Court held unconstitutional a city‐adopted minority set‐aside program virtually identical to the federal program that had been upheld in Fullilove. Even more importantly, Croson was the first case in which a majority of the Court clearly committed itself to very stringent scrutiny of affirmative action programs.

Croson, however, did not sound the death knell for all affirmative action programs. In Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC (1990), the Court rejected constitutional challenges to regulations of the Federal Communications Commission that gave preferential treatment to minority‐owned stations in licensing proceedings. The regulations were adopted pursuant to a statutory directive requiring the commission to promote diversification of programming in the broadcasting industry and had been explicitly approved by Congress. Rather than applying strict scrutiny, the majority held that the regulations were constitutionally permissible because they served important government objectives and were substantially related to those objectives.

Following Croson and Metro Broadcasting, the center of debate on affirmative action shifted from jobs and government contracts to preferential college admissions. Through the 1990s, opponents to preferential college admissions attacked the underlying justifications for this form of affirmative action in the lower federal courts. They argued that race‐conscious remedies were nothing more than reverse forms of discrimination. As such, they challenged them under the Fourteenth Amendment and called for the courts to impose strict scrutiny in evaluating all such programs. The results were mixed. In 1996, the Fifth Circuit in Hopwood v. Texas found that the University of Texas School of Law had violated the Equal Protection Clause by applying race‐based considerations in its law school admissions process. On the other hand, in Smith v. University of Washington Law School (2000) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2002), the Ninth and the Sixth Circuits respectively upheld the University of Michigan's law school admission policies as constitutionally permissible.

In 2003, the Supreme Court took up the matter, reviewing the Sixth Circuit's rulings in Grutter v. Bollinger and a companion case, Gratz v. Bollinger that challenged preferential admission in the University of Michigan's undergraduate colleges. The Supreme Court's response was as divided as that of the courts below. In Grutter, the Court held, “the Equal Protection Clause does not prohibit the Law School's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body”(p. 443). Meanwhile, in Gratz, the justices held that since the university's “use of race in its current freshman admissions policy [was] not narrowly tailored to achieve respondents' interest in diversity” (the university automatically awarded each minority applicant a bonus of twenty points toward admission), the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause.

The split rulings in Grutter and Gratz suggest the indeterminate nature of the Supreme Court's ongoing response to affirmative action. On the one hand, the justices acknowledge a legitimate governmental duty to assure racial balance within society, even to the extent of employing race‐conscious remedies On the other hand, they are deeply worried by the negative constitutional implications for individual rights and equal protection of such race‐conscious actions. Their response has been to split their rulings on a case by case basis, questioning the basic doctrine of affirmative action, but allowing its use where the preferential admissions were narrowly tailored in their reach and impact.

Conclusion.

It is quite difficult to evaluate the overall impact of the Supreme Court on race relations in America. One point does emerge clearly, however. In many respects, the evolution of the Supreme Court's approach to issues of race relations mirrors that of American society as a whole. Overall, whites in the twenty‐first century almost certainly view racial minorities more benignly than did their predecessors of 1850 or even 1950. At the same time, however, there are limits to the price that most white Americans are willing to pay in order to ameliorate the conditions of racial minorities, and this factor is also reflected in contemporary decisions.

Changes in perceptions of state‐federal relations have also had a strong impact on the Court's decisions. The movement from Cruikshank to Katzenbach v. McClung to Metro Broadcasting and beyond is not only a function of the evolution of social attitudes toward race. It also reflects the degree to which large segments of American society have come to look to the federal government rather than the state governments as the proper agent to solve social problems.

In short, the Supreme Court's experience with race relations provides an excellent illustration of the interaction between the Court and society as a whole. The range of actions likely to be considered by the Court will be determined by the overall political culture in which it operates. The choice among those actions will be determined by a variety of factors, not the least of which are the specific predilections of the serving justices. These considerations define both the possibilities and limits of the Court's potential for dealing with major social problems such as race relations.

Bibliography

Derrick A. Bell, Jr. , Race, Racism and American Law (1980).
Harold M. Hyman and and William M. Wiecek , Equal Justice under Law: Constitutional Development 1835–1875 (1982).
Richard Kluger , Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (1975).
Charles A. Lofgren , The Plessy Case: A Legal‐Historical Interpretation (1987).
J. Harvie Wilkinson , From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954–1978 (1979).
Tinsley E. Yarbrough , Race and Redistricting: The Shaw‐Cromartie Cases (2002).

Earl M. Maltz;

Charles L. Zelden

Racial Discrimination

Racial discrimination is the practice of letting a person's race or skin color unfairly become a factor when deciding who receives a job, promotion, or other employment benefit. It most often affects minority individuals who feel they have been unfairly discriminated against in favor of a Caucasian (or white) individual, but there have been recent cases where whites have claimed that reverse discrimination has occurred—that is, a minority received unfairly favorable treatment at the expense of a white individual.

Court rulings handed down through the years have determined that a company's responsibility not to discriminate based on race begins even before an individual is hired. Companies can be held liable if pre-employment screening or testing is determined to be discriminatory, if applications ask unacceptable questions designed to screen for race, or if the overall selection process is deemed to be unfair. One of the main indicators that racial discrimination has occurred in the hiring process involves the qualifications of the job applicants. While a slight difference in qualifications between a minority and white candidate does not automatically indicate racial bias (if the lesser qualified white candidate is hired over the minority candidate), a substantial difference in qualifications has almost always been upheld by the courts as a sure sign of racial discrimination.

FEDERAL LAWS PROHIBIT DISCRIMINATION

Since the social unrest of the 1960s, the federal government has been actively involved in preventing racial discrimination in the workplace. The most important law covering racial discrimination on the job is the Civil Rights Act of 1964—specifically, Title VII of that act: it strictly prohibits all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in all aspects of employment. Written during a tumultuous period in American history when many people expected the federal government to right social wrongs, the law was a monumental piece of legislation that changed the American employment landscape.

