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The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing AUTHOR: JOE R. FEAGIN ROUTLEDGE, 2010 PRICE: $26.95 ISBN :978-0-41 5-99439-2
Racial and ethnic studies is still a rather young area of specialization in the world of academia. Outside of early African American scholars, the shift to focusing on "whiteness" as related to the oppressing group is still a more recent endeavor among the predominantly white governed institutional milieus of scholarship. Over the last two decades the Uterature on whiteness has only begun to take on theoretical form and more recent literature has focused on institutional and systemic racism. Though lacking in the field is a robust grounded theory on how whiteness is firmly nested in the psyche of U.S society and why it is so resistant to change. The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Framing and Counter-Framing corrects for this deficiency through exemplifying how white framing operates and is reproduced across generations through both the psychology of individuals and society. This book further addresses framing dimensions and divisions that serve to either reinforce or resist the white racial frame. This theoretical piece undergirds prior Uterature through contextualizing the psychology of institutional and systemic racism, which consequently has expanded globally at an excelled rate through technological advancements and neo-colonialism.
Chapter One introduces the theoretical definition of the white racial frame, which can be best understood in conjunction with the term "perspectival frame" used in various disciplines. Framing in this context typically refers to deeply embedded information that serves to interpret and translate perceptions of reality in the minds of people and collective groups. The white racial frame, however, is a broader theoretical conception that encompasses racialized phenomena and includes: racial stereotypes; racial narratives; racial images; racialized emotions; and incUnations to discriminatory actions. Through systemic racism, the white racial frame permeates virtually all social dimensions of American society and inevitably impacts all people through upholding white privilege at the ongoing cost of oppressing and subordinating groups of color.
Chapter Two illustrates how the U.S. legal system was central in securing the systemic racist foundation responsible for implementing and regulating the white racial frame into contemporary times. Conveniently the Supreme Court was erected and composed of white male justices and this new legal system made no hesitation...