White Frames of Reference
Artifacts of pop culture are introduced as imagery to underscore the concept of internalization of the white frame of reference in America. This is a concept suggesting people of color become aware of racial distinctions earlier than whites and that, furthermore, white often don’t become aware of racial differences at a person level:
“If you lived in a primarily white environment and are having trouble remembering, think about Disney movies, music videos, sports heroes, Chinese food, Aunt Jemima syrup, Uncle Ben’s rice, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Columbus Day, Apu from The Simpsons, and the donkey from Shrek.”
White Solidarity
White solidarity is the term the author uses to describe an unspoken agreement among white people. This agreement is not necessarily to support and protect extremities of white supremacist thinking, but rather than the more mundane, but no less dangerous habit of simply refusing to point out racist thinking among whites in the exclusive company of whites:
“the big family dinner at which Uncle Bob says something racially offensive. Everyone cringes but no one challenges him because nobody wants to ruin the dinner. Or the party where someone tells a racist joke but we keep silent because we don’t want to be accused of being too politically correct and be told to lighten up.”
“The Blind Side”
The author deconstructs a very popular film which earned Sandra Bullock an Academy Award to reveal how its seemingly anti-racist imagery actually reaffirms widespread racist principles shared by much of white society. Although the film clearly never intends to forward these propositions, the breakdown of what is actually occurring on screen becomes impossible do deny:
“White people are the saviors of black people.
Black neighborhoods are inherently dangerous and criminal.
Whites who are willing to save or otherwise help black people, at seemingly great personal cost, are noble, courageous, and morally superior to other whites.”
The Changing Definition of Racist
The author points out how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s served to significantly alter the very understanding and definition of the term “racist.” Only after the nightly news broadcast the evidence of systemic racism and the obsessive violence enacted against black people by white law enforcement officials did the term expand beyond a very tightly restricted and constricted mode of operation:
“Racists were those white people in the South, smiling and picnicking at the base of lynching trees; store owners posting Whites Only signs over drinking fountains; and good ol’ boys beating innocent children such as Emmett Till to death. In other words, racists were mean, ignorant, old, uneducated, Southern whites. Nice people, well-intended people, open-minded middle-class people, people raised in the `enlightened North,’ could not be racist.”