The law stated that it was unlawful for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The law covers hiring, dismissals, compensation, and all other aspects of employment, while also covering actual employment opportunities that are available. Examples of racial discrimination that would fall under the scope of the act include:

1. An employee who alleges that his or her manager only promotes nonminority employees and keeps minorities in entry-level positions.
2. An employee who alleges that a manager or other person in power tells jokes or makes statements that are demeaning, insulting, or offensive to members of a minority group.
3. A manager who makes it clear that he or she believes in racial stereotypes by admitting that he or she refuses to promote a certain minority group because "all [members of that group] are lazy."

The law covers business with 15 or more employees, and applies to all private, federal, state, and local employers. In many states, businesses with fewer than 15 employees face the same rules thanks to local or state statutes. In addition to the hiring provisions, the law dictates that employers cannot in any way limit or segregate employees based on race in any way that would adversely affect their chances at promotions. It does allow for two narrow exceptions to the law—businesses may use a "bona fide" seniority or merit system and measure performance and earnings based on a quantity or quality measuring system, and employers may use ability tests to determine the most qualified candidates for a job as long as the test does not discriminate racially in any way.

In 1991, the 1964 law was significantly amended for the first time by the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The law was passed to override several Supreme Court decisions that had made it much more difficult for employees to prove that racial discrimination had occurred. One of the many changes of the 1991 law is that it closed a loophole in the 1964 act that also involved a Civil War-era statute known as 42 U.S.C. Section 1981. The Supreme Court had held that Section 1981 applied to hiring and sometimes to promotions but did not cover racial harassment that occurred in the workplace once a person was hired. The 1991 act said that all racial discrimination was covered by U.S. law, including post-hire harassment.

The other major enhancement under the 1991 act involved monetary damages. Before the law was passed, employees who sued an employer for discrimination and won could only recover lost wages or salary, lost benefits, attorney fees, other legal costs, and the costs associated with reinstatement. The 1991 law said that employees could also recover punitive monetary damages for pain and emotional suffering, mental anguish, future lost wages and benefits, and more. Those damages could only be collected if it was proven that the discrimination was intentional and there was clearly "malice" or "reckless indifference" exhibited, but this was a radical change from the previous legislation. To protect employers from overly large court settlements, the amount of punitive damages was capped at $300,000 for certain cases of discrimination, although no caps apply in cases of ethnic or racial discrimination.

Other changes in the 1991 law involve employment practices that have a "disparate impact" on racial groups (that is, affect them more than white groups), make it easier for a plaintiff to receive damages in cases where a discriminatory practice and a nondiscriminatory practice both played a part in a hiring or promotion decision, and allow employees to challenge seniority systems that are put into place if the systems are later determined to be discriminatory (in the past, workers could only sue at the time the system was first put into place). Together, all of these changes made it easier for workers to prove discrimination claims, which has increased the number of lawsuits nationwide.

THE EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION

To oversee the federal civil rights legislation, a separate administrative body was created as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, was created to enforce laws that prevent discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, national origin, disability, or age when hiring, firing, or promoting employees. Four categories of people—by race, color, sex, and/or creed—were given "protected status" under the law, which was to be upheld by the EEOC. The commission is an independent regulatory body that has the power to launch investigations, file lawsuits, and create programs to eliminate discrimination.

The EEOC has been a controversial organization throughout its 40-plus years of history. Liberal politicians believe that the agency was long overdue and that it is absolutely imperative that the agency be proactive in identifying and fighting discrimination in the courts, while conservatives believe that the organization is a perfect example of "big government" that intrudes far too deeply into citizens' lives. The agency's strong enforcement of affirmative action policies (which actively seek to promote minorities over equally qualified whites in order to address past discrimination) has been its most controversial action, as many Americans oppose affirmative action.

Even with political opposition, the EEOC continues to be effective in fighting racial discrimination. In FY 2005 alone, for instance, the EEOC obtained nearly $173 million in benefits for complainants through settlement and conciliation (excluding litigation awards). Litigation awards accounted for another $106 million in FY 2005.

STEPS TAKEN BY EMPLOYERS TO END DISCRIMINATION

Because racial discrimination can have adverse consequences for a company—including lower morale, a divided workplace, expensive lawsuits, and public embarrassment—some companies take highly visible steps to curtail discrimination in the workplace. These include in-house workshops and training sessions on racial sensitivity and diversity in the workplace, training on employment laws, and adopting strict new rules against discrimination.

Many other companies only become active when prodded by events and circumstances. In November of 2000, the Coca-Cola Company agreed to settle a racial discrimination suit by paying a penalty of $192.5 million. Sara Lee Corporation was forced to make a large cash settlement to a former employee who says that he was the butt of racist jokes, disparaging remarks, and was even forced to view a noose hanging in his workplace. In addition to the cash settlement, the amount of which was confidential, Sara Lee also agreed to establish training programs to raise awareness of the company's anti-discrimination policies.

To make sure that it is on the cutting edge of preventing racial discrimination, IBM has established individual employee task forces for almost every group that is employed by the huge company, including men, women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, and disabled persons. The groups, which are established at many of the company's offices, meet regularly to discuss diversity and workplace concerns. This represents an extreme example of the steps companies are taking to prevent discrimination, but actions of this type are becoming more common.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Affirmative action is a controversial policy intended to counteract racial discrimination. West's Encyclopedia of American Law defines affirmative action as referring "to both mandatory and voluntary programs intended to affirm the civil rights of designated classes of individuals by taking positive actions to protect them." In other words, affirmative action actively promotes the interest of minorities over the white majority in order to correct past discrimination. For example, in a situation where a test is required before starting a particular job or to earn a promotion, minorities may be given preference over nonminorities for that job or promotion even though they score lower on the test than the nonminority worker. While this may seem wrong to some people, those who support affirmative action argue that past acts of discrimination have been so blatant that extraordinary steps are required to overcome those acts. At the start of the twenty-first century, however, affirmative action programs are under fire across the United States, with numerous court challenges occurring across the country.

One effect of affirmative action has been an increase in "reverse discrimination" lawsuits, in which nonminority workers allege that they have been discriminated against. In situations where companies have used affirmative action to help undo decades of blatant discrimination, white workers have become upset over being passed over for jobs and promotions. They claim that, if it is unfair to not hire a qualified worker just because he or she is a minority, then it should be equally unfair to not hire a qualified worker just because he or she is white. White employees have argued that, even though they have higher qualifications, experience, and skill, they are being passed over for jobs in favor of less-qualified candidates who are minorities.

