During the crisis that followed Hurricane Katrina, many Americans
expressed surprise at the dramatic levels of racial inequality captured in
the images of large numbers of poor Black people left behind in devastated
New Orleans. In this article we argue that, to better understand both the
parameters of contemporary racial inequality reflected in the
hurricane's aftermath and why so many were surprised about the social
realities of racial inequality that social scientists have known about for
decades, it is essential to recognize the shifting nature of Whites'
racial attitudes and understandings. There is widespread evidence that in
the post-civil rights era the expression of White racial prejudice has
changed. In fact, during the post-civil rights era subtle and indirect
forms of prejudice have become more central to the sustenance and
perpetuation of racial inequality than are overt forms of prejudice. We
draw on both survey and qualitative data to investigate current
manifestations of White racial attitudes and prejudices. Our results
indicate that racial apathy, indifference towards racial and ethnic
inequality, is a relatively new but expanding form of racial prejudice. We
further show that Whites' systematic “not knowing” about
racial inequality (White ignorance), which was manifest in the reaction to
the crises after Hurricane Katrina, is related to this racial
indifference. Racial apathy and White ignorance (i.e., not caring and not
knowing) are extensions of hegemonic color-blind discourses (i.e., not
seeing race). These phenomena serve as pillars of contemporary racial
inequality that have until now received little attention. We conclude with
a discussion of the theoretical and the practical implications of our
results for understanding racial dynamics in the post-Katrina United
States.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM IN AMERICAN POST-CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN DEAR MARTIN BY NIC STONE (2017)