Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T19:47:47.437Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reflections on a Funhouse Mirror—Racist Violence, the Protection of Privilege, and the Limits of Tolerance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

George I. Lovell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Jeannine Bell's Hate Thy Neighbor: Move In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing provides an account of racist violence as a tool for maintaining housing segregation that challenges perceptions of rising tolerance and demonstrates the importance of understanding racism as a structural feature of social organization. Bell shows how some perpetrators of move in violence deploy claims about “property values” as a defense against charges of racism. The use of such claims starkly illustrates how colorblind racism allows assertions of racial privilege to resonate as neutral articulations of rational self-interest. The desire to defend racial privileges persists as a significant practical barrier to racial equality even when tolerance increases.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , Spring 2017 , pp. 571 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, Jeannine. 2013. Hate Thy Neighbor: Move In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence, Kleugel, James R., and Smith, Ryan A. 1997. Laissez Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology. In Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed. Martin, Jack and Tuch, Steven A. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Bonilla‐Silva, Eduardo. 1996. Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation. American Sociological Review 62:465–80.Google Scholar
Bonilla‐Silva, Eduardo. 2003. Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. 2006 . Won't You Be My Neighbor: Race, Class and Residence in Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R., and Sears, David O. 1981. Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threats to the Good Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40:414–31.Google Scholar
Norton, Michael I., and Sommers, Samuel R. 2011. Whites See Racisim as a Zero Sum Game That They Are Now Losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science 6:215–18.Google Scholar
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. 1986. Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sharkey, Patrick. 2013. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1999. Residential Segregation and Differentiated Citizenship. Citizenship Studies 3:237–52.Google Scholar