1
Hill 1
Kyle Hill
Professor Hill
ENGL 1A & 1AS
3 February 2021
Sample Unit 2 Reading Journal: “Racism Today is Subtle, Insidious, and Systemic”
● Dr. Quist-Adade’s thesis or central claim is that racism is even more a problem
today because people are scared to talk about it for fear of being labeled racist or
losing privilege, so they silently participate in a system that advantages some
and disadvantages others; he also emphasizes that racism is a social construct
that people have created to signal insiders and outsiders and that behaviors can
change – this is not a hopeless situation.
● Dr. Quist-Adade’s paper seemed logical and well presented to me. The one thing
that I did not observe Dr. Quist-Adade do in the paper was handling opposing
viewpoints. While Dr. Quist-Adade does cite sources in his paper, he mainly uses
his sources to support and illustrate his ideas, not necessarily challenge them.
It’s hard for me to imagine what those opposing viewpoints might be since I tend
to agree with Dr. Quist-Adade. For this reason, I think it would have been helpful
for me to see how others might argue against the idea that racism is subtle and
systemic just so I have a better idea of what the opposition might say.
● “For example, racism in the USA has ceased to be the avowed commitment of
Southern white supremacists. Now its INSIDIOUS form is an unconscious habit
corrupting legions of Euro-Americans, including some well-meaning ones among
them” (Quist-Adade).
Hill 2
○ Adjective: operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly
harmless way but actually with grave effect.
○ My cousin was ready to divorce her husband by the time she realized how
INSIDIOUS their daily quarrels and disagreements had become.
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After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support
systemic change to end racism. Will they now?
Author: Candis Watts Smith
Date: 2020
From: Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection
Publisher: Gale, a Cengage Company
Document Type: Viewpoint essay
Length: 1,359 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1330L
Full Text:
Article Commentary
“[W]hite Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support policies that have the potential to lead to
greater justice for Black Americans.”
Candis Watts Smith is an associate professor of political science and African American studies at Pennsylvania State University in
University Park, Pennsylvania. In the following viewpoint, Smith explores the principle-policy gap, which refers to the distance
between how people characterize their own values and their actual willingness to support social change. The author draws parallels
between the Black Lives Matter protests of the twenty-first century and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which led to
substantial legislation like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Though social attitudes have evolved over time, Smith
asserts that many white Americans still fail to understand the nuances and history of racism in the United States. Closing the
principle-policy gap, the author concludes, will require both sacrifice and action on the part of white Americans.
As you read, consider the following questions:
According to Smith, how has public perception of the Black Lives Matter movement changed since 2014?1.
What lessons does the author suggest that twenty-first century Americans can learn from the civil rights movement of the2.
1960s?
In your opinion, what can individual people do to help close the principle-policy gap? Explain your answer.3.
The first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement, which crested after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, had the
support of less than half of white Americans.
Given that Americans tend to have a very narrow definition of racism, many at that time were likely confused by the juxtaposition of
Black-led protests, implying that racism was persistent, alongside the presence of a Black family in the White House. Barack
Obama’s presidency was seen as evidence that racism was in decline.
The current, second wave of the movement feels different, in part because the past months of protests have been multiracial. The
media and scholars have noted that whites’ sensibilities have become more attuned to issues of anti-Black police violence and
discrimination.
After the first wave of the movement in 2014, there was little systemic change in response to demands by Black Lives Matter
activists. Does the fact that whites are participating in the current protests in greater numbers mean that the outcome of these
protests will be different? Will whites go beyond participating in marches and actually support fundamental policy changes to fight
anti-Black violence and discrimination?
As a scholar of political science and African American studies, I believe there are lessons from the civil rights movement 60 years ago
that can help answer those questions.
Principles didn’t turn into policy
The challenges that Black Americans face today do not precisely mimic those of the 1960s, but the history is still relevant.
During the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, there was a concerted effort among Black freedom fighters to show white
Americans the kinds of racial terrorism the average Black American lived under.
Through the power of television, whites were able to see with their own eyes how respectable, nonviolent Black youth were treated by
police as they sought to push the U.S. to live up to its creed of liberty and equality for all of its citizens.
Monumental legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed, purportedly guaranteeing
protection from racial discrimination in many public spaces and equal opportunity to register to vote and cast a ballot.
