The Continuing Significance of Race: Antiblack Discrimination in Public Places

TLDR

Racial discrimination remains a major problem for middle‑class blacks, affecting them in homes, workplaces, schools, and public places, and is defined as actions by dominant groups that negatively impact subordinate groups, with cumulative effects shaping how blacks perceive interracial incidents. Since the 1950s and 1960s, black responses to discrimination have shifted from deference to vigorous confrontation, rejecting poor service and leaving rather than acquiescing.

Abstract

Racial discrimination as a continuing and major problem for middle-class blacks has been downplayed as analysts have turned to the various problems of the ''underclass.'' Discrimination can be defined in socialcontextual terms as ''actions or practices carried out by members of dominant racial or ethnic groups that have a differential and negative impact on members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups''. The black response indicates the change in black-white interaction since the 1950s and 1960s, for discrimination is handled with vigorous confrontation rather than deference. The black response to degradation here was not to confront the white person or to acquiesce abjectly, but rather to reject the poor service and leave. The sites of racial discrimination range from relatively protected home sites, to less protected workplace and educational sites, to the even less protected public places. The cumulative impact of racial discrimination accounts for the special way that blacks have of looking at and evaluating interracial incidents.