BLOG POST
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On an early May morning, 2014, I was fast asleep in a room in a house atop a mountain on the western edge of the Mojave Desert. There and then I had a dream. The otherwise busy dream featured a brief but vivid shouting match between me and Martin Luther King. No mistaking it was King. I was vaguely aware of what I was excited to share with my teacher [we never met in waking life], but the exchange did not last beyond this:
Me “I have something to tell you!” [delivered with some enthusiastic intensity] Martin “No, you listen to me!” [with escalated intensity] Me “No, you don’t understand!” [holding the intensity] Martin “No, you don’t understand!” [escalating a bit] |
Despite sociology’s longstanding interest in inequality, the internalization of racial oppression among the racially subordinated and its contribution to the reproduction of racial inequality has been largely ignored, reflecting a taboo on the subject. Consequently, internalized racism remains one of the most neglected and misunderstood components of racism. In this article, the author argues that only by defying the taboo can sociology expose the hidden injuries of racism and the subtle mechanisms that sustain White privilege. After reviewing the concept and providing examples of the phenomenon, the author draws on critical social theory to examine reasons for the taboo, such as a theoretical fixation on resistance, a penchant for racial essentialism, and the limitations of an identity politics. The author concludes by offering a method for studying internalized racism and resistance concurrently within the matrix of intersecting forms of oppression.
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Thomas, a Syracuse University art professor, is a part of Strike Debt. Strike Debt is a nationwide movement of debt resistors fighting for economic justice and democratic freedom. A little over a year ago, Strike Debt announced Rolling Jubilee. Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. They are trying to spark a movement that imagines and creates a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits . . .
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