Additionally, whites were increasingly likely to report attitudes that many would now view as nonracist over the following several
decades. For example, white Americans were more willing to have a nonwhite neighbor. They were less likely to support ideas of
biological racism or the idea that whites should always have access to better jobs over Blacks.
But these changed values and attitudes among whites never fully translated into support for government policies that would bring
racial equality to fruition for Blacks.
White Americans remained uncommitted to integrating public schools, which has been shown to drastically reduce the so-called
racial achievement gap. Whites never gave more than a modicum of support for affirmative action policies aimed to level the playing
field for jobs and higher education.
This phenomenon the distance between what people say they value and what they are willing to do to live up to their ideals is
so common that social scientists have given it a name: the principle-policy gap.
White Americans’ direct witness of police brutality led to a shift in racial attitudes and the passage of significant legislation. But even
these combined changes did not radically change the face of racial inequality in American society.
Going backward
By the 1970s and 1980s, political leaders would capitalize on whites’ sentiments that efforts for racial equality had gone too far.
That created an environment that allowed the retrenchment of civil rights-era gains. The Republican Party’s so-called “Southern
Strategy,” which aimed to turn white Southern Democrats into Republican voters, was successful in consolidating the support of white
Southerners through the use of racial dog whistles. And the War on Drugs would serve to disproportionately target and police already
segregated Black communities.
By the 1990s, racial disparities in incarceration rates had skyrocketed, schools began to resegregate, and federal and state policies
that created residential segregation and the existing racial wealth gap were never adequately addressed.
From understanding to action?
Scholars have made efforts to reveal the intricate and structural nature of racism in the U.S. Their analyses range from showing how
racial disparities across various domains of American life are intricately connected rather than coincidental; to highlighting the ways in
which race-neutral policies like the GI Bill helped to set the stage for today’s racial wealth gap; to explaining that America’s racial
hierarchy is a caste system.
But my research shows that white Americans, including white millennials, have largely become accustomed to thinking about racism
in terms of overt racial prejudice, discrimination and bigotry. They don’t see the deeper, more intractable problems that
scholars and Black activists have laid out.
Consequently, it has taken a filmed incident of incendiary racism to awaken whites to the problems clearly identified by Black
activists, just as it did for previous generations.
My research also shows that individuals’ understanding of the problem influences their willingness to support various policies. A big
issue that our society faces, then, is that white Americans’ understanding of racism is too superficial to prompt them to support
policies that have the potential to lead to greater justice for Black Americans.
Attitudes and policies don’t match
Some have suggested that this second wave of the Black Lives Matter movement is the largest social movement in American history.
These protests have led local representatives to publicly proclaim that Black Lives Matter; policymakers, government officials and
corporations to decry and remove Confederate symbols and racist images; and congressional as well as local attempts to address
police accountability.
But, as after the civil rights era, the principle-policy gap seems to be reappearing. Attitudes among whites are changing, but the
policies that people are willing to support do not necessarily address the more complex issue of structural racism.
For example, polling reveals that people support both these protests and also the way that police are handling them, despite
evidence of ongoing brutality.
The polling also shows that the majority of Americans believe that police are more likely to use deadly force against Black Americans
than against whites. But only one-quarter of those polled are willing to support efforts to reduce funding to police a policy aimed to
redistribute funds to support community equity.
More whites are willing to acknowledge white racial privilege, but only about one in eight support reparations to Blacks.
Americans may choose to dig deeper this time around. Some state legislators, for example, are attempting to leverage this moment
to create more systemic changes beyond policing in schools, judicial systems and health matters.
But ultimately, Americans will have to overcome two intertwined challenges. First, they will have to learn to detect forms of racism that
don’t lend themselves to a mobile-phone filming. And they will have to recognize that dismantling centuries of oppression takes more
than acknowledgment, understanding and well-meaning sentiment. It takes sacrifice and action.
https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-
now-141954
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2020 Gale, a Cengage Company
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Candis Watts. “After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they now?”
Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints,
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/TGREEL614947152/OVIC?u=ccsf_main&sid=OVIC&xid=80cb4a25. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020.
Originally published as “After the civil rights era, white Americans failed to support systemic change to end racism. Will they
now?” The Conversation, 13 Aug. 2020.
Gale Document Number: GALE|TGREEL614947152
https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-now-141954
https://theconversation.com/after-the-civil-rights-era-white-americans-failed-to-support-systemic-change-to-end-racism-will-they-now-141954
