{"id":5403,"date":"2015-05-19T10:16:12","date_gmt":"2015-05-19T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=5403"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:16:32","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:16:32","slug":"the-persistence-of-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2015\/05\/19\/the-persistence-of-racism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Persistence of White Supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The battles of the past are not yet in<\/em> the past. Photo by Paul Walsh, 1987.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

In February, PBS\u2019s Independent Lens <\/em>series aired \u201cAmerican Denial<\/a>,\u201d a documentary examining the powerful unconscious biases around race and class that still shape racial dynamics in the United States. The film largely focuses on Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal\u2019s 1944 book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy<\/em><\/a>, comparing his findings about race relations in the Deep South during Jim Crow with more recent studies of racism and structural inequalities. Myrdal found that racism was not a \u201cNegro Problem,\u201d as his funders at the Carnegie Corporation of New York had told him, but a problem among whites perpetuating irrational fear of African Americans.<\/p>\n

Among the many prominent scholars interviewed in the documentary is sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh<\/a>, whose best-selling book Gang Leader for a Day<\/em><\/a> took an in-depth look at racial inequality and poverty within Chicago\u2019s most notorious housing projects. In the film, Venkatesh says of racism:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s anything but a \u2018Negro Problem.\u2019 It\u2019s a condition produced fundamentally by exclusion, racism, discrimination, and the unequal distribution of resources. I think it\u2019s really hard to say we\u2019re not actually doing much better on a lot of these questions about race, because the narrative is \u2018America gets better every day.\u2019 Well, what if it doesn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n

The film also recognizes earlier scholars of race including Frederick Douglass and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, noting that Myrdal\u2019s work was given more recognition that Douglass and Du Bois\u2019 because it came from a white European and was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.<\/p>\n

The documentary can be watched in its entirety here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In February, PBS\u2019s Independent Lens series aired \u201cAmerican Denial,\u201d a documentary examining the powerful unconscious biases around race and class that still shape racial dynamics in the United States. The film largely focuses on Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal\u2019s 1944 book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, comparing his findings about race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2025,"featured_media":5404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,14],"tags":[39112,470,39110,2901,39111,82,4291],"class_list":["post-5403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-race","tag-culture","tag-discrimination","tag-inequality","tag-institutional-racism","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-white-supremacy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/05\/Photo-by-Paul-Walsh-KKK.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5405,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5403\/revisions\/5405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}