In response to reverse discrimination lawsuits involving affirmative action programs, courts have recognized the need to overcome past racial bias, but have also sided with the white workers in many cases. For example, in an attempt to redress past problems, a public university ruled that women and minorities would no longer have to take a test to qualify for a special employment program. As a result, for nine years, every job opening in the program went to a woman or a minority, even though white males represented half of the applicant pool. When the university's program was challenged in a lawsuit brought by white males, the courts ruled that the test exemption ensured that "the sole purpose of the affirmative action plan was to circumvent a lawful … preference program" and that the exemption violated Title VII because it caused white men to be excluded from the job in question. The school was forced to pay $113,000 to settle the case and correct the reverse discrimination.

Reverse discrimination does not always have to involve affirmative action, however. In a case decided in 2006, as reported by Shannon Duffy in The Legal Intelligencer, four white males prevailed in a law suit against the Philadelphia School District claiming that an African-American woman had discharged them because there were "too many white male managers in this department."

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION TRENDS

While advances have been made to improve race relations, there is statistical evidence to show that racial discrimination in the workplace is still commonplace. In 2000, the EEOC reported the results of a study of workplaces in North Carolina that showed that accusations of racial harassment on the job nearly quadrupled between 1996 and 2000, jumping from 16 reported incidents in 1996 to 62 in 2000 in just one region of the state. Mindy Weinstein, attorney at the EEOC office in Charlotte, North Carolina, was uncertain of what caused the increase, but she had some ideas. "There's a new generation of workers today who were not raised in the civil rights movement, who may not have been aware of the laws that came about because of that time," she said in the Raleigh News & Observer. "We think it's largely a reflection of what's going on in society as a whole."

Another potential cause of the increase is the fact that, thanks to earlier efforts to wipe out racial discrimination, there are more minorities than ever before in the workplace and also in high-level positions of power. Because minorities have been able to compete on a level playing field, they have been able to rise through the ranks more quickly, often taking jobs that were traditionally held by white workers. This can lead to resentment among the formerly dominant workers who are now lower on the employment ladder.

see also Affirmative Action

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blank, Rbecca M., Marilyn Dabady, and Constance F. Citro. Measuring Racial Discrimination. National Academies Press, 2004.

"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission." National Archives and Records Administration website. Available from http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/. Retrieved on 15 May 2006.

Contini, Peter. "How to Protect Your Office from Discrimination Claims." Real Estate Weekly. 15 March 2006.

Duffy, Shannon P. "'Reverse Discrimination' Verdict Upheld." The Legal Intelligencer. 17 April 2006.

"Institutional Racism, Part II: Race, Skill, and Hiring in U.S. Cities." Nation's Cities Weekly. 19 June 2000.

Moss, Philip I., and Chris Tilly. Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill and Hiring in America (Multi-City Study of Inequality). Russell Sage Foundation, 2001.

"Reports of Racism at Work Increasing." Raleigh News & Observer. 11 December 2000.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "EEOC Annual Reports." Available from http://www.eeoc.gov/abouteeoc/annual_reports/index.html. Retrieved on 15 May 2006.

                               Hillstrom, Northern Lights

                                  updated by Magee, ECDI

Discrimination, Racial

OVERT AND INDIRECT DISCRIMINATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The word discrimination is derived from the word Latin “discriminare” translated as to “distinguish between.” Racial discrimination, as a commonly accepted construct, is conceptualized as distinguishing in an unequal or less favorable manner an individual or institution by another individual, institution, or other entity with power to influence outcomes based on the perceived race, nationality, ethnicity, or national origin of the victim. It can occur as an overt action or in a subtler, covert manner.

OVERT AND INDIRECT DISCRIMINATION

Overt racial discrimination occurs when there is an illegal and direct link between an individual’s perceived race, nationality, ethnicity, or national origin, or an organization’s perceived characteristics and composition, and a particular negative outcome or pervasive disadvantage. Notably, the conceptualization of overt racial discrimination emphasizes the inappropriate reliance on fallible perceptions of another person’s race or ethnicity as an estimate of their more general characteristics, skills, abilities, or worth. Consistent with the historical use of the word race, contemporary racial discrimination occurs when external characteristics such as skin tone are used as a mechanism for negative appraisal or social or political classification (Goodman 2000). Appropriately or not, race is commonly used to distinguish groups of people according to their ancestry and a more or less distinctive combination of physical characteristics. Ethnicity, a term that includes biological, behavioral, and cultural characteristics, is commonly used to describe groups of people with a common history, ancestry, and belief system. Because terms of categorization such as race and ethnicity are used to quickly appraise and then give meaning to individuals in our environments, they are also principle agents for overt overestimates of knowledge about an individual, group, or organization, and may facilitate inappropriate judgments and social outcomes.

Indirect racial discrimination has existed throughout the history of mankind but has only recently come to the attention of social and medical researchers. The essence of indirect racial discrimination is that a structure or policy that was designed without specific attention to race or ethnicity results in disadvantage and or detriment to a particular group of people based on race or ethnicity. One example is a policy that for security purposes prohibits a particular type of uniform, dress, or head dressing that is the normal uniform, dress, or head dressing of a particular group of individuals of similar racial composition or ethnic heritage. Other examples include the forced participation of school-aged children in a particular celebratory custom or ritual that is incongruent with the religious beliefs or customs of a particular racial or ethnic group of people.

These examples highlight several important factors about overt and indirect racism. The first is that in the context of the multifactoral dimensions of humanity and the multiple characteristics that unite and distinguish individuals (e.g., age, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.), it is sometimes difficult to prove that a single characteristic such as race is the basis of a negative appraisal or outcome. Secondly, inherent in the construct of racial discrimination is the presence of a power differential such that benefits or gains are withheld from deserving or entitled individuals or entities. In the absence of a power differential or a negative consequence, racial discrimination cannot exist.

Based on the complex definitions of race and ethnicity, racial discrimination is sometimes difficult to identify. For example, the existence of racial discrimination is not dependent on the volition of the perpetrator; it can exist even when the (accidental) perpetrator’s intentions were honorable. Additionally, in some cases the negative impact on or consequences to a victim may be difficult to identify.

