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Racism Without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. 214 pp. $68.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-7425-1632-6. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 0-7425-1633-4.
In Racism Without Racists, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva presents a passionate analysis of the colorblind language many Americans, especially white Americans, use to avoid talking about race and racism, and the unsubtle racism that bubbles beneath it. For his analysis, he relies on two surveys and consequent interviews. In one survey, 627 college students in different parts of the country participated, and in the second, 400 Detroit area residents participated. From the first sample, 10 percent of white respondents were interviewed, as were 21 percent of black and white participants from the second sample. A major limitation of the data is that only blacks and whites participated in the study, with whites accounting for most respondents and interviewees. In addition, it seems that most questions about race in the surveys and interviews related specifically to blacks and/or whites. These limitations are a point of frustration in much race and racism literature today. Constructing racism as a black and white issue only, or even predominantly, simplifies the nature of racism and disregards the ways that people of color from other racial and ethnic groups experience it today....