Racial gaslighting

ABSTRACT

How does white supremacy – the systemic covert and overt version – remain inextricably woven into the ideological fabric of the United States? We argue that racial gaslighting – the political, social, economic and cultural process that perpetuates and normalizes a white supremacist reality through pathologizing those who resist – offers a framework to understand its maintenance in the United States. Racial gaslighting is a process that relies on racial spectacles [Davis, Angelique M., and Rose Ernst. 2011. “Racial Spectacles: Promoting a Colorblind Agenda Through Direct Democracy.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 55: 133–171]: narratives that obfuscate the existence of a white supremacist state power structure. We trace the production of racial spectacles in Korematsu v. United States (1944) and Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Braden (1955) to highlight how micro-level individual acts are part of a macro-level process of racial gaslighting and the often-catastrophic consequences for individuals who resist white supremacy. A comparison of these cases also reveals different “functions” of gaslighting People of Color versus white people in terms of portrayal, exposure, pathologization, audience, and outcome. Although they occurred in the twentieth century, we argue that racial gaslighting is an enduring process that responds to individual and collective resistance. We contend that naming and clarifying racial gaslighting processes assist in building collective language and strategies to challenge this systemic violence and its manifestations.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial formation
• racial gaslighting
• racial politics
• racial spectacles
• racism
• white supremacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Angelique M. Davis https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0270-4055

Rose Ernst http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1803-9424

Notes

1 We use Ellinger and Martinas’ definition of white supremacy:

White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege. (1994)

2 Our definition of racial spectacles builds on our previous work on the subject. The addition of the overarching process of racial gaslighting illustrates the specific role of racial spectacles in this context.

3 Others also resisted the incarceration through the court system, such as Yosh Kuromiya and Gene Akutsu (Bannai 2005).

4 While this is the first case to introduce the concept of strict scrutiny by the Supreme Court to equal protection analysis, it was not developed until later cases due to the majority's refusal to acknowledge the racism inherent in these orders.

5 Fred Korematsu's biography, Enduring Conviction, discusses his decision to resist:

Fred said he knew remaining in Oakland had been wrong and that he had intended to turn himself in. One might wonder now, over half a century later, why Fred didn't tell Mansfield that he had done nothing wrong – that he, as an American citizen, had a constitutional right to remain free. Maybe he was scared or intimidated or both. Maybe he wanted to protect his [girlfriend] Ida. Most importantly, however, he, as an American citizen, did not have to invoke his constitutional rights to be able to exercise them. While Fred may not have asserted his rights in words, he had asserted his right to liberty by choosing to stay.  …  while not quoting the Constitution, he was seeking the freedom it promised. (Bannai 2015, 42)

6 Concrete state action can also include state omission or delayed action. For example, during the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, local public safety officials’ complicity and failure to intervene allowed white mobs to injure and murder hundreds of African Americans and destroy more than 1000 Black-owned homes and businesses (Oklahoma 2001).

7 The other racial spectacles include multiple trials, arrests, hearings, press coverage, and the like.

8 Though racial gaslighting illustrates how white supremacy survives, we are aware of possible critiques of a single axis analysis along racial lines. Rather than view this framework as following a single axis analysis, however, racial gaslighting invites intersectional and multiplicative understandings of domination and resistance precisely because the process is a binary of normalization versus pathologization.