Racial discrimination can occur as a single event or as a more systemic and engrained intentional or unintentional policy. In cases where there is an established pattern of inequity based on race, ethnicity, or culture perpetrated by a definable individual, overt racial discrimination is usually easier to prove, but when it is a single occurrence at issue, or the perpetrator is a system or institution, discrimination may be difficult to document and prove.

CONSEQUENCES OF DISCRIMINATION

Recent evidence presented in the American Journal of Public Health indicated that people who experience daily discrimination may be more susceptible to a variety of health problems, including cardiovascular and pulmonary disease and chronic pains (2006). This study was notable because it was the first to explore such issues in a sample of 2, 100 Asian Americans, a population traditionally thought to be insulated from negative discriminatory experiences. Similar evidence predicted poor mental health outcomes in black and Latino immigrants who were subject to racial discrimination (Gee et al. 2006). Gary Bennett and colleagues (2005) found that minorities who perceived greater amounts of racial or ethnic harassment were more likely to use tobacco daily, and ultimately may manifest greater risk of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed to protect an individual’s right to employment without negative consequence or discrimination as a function of his or her race, color, national origin, sex, or religion. Title VII applies only to employers with more than fifteen employees. Current laws and regulations prohibit racial discrimination that results in differences in recruiting, hiring, determination of salary and fringe benefits, training, work assignments, promotions, transfers, disciplinary actions, firings, and retaliation. Yet, the workplace remains one of the most fertile settings for claims of racial discrimination. Each year from 1997 to 2006, more than 26, 000 race-based discrimination charges were filed in the United States (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2007).

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EXPLANATIONS

Beyond individual level explanations, economic models have been posited for many years to explain inequity and racial discrimination. For example, Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate and professor who was often referred to as the “economist’s economist,” was a strong advocate of personal liberty and freedom. Among his many lifetime achievements and controversial theories were ending mandatory licensing of doctors as well as ending social security as an unfair and unsustainable system exemplary of governmental intervention in a free market economy.

In a manner consistent with his previous writings, Friedman also indicated that market racial discrimination and market competition were antithetical. More specifically, that social and political freedom was maximized and racial equality was best achieved by minimizing the interventional and regulatory role of the government, and that free markets and their associated economic forces would facilitate a state of equilibrium and fairness to all who participated (Friedman and Rose 1962).

Certainly, not all social scientists and economists agreed with Friedman. From a sociological and spatial perspective, many argued that there was a positive relationship between the size of a racial minority and discrimination. More specifically, that market competition encouraged racial discrimination. As the relative size of a racial or ethnic minority group increases, motives for the majority racial population to discriminate against the minority population may also increase toward the reduction of market racial competition and reducing threats to the loss of jobs and other essential scarce resources (Blalock 1967).

The relationship between the size of the minority population and the magnitude of discrimination is imperfect, at best. For example, the more effective the discriminatory economic practices against minorities, the less threat there is to perceived or real resources and, consequentially, the less the need for discriminatory practices. In contrast, ineffective discriminatory practices promote the use of additional or more potent attempts to regulate racial competition and preserve resources of the majority. Adjustments to the marketplace mobility and economic growth of minority and majority populations is designed to preserve majority resources, particularly in the upper echelons of status, while maintaining incentives for the minority racial populations to remain engaged in such a limited and punitive system (Reich 1981).

The compelling logic of this socioeconomic model of discrimination is that the more prominent minorities are in a labor force equally accessible to majority and minority populations, the worse their ultimate economic position at the hands of the majority. Secondly, that a ceiling of economic achievement and mobility will be imposed and maintained by the majority population to preserve economic status and resources as a function of the degree to which minority racial populations are perceived as threatening. Lastly and particularly, for example, in the U.S. market, discriminatory practices against minorities will most likely persist due to the increasingly large number of minorities in the workplace and their perceived threat to the economic existence and stability of the majority unless there are regulatory and other governmental remedies.

OTHER FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

There are several marketplace and non-marketplace forms of racial discrimination. For example, statistical discrimination is unfair or unequal treatment of a racial group because of stereotypes or generalized estimates of group behavior or assumptions about an individual within a group based on the “average” estimated behavior for that group (i.e., greater interest rates for home mortgages for African Americans due to perceptions of greater risk of loan default). Customer discrimination refers to the process by which the racial composition of customers of a direct-public-contact business influences the race of who is hired as an employee. Although customer discrimination occurs in businesses that serve white and black customers, this practice appears to result in some reduction in overall labor demand and wages for blacks (Holzer and Ihlanfeldt 1998).

Social discrimination is the process by which non-meritorious judgments are made and differential treatment is given based on estimates of lower social status or lower social class of an individual secondary to their race or ethnicity. Governmental discrimination, like any other form of racial discrimination, is committed by governmental personnel or in a government setting against an individual based on their race or ethnicity. This can be manifest as direct actions against an individual or as policies that negatively effect groups of individuals. The difficulty of defining and then distinguishing racial discrimination from other concepts such as “preference” or “choice” is highlighted by non-market forms of private discrimination. An individual, based on previous experiences, social norms, or preferences can decide to exclusively pursue or exclude members of a group for mate selection. When is preference for a race elevated to the level of racial discrimination? Is this form of private discrimination harmful? Who gains and, if anyone, who is disadvantaged by such actions? Answers to these types of questions are as varied as the individuals who attempt to answer them.

CONCLUSION

In the context of a growing list of psychological and physical morbidities associated with racial discrimination, and what appears to be consistent numbers of claims of discriminatory acts each year, there remains a robust interest in factors that influence equity of processes and outcomes. Some theories suggest that racial discrimination is pathological and is to be remedied with policies and regulations. Others suggest that marketplace factors should produce a form of equality and that there is no role for government in facilitating equality of process or outcomes. Independent of theoretical orientations for resolving racial discrimination, its economic, social, interpersonal, psychological, and physiological consequences are not in question nor is the degree to which it demoralizes its victims.

