Off white: colour-blind ideology at the margins of whiteness

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between racial contestation and colour-blind ideology adherence. Using the first nationally representative study to ask respondents directly about personal racial identity and external racial ascription, I compare the racial conceptualizations of contested and non-contested whites. Contested whites are individuals who identify racially as white, but who are perceived by others as non-white. Contested whites find themselves at the margins of whiteness, betwixt and between categories of racial dominance and racial marginalization. One might hypothesize that because contested whites are socially perceived as non-white, that they would be more aware of racial marginalization in social life, and would therefore exhibit more progressive racial views. However, this study finds that the opposite is true. Results of ordinal logistic regression analyses suggest that individuals placed at the margins of whiteness may seek to legitimate group membership as white by expressing similar and sometimes even amplified notions of colourblindness than their non-contested white counterparts.

Keywords:

• racial contestation
• racial misclassification
• colour-blind ideology
• whiteness
• group threat
• identity threat

Notes

1. Of the survey-based studies that have considered race as a multidimensional system of categorization, most have described the experience as ‘racial incongruence’, ‘racial mismatch’ or ‘racial misclassification’. However, insofar as race and ethnicity are often important elements of identity (Nagel 1994), this experience is also a challenge to one's sense of self. There is inherent conflict in this experience that previously used terms may not reflect. The concept of racial contestation helps to elucidate both racial incongruence and the emergent tensions between personal identity and external ascription that individuals respond to.

2. A grammatical note: I acknowledge that the racial categories ‘black’ and ‘white’ are not typically capitalized at Ethnic and Racial Studies. Roth (2010, 1288), in my view, convincingly explains why they should be:

Common grammatical usage does not capitalize these terms [“Black” and “White”], even though other racial categories such as “Asian” and “American Indian” are frequently capitalized, as are ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and other social constructions. I believe this grammatical exception is a holdover from a conception of race, and particularly of Whiteness and Blackness, as natural and generic, much like age and sex (which are also not capitalized). Yet it is clear that the categories “Black” and “White” are just as socially constructed as other racial terms. I believe it is appropriate for these labels to take their rightful place in our language with other proper nouns.

3. The political party measure does not meet the proportional odds assumption. See Appendix 1 for how this measure varies at each level of the dependent variable.

4. Pager and Shepherd (2008) provide a thorough review of studies on racial discrimination across many of these institutions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Vargas

NICHOLAS VARGAS is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, at the University of Texas at Dallas.