The white racial frame: centuries of racial framing and counter-framing

TLDR

The white racial frame, a four‑century‑old construct, encompasses stereotypes, bigotry, ideology, imagery, emotions, language, narratives, and discrimination, and is deeply embedded in American minds and institutions as a worldview that legitimizes systemic racism. Feagin extends the systemic racism framework by developing the white racial frame concept and investigates its emergence, evolution, the racial groups it frames, its operation for white and people of color, and the counter‑frames and resistance strategies that have arisen. The book discusses the white frame’s impact on popular culture—video games, movies, television—and on public policy areas such as immigration, environment, health care, and criminal justice. The third edition incorporates new data from recent studies on framing issues concerning white, black, Native, Latino/a, Asian Americans, and society at large.

Abstract

In this book sociologist Joe Feagin extends the systemic racism framework in previous Routledge books by developing an innovative concept, the white racial frame. Now more than four centuries old, this white racial frame encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology emphasized in other theories of “race,” but also the visual images, array of emotions, sounds of accented language, interlinking interpretations and narratives, and inclinations to discriminate that are central to the frame’s everyday operations. Deeply imbedded in American minds and institutions, this white racial frame has for centuries functioned as a broad worldview, one essential to the routine legitimation, scripting, and maintenance of systemic racism in the United States. Here Feagin examines how and why this white racial frame emerged in North America, how and why it has evolved socially over time, which racial groups are framed within it, how it has operated in the past and present for both white Americans and Americans of color, and how the latter have long responded with strategies of resistance that include enduring counter-frames. In this third edition, Feagin has included much new data from many recent research studies on framing issues related to white, black, Native, Latino/a, and Asian Americans, and on society generally. The book also includes a more extensive discussion of the impact of the white frame on popular culture, including on video games, movies, and television programs, as well as a discussion of the white racial frame’s significant impacts on public policymaking on immigration, the environment, health care, and crime and imprisonment issues.