SEE ALSO African Americans; Civil Rights; Civil Rights Movement, U.S.; Colorism; Discrimination; Discrimination, Statistical; Discrimination, Taste for; Discrimination, Wage; Discrimination, Wage, by Age; Discrimination, Wage, by Gender; Discrimination, Wage, by Occupation; Discrimination, Wage, by Race; Disease; Ethnicity; Inequality, Racial; Latinos; Mental Health; Mental Illness; Prejudice; Race; Race-Blind Policies; Race-Conscious Policies; Racism; Stereotypes

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennett, Gary G., Marcellus M. Merritt, Christopher L. Edwards, and John J. Sollers III. 2003. Perceived Racism and Affective Responses to Ambiguous Interpersonal Interactions among African American Men. American Behavioral Scientist 47 (7): 963–976.

Blalock, H. M., Jr. 1967. Toward a Theory of Minority Group Relations. New York: Wiley.

Friedman, M., and D. Rose. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holzer, H. J., and K. R. Ihlanfeldt. 1998. Customer Discrimination and Employment Outcomes for Minority Workers. Quarterly Journal of Economics 113 (3): 835–867.

Krieger, Nancy, Pamela D. Waterman, Cathy Hartman, et al. 2006. Social Hazards on the Job: Workplace Abuse, Sexual Harassment, and Racial Discrimination—A Study of Black, Latino, and White Low-Income Women and Men Workers in the United States. International Journal of Health Services 36 (1): 51–85.

Merritt, Marcellus M., Gary G. Bennett, Redford B. Williams, et al. 2006. Perceived Racism and Cardiovascular Reactivity and Recovery to Personally Relevant Stress. Health Psychology 25 (3): 364–369.

Reich, M. 1981. Racial Inequality: A Political-Economic Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ryan, Albert M., Gilbert C. Gee, and David F. Laflamme. 2006. The Association between Self-Reported Discrimination, Physical Health, and Blood Pressure: Findings from African Americans, Black Immigrants, and Latino Immigrants in New Hampshire. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 17 (2 Suppl): 116–132.

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Christopher L. Edwards

Racism

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEOLOGICAL RACISM

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACISM AND REFLECTIONS OF RACISM IN THE PSYCHE

RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Racism is intertwined with discrimination in two dimensions. On the one hand, discrimination is a specific practice that can arise from racism. On the other hand, racism is a specific form of discrimination directed against a social group that is constructed with regard to physical attributes, for example the color of the skin or the hair type. To these physical attributes specific social features such as behaviors and values are ascribed, thus naturalizing social attributes. Privileges and disadvantages of groups are therefore grounded in nature and gain their legitimacy through this naturalization. The identity of a person is always dependent on the marking, the ascription, and the perception of others. Self and other are defined in a reciprocal relationship: Racism is a specific process of producing self and other (see Darity, Mason, and Stewart 2006). It is the praxis of a dominant group classifying and characterizing an inferior group. Thus some scholars argue that racism transforms political or economical interests into apparently natural facts. Because racism affects social relations, class and race should be examined together (see Hall 1980).

Racism is produced on different levels of societies. On the macro level, racism comes into being through institutional rules, guidelines, and processes of exclusion that are based on and justified by racist discourse. Examples are the Jim Crow laws in the United States, the Nazi regime in Germany, and the apartheid system in South Africa. On the micro level, individual racism comes into being through generalizations, stereotypes, and discrimination against the other’s everyday activities.

The phenomenon of racism existed long before social scientists defined the term. In the 1930s the term racism was first used by the German physician Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) to describe the ideology upon which the Nazis based their identification of the Jews as members of an alien, subordinate, and dangerous race, providing an ideological foundation for the Holocaust (for a wider analysis see Horkheimer and Adorno 1947).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF IDEOLOGICAL RACISM

Ideological racism developed from the processes of construing the human races as apparently homogenous and then building a hierarchy of these races on the basis of ascribed features. These concepts were developed in Europe in the eighteenth century in the context of the Enlightenment and the increased trust in scientific knowledge. Laws of nature were presented as the foundation for differences between social groups, and scientists tried to classify human beings according to categorizations developed in the natural sciences.

Some argue that these classifications based on nature replaced former classifications based on religion, following a trend to secularization. In contrast, Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown argued in Racism (2003) that the clash between the idea of biologically constituted different races and the religious belief that all human species descend from Adam and Eve and are therefore homogenous was harmonized by the claim that in response to human sin God damned the sinners and their descendents by distinctive features, such as black skin.

The main impulse to formulate racism as a theory came from French aristocrats striving to get back the privileges they lost in the French Revolution. According to them, the French aristocrats were descendants of the Franconian conqueror, so any restriction of their privileges was a violation of their inherited rights; this idea was formulated as “the legend of the Franconia” by the French historian Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722). Socially different estates in France became referred to as different “races.” In consequence, the privileges of the aristocracy became legitimized not only by the legal system, but also by what were presented as hereditary, physical traits. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolution (1863) provided further justification for this theory of the naturally grounded inequality of human beings. The adaptation of Darwin’s theory of evolution to society is called social Darwinism (see Hawkins 1997, Dickens 2000). Following this theory, disadvantaged races have their social positions because of their inferior qualities, and those inferior qualities are translated to inevitably lower social status in the common struggle for existence. The idea of a racial hierarchy based on nature became important during the colonization period beginning at the end of the fifteenth century when in the process of oppressing and exploiting Africans, Asians, and Native Americans the supposed racial superiority of whites was established (for a discussion of whiteness, see Bonnett 2000 and Allen 1994).

Racial inequality is a matter of scholarly debate. Some academics argue, with the help of recent genetic research, that there are more genetic variations within races than between them. In this view, races do not naturally exist, but instead are powerful social constructions of racist people (see Miles and Brown 2003). Adherents to this theory argue that there are no clear natural borders between the races; racism itself constitutes these borders and tries to maintain them by ignoring any exceptions. Two crucial aspects of the impact of racism emerge: On the one hand, there is the practice of defining an apparently homogenous group of human beings as a race by negating differences between the individual members of the group; on the other hand, it is essential that the differences between the social groups that are constructed as races are emphasized.

