Journal article
Introduction: Racism of Omission
Social problems (Berkeley, Calif.), Vol.72(2), pp.331-340
05/16/2025
DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spaf006
Abstract
Racism, in both the popular imagination and academic conceptualizations, is often characterized as an act of commission. Scholarship sees racism as the actions of individuals, organizations, and states whose choices and policies disadvantage marginalized groups. Discrimination is conceptualized as actions that deny access to housing, work, schooling, or other resources, or as differential treatment once people of color gain entrance to white-dominated spaces. Studying racism as acts of commission has provided insight into the emergence and persistence of racialized exclusion. Yet, focusing disproportionately on commission may downplay long-standing claims about the “structural,” “institutional,” or “systemic” aspects of racism, which can be effectively reproduced through strategic inaction or omissions. This special issue inverts the dominant logic in the study of racism, arguing that scholars should pay greater attention to racism as an act of omission or choosing not to act. As the articles in this special issue show, conceptualizing the racism of omission provides a theoretical bridge between individual and structural accounts because once processes of racial exclusion are institutionalized, they are perpetuated through normalized inaction.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Introduction: Racism of Omission
- Creators
- Rory Kramer - Villanova UniversityVictor Ray - University of IowaEduardo Bonilla-Silva - Duke University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Social problems (Berkeley, Calif.), Vol.72(2), pp.331-340
- DOI
- 10.1093/socpro/spaf006
- ISSN
- 0037-7791
- eISSN
- 1533-8533
- Publisher
- Oxford Academic; CARY
- Grant note
- Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Fellowship
Thanks to Megan Underhill and Sarah Faude for feedback on an earlier version of this introduction. Special thanks to the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Fellowship for support. Please direct correspondence to Rory Kramer at the Department of Sociology and Criminology, Villanova University, 800 E. Lancaster Ave, Villanova, PA 19085, USA; email: rory.kramer@villanova.edu.
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 02/08/2025
- Date published
- 05/16/2025
- Academic Unit
- African American Studies; Sociology and Criminology
- Record Identifier
- 9984790972302771
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