Other scholars argue that the reason for racism is not that there are different races. According to them, racism is caused by the ascription of specific attributes to the races, and they hold that by identifying races as an ideological effect the racial solidarity of the disadvantaged race is undermined.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF RACISM AND REFLECTIONS OF RACISM IN THE PSYCHE

Racism gets its full power by infiltrating people’s own specific perceptions. In the minds of both victims and perpetrators, racism is produced and reproduced with prejudices and stereotypes from the other and the own. It has been widely demonstrated that from the perspective of whites, blacks are seen as violent and criminal. Studies in psychology illustrate that the same behavior pattern is interpreted differently depending on the race of the actor (see, for example, Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, et al. 2004). From the point of view of whites, a positive action by a black person, like being smart and helpful, often is seen as an atypical event explained by special circumstances, whereas a negative action by a black, like committing a crime or an aggressive behavior, is seen as typical of the genuine personal characteristics of black people. For the actions of whites, the relation is reversed. Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson illustrated the harmful effects of stereotypes when they demonstrated that the mere presence of a question asking the race of those taking an academic test led to a distinct decrease in the scores of participating African American college students: The race question activated negative stereotypes and self-confirming mental representations of poor academic performance. In consequence, the test participants confirmed unwittingly the stereotype that African Americans are intellectually inferior. Different tests showed that the simple activation of race stereotypes had different effects on test performances, depending on the kind of stereotypes (Shih, Ambady, Richeson, et al. 2002).

RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES

Because racism depends on economic and political factors, it is important to point out that racism came into being in different forms depending on the historic epoch and geographical region in which it appeared.

Slavery Slavery came into existence in China, imperial Rome, and West Africa without relying on racist concepts. However, in the colonial period the ideology of racism was useful in circumventing any of the conquerors’ religious or moral considerations that would make all human beings equal before God and thus require that they be treated equally by man. Using racist arguments, white conquerors could justify slavery, the use of slaves as property, the destruction of their social and cultural identities (Patterson 1982), and their exploitation. This was possible because the conceived hierarchy of races presented the whites as superior to other races; from a racist perspective, human beings are not equal and therefore they can be treated unequally.

The main reasons for the growth of slavery were economic. Slaves were used as a cheap labor force and as a profitable trade good. In the United States the profits acquired through slavery were an important factor in the growth of the shipping industry and a source of surplus wealth for early industrialism. Slaves worked in households, in mines, and on sugar and cotton plantations in the southern states of North America, in Brazil, and in the Caribbean. Most of the 4 million slaves in 1860 were the property of a small upper class in the U.S. southern states, and for this elite, their own economic power was bound directly to their property of slaves. They justified slavery by identifying blacks as a weak race that had to be protected by the slave owners, who knew how to treat them according to their natural status.

Before the end of the slave trade in the mid-nineteenth century, between 11 and 15 million Africans were enslaved and transported to Europe and South, Central, and North America. Most of them were enslaved during the eighteenth century, and most came from the West African coast and from central Africa.

After the Civil War After the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) slavery was legally banned in 1870 by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Because there was no land reform most African Americans were solidly concentrated in the southeastern states, nominally free but economically tied to the same cotton lands and the same employers as before the war. Former slaves were still stigmatized and pressed into economic poverty. From the perspective of racist whites in the northern and southern states, African Americans were an inferior race without the right to participate equally in political and social life. After the end of slavery in the United States racism took shape in the oppression of the African American population and in defining them as a subordinated race.

Discriminatory practices continued in the United States; the Jim Crow laws (1890–1912) banned African Americans from public places, curtailed their educational rights, and allowed widespread violence against people of color, including the lynching of more than 3,000 African Americans in the southern states between 1882 and 1936. Clandestine organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan murdered and harassed African Americans.

The Twenty-First Century The civil rights movement in the United States led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending institutionalized racism in the United States. However, racism is still alive; the durability of ideological racism and the idea of naturally based inequality between races still is present in the attribution of social traits to racial groups. In consequence, economic and educational opportunities are still unequal between the races. African Americans are still put into a position of inferiority in the hierarchy of races; an expression of this is segregation in urban ghettos (see Massey and Denton 1993 and Wilson 1987). Racist discourse still exists and reproduces itself in the stereotypes; it is part of everyday discrimination, and it leads to different chances for access and participation in the contemporary United States and elsewhere.

SEE ALSO Discrimination; Economics, Stratification; Hierarchy; IQ Controversy; Prejudice; Race; Stigma; Stratification; White Supremacy; Whiteness; Whites

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Theodore. 1994. The Invention of White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control. London: Verso.

Bonnett, Alastair. 2000. White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives. Harlow, U.K.: Prentice Hall.

Darity, William A. Jr., Patrick L. Mason, and James Stewart. 2006. The Economics of Identity: The Origin and Persistence of Racial Identity Norms. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations 60 (3): 283–305.

Dickens, Peter. 2000. Social Darwinism: Linking Evolutionary Thought to Social Theory. Philadelphia: Open University Press.

Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Phillip Atiba Goff, Valerie J. Purdie, and Paul G. Davies. 2004. Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87 (6): 876–893.

Fredrickson, George M. 2002. Racism: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hall, Stuart. 1980. Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance. In Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, 305–345. Paris: UNESCO.

Hawkins, Mike. 1997. Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945: Nature and Model and Nature as Threat. London: Cambridge University Press.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. [1947] 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Miles, Robert, and Malcolm Brown. 2003. Racism. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge.

Patterson, Orlando. 1982. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shih, Margaret, Nalini Ambady, Jennifer A. Richeson, et al. 2002. Stereotype Performance Boosts: The Impact of Self-Relevance and the Manner of Stereotype Activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83 (3): 638–647.

Steele, Claude M., and Joshua Aronson. 1995. Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 797–811.

Wilson, William J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lars Meier

Racism, an ideology that views “race” as a fundamental human category rooted in nature and sees some races as inherently inferior. Racism in America has functioned as a means by which the white majority asserted its superiority and rationalized its dominance over Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African Americans. In the Colonial Era, European settlers often expressed racist views toward the native population, reinforced by religious beliefs in the Indians' satanic nature and God's mandate to the colonists to conquer them. Racist assumptions continued thereafter to justify white appropriation of Indian lands and even campaigns of extermination.

Racist ideas have long been directed against African Americans. When Africans were first brought to America, some historians argue, their treatment was roughly equivalent to that of white indentured servants. The large‐scale influx of Africans in the late seventeenth century, however, historian George Frederickson suggests, engendered fears that hardened prejudice into racism. As Virginia legalized slavery in the 1670s, racist ideas took deep root. Racism underlay not only slavery but also the African colonization movement, which arose in the South after Gabriel Prosser's slave uprising in Virginia in 1800. Supporters of colonization—the return of blacks to Africa—included such notables as Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. Discussing the peoples of North America in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Jefferson revealed racist notions, portraying African Americans as subhuman while idealizing Indians.

White racism so pervaded antebellum America that the free black leader Martin Delany (1812–1885) argued only that when blacks gained political power would it diminish. Southern religious leaders offered biblical defenses of racism and by the 1850s, an elaborate pseudo‐scientific racism, based largely on measurements of cranial capacity, was devised by the so‐called American School of Anthropology, which included the distinguished naturalist Louis Agassiz and the Mobile, Alabama, physician and ethnologist Josiah Nott (1804–1873). The U.S. Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision (Scott v. Sandford), declaring that blacks had no rights that whites were bound to respect, rested on a web of racist assumptions. Although abolitionist opposition to slavery threatened its racist foundations, many white abolitionists themselves held racist views and opposed social equality with blacks. Black abolitionists such as David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, and Frederick Douglass, by contrast, urged a struggle not only against slavery but also against the pervasive racism that underlay racial discrimination in the North.

Rooted in phobia and activated by the reflex of color, racism long survived its social construction in the slavery era. Post–Civil War racism found expression in the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror, in the spread of segregation across the South, and in the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson upholding racial segregation in schools and public facilities. Racist assumptions underlay the biased intelligence and psychological tests introduced in World War I, as well as historian Ulrich B. Phillips's American Negro Slavery (1918), long the reigning text on the subject. Racism also pervaded popular culture, including the blackface minstrel shows and D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915), celebrating the Ku Klux Klan and portraying blacks in hostile, stereotyped terms. Racism shaped the history of populism and American labor movements, since poor white farmers and workers, while sometimes joining interracial movements, more often identified with white planters and capitalists than with their fellow black workers.

Opposition to racism continued, however, as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP, 1910) conducted its long legal campaign against discriminatory laws and practices rooted in racist ideas. In addition, during the 1930s the U.S. Communist party mounted an impressive campaign to eliminate racism from its ranks. Its very success, however, militated against efforts to attract white workers, whose racist phobias are explored at length by David Roediger.

Meanwhile, immigrants who arrived in vast numbers from southern and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often embraced racist ideas as a way of identifying with the native‐born white majority. At the same time, however, nativists used racist language to attack the new immigrants. In The Passing of the Great Race (1916), the New York lawyer and philanthropist Madison Grant, drawing upon the work of the Frenchman Joseph Gobineau and others, stridently insisted on the superiority of the “Nordic” race over all others. Grant proposed immigrant restriction, racial segregation, and sterilization of the “unfit.” The term “race” was loosely applied in these years, and racism often blurred into anti‐Semitism and hatred of various ethnic and national groups. Racist ideology targeted Asian Americans as well, underlying restrictive immigration laws and the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II. Pervading anti‐Japanese propaganda, racism also surfaced in the Vietnam War.

But, on balance, developments during and following World War II provided the context in which blatant expressions of racism were reduced. The horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, labor leader A. Philip Randolph's call for a march of blacks on the nation's capital demanding fair employment in the war industries, and opposition to lynching by such eminent figures as Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein helped to discredit racism. Moreover, America's Cold War priority of recruiting allies in Asia and Africa, a diminished emphasis on race in the social sciences, and especially the militancy of the civil rights movement were changing the nation's attitude toward issues of race.

The civil rights movement gained inspiration from the school‐desegregation decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), in which the plaintiff's case, argued by Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP, included sociological evidence demonstrating the psychological effects of racism on black children. The Montgomery bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr., and the heavily publicized brutality of southern racists against civil rights demonstrators further discredited racism.

Racism did not disappear, however. The Mississippi novelist and Nobel Laureate William Faulkner in 1956, speaking of “blood,” “kin,” and “home,” declared that if necessary he would resort to arms to resist government efforts to end racial segregation. The Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 to investigate racial disturbances in northern cities, identified white racism as a central cause and warned that America was in danger of becoming two societies, one white, one black. As the twentieth century ended, some observers saw a declining significance of race, emphasizing class differences instead, and social scientists increasingly stressed the social construction of the concept of “race” itself. Nevertheless, as the nation's weakening commitment to racial justice threatened the gains of the civil rights movement, a renewed emphasis on inherent racial difference was evident in such controversial works as The Bell Curve (1996) by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, which claimed to find a genetic basis for racial variation in intelligence tests.
See also Antislavery; Communist Party—USA; Eugenics; Garvey, Marcus; Immigration; Immigration Law; Indentured Servitude; Indian History and Culture; Intelligence, Concepts of; Malcolm X; Minstrelsy; Nation of Islam; Nativist Movement; Populist Era; Race, Concept of; Race and Ethnicity; Riots, Urban; Slave Uprisings and Resistance.

Bibliography

W.E.B. Du Bois , Dusk of Dawn, 1940, reprint ed., 1984.
Winthrop Jordan , White over Black, 1968.
George M. Frederickson , The Black Image in the White Mind, 1971.
St. Clair Drake , Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, 1987.
David Roediger , Wages of Whiteness, 1991.
Alden T. Vaughn , The Roots of American Racism, 1995.

Sterling Stuckey

racism According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term describes ‘the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race’. The word itself is rather recent, probably going back only to the 1930s. There are two attitudes towards the concept of racism: one says that ‘racism’ is usefully applied only where it is derived from a perception of race and the ensuing fixation on ‘typical’ racial traits. In this sense ‘racism’ describes the racialist attitudes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, deriving from the merger of physical anthropology und ethnography on the background of the idea of evolution. Another school has argued that racism consists in intentional practices and unintended processes or consequences of attitudes towards the ethnic ‘other’. According to this line of thought, it is not necessary to possess a concept of ‘race’ to entertain prejudices towards other peoples.

As the term was coined in reaction to the rise of German Fascism and its antisemitic theory of race, ‘racism’ carries in itself the condemnation of what it means — it is true indeed that self-professed racists are very rare. Basically, racism lives in practice, not in theory; sociologists such as Michael Banton, therefore, have denied that the phenomenon of racism might be accessible to theory. Some theoreticians of imperialism have argued that only whites could be racists. Marxist thinking has tended to consider it as a corollary of the development of capitalist society. The sociologist Robert Miles, by contrast, has pointed out that pre-capitalist societies, too, afford manifold opportunities to observe racism. Concentrating on racism under the conditions of colonialism and in societies with a large contingent of foreign immigrants, Miles has put forward the suggestion that it must be regarded as an ‘ideology’. To rescue the concept of ‘racism’ from indiscriminate conflation with exclusionary practices, on the one hand, and from being tied up too closely with the nineteenth-century understanding of ‘race’, on the other hand, he has suggested that racism refers ‘to a particular form of (evaluative) representation which is a specific instance of a wider (descriptive) process of racialisation’.

The psychological precondition of racism is anxiety. On a sociological level it may be said that mobile societies and those experiencing great social changes are especially prone to develop some or other sort of racism: contempt of the ‘other’ provides a reassuring feeling of identity. Philosophically speaking, racism is the result of a world view that does not leave any conceptual room for the strange, the unknown. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has surprised his audience with his discovery that the Indians of Southern America possessed the very rare ability to accept the ‘other’. According to Strauss, the cosmogony of these Indians included the idea that the world was complete thanks only to the existence of other beings different from themselves. When the conquistadores arrived they were initially taken for this complement to Indian identity.

Racism has many faces; its particular expressions are dependent on the socio-economic, religious, and cultural situation of any given society. This versatility notwithstanding, the moral overdetermination of skin colour is one of its most conspicuous, ever-recurring elements. The Christian world has excelled at consigning dark complexion to the realms of the mysterious and the bad. In pagan antiquity, however, this was quite different: the stereotypes associated with black Africans were rather of a positive nature: blackness signified qualities such as wisdom, or the love of freedom and justice.

One of the earliest examples of what, in modern parlance, amounts to state-organized racism in European history was the persecution of the Jews in fifteenth-century Spain. In 1492 King Ferdinand succeeded in defeating the Arabs at Granada. Eight hundred years of Muslim rule in Southern Spain came to an end. In the wake of the victory, the Jews were expelled. Though converts to Christianity were allowed to remain, the enforced Jewish exodus signalled that the times were over when political rulers could tolerate the existence of the ‘other’ on their territory. This had been possible in the Roman Empire as well as in Greek city-states. Post-medieval, centrally governed countries, by contrast, had lost the will and the philosophical preconditions for putting up with foreign ethnic groups. Since the fifteenth century instances of organized racism have accumulated. The holocaust happened in a cultural climate of which it has been said that it bore many resemblances to the atmosphere in Spain at the time of the expulsion of the Jews.

H. F. Augstein

Bibliography

Benedict, R. (1983). Race and racism. Routeledge and Kegan Paul, London.
Miles, R. (1989). Racism. Routledge, London.
Banton, M. (1970). The concept of racism. In Race and Racialism, (ed. S. Zubaida). Tavistock Publications, London.

Racism

The belief that members of one (or more) races are inferior to members of other races.

Racism is most commonly used to describe the belief that members of one's own race are superior physically, mentally, culturally, and morally to members of other races. Racist beliefs provide the foundation for extending special rights, privileges, and opportunities to the race that is believed to be superior, and to withholding rights, privileges, and opportunities from the races believed to be inferior. No scientific evidence supports racist claims, although racism exists in all countries and cultures. The definition of racism has evolved to describe prejudice against a group of people based on the belief that human groups are unequal genetically, and that members of some racial groups are thus inferior. Sociologists distinguish between individual racism, a term describing attitudes and beliefs of individuals, and institutional racism, which denotes governmental and organizational policies that restrict minority groups or demean them by the application of stereotypes. While such policies are being corrected to eliminate institutional racism, individual racism nonetheless persists.

Scientists have acknowledged individual differences among ethnic and racial groups, citing the importance of environment in shaping performance and measurable ability . When test results appear to indicate differences in ability and performance that follow racial lines, the effect of environment must be considered in interpreting the results. In addition, tests and other instruments for evaluating ability may be biased to favor knowledge and experiences of one racial or ethnic group over others. Thus, test scores must be analyzed with great caution with regard to patterns of performance and their relationship to race.

By studying genetic patterns in humans, scientists have demonstrated that genetic differences between races are not very significant. As humans migrate from continent to continent and ethnic groups intermingle, racial categories will have less meaning, but prejudice is not likely to disappear.

See also Ethnocentrism; Eugenics

Further Reading

Balibar, Etienne. "Racism and Anti-Racism." UNESCO Courier (March 1996): 14+.

Dawes, Kwame. "Clothed Against Naked Racism." World Press Review (April 1996): 32+.

Jacquard, Albert. "An Unscientific Notion." UNESCO Courier (March 1996): 22+.

Wieviorka, Michel. "The Seeds of Hate: Racism and Nationalism After World War II." UNESCO Courier (March 1996): 104+.

rac·ism / ˈrāˌsizəm/ • n. the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. ∎  prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief: a program to combat racism. DERIVATIVES: rac·ist n. & adj.

racism Doctrine advocating the superiority of one human race. Racism has been the avowed policy of certain regimes that, as a result, sanctioned slavery and discriminatory practices, such as the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and the apartheid system in South Africa. In 1967, UNESCO defined racism as “anti-social beliefs and acts which are based on a fallacy that discriminatory inter-group relations are justifiable on biological grounds”.

RACE AND RACISM.

This entry includes four subentries:

racism •chasm, spasm •enthusiasm • orgasm • sarcasm •ectoplasm • cytoplasm • iconoclasm •cataplasm • pleonasm • phantasm •besom • dirigisme •abysm, arrivisme, chrism, chrisom, ism, prism, schism •Shiism, theism •Maoism, Taoism •egoism • truism • Babism • cubism •sadism • nudism • Sufism • ageism •holism • cataclysm • monism • papism •verism • aneurysm • purism • Nazism •sexism • racism • paroxysm • autism •macrocosm • microcosm • bosom