Encyclopedia of Sociology

AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

current and future wealth. And such calculations
do not take into account the many other personal
and community costs of slavery, segregation, and
modern racism.

Research has shown that for centuries whites
have benefited from large-scale government assist-
ance denied to African Americans. These pro-
grams included large-scale land grants from the
1600s to the late 1800s, a period when most blacks
were ineligible. In the first decades of the twenti-
eth century many government-controlled resourc-
es were given away, or made available on reason-
able terms, to white Americans. These included
airline routes, leases on federal lands, and access
to radio and television frequencies. During the
1930s most federal New Deal programs heavily
favored white Americans. Perhaps the most im-
portant subsidy program benefiting whites was the
Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan in-
surance that enabled millions of white families to
secure homes and accumulate equity later used for
education of their children (Sitkoff 1978). During
the long segregation period from the 1890s to the
late 1960s, black families received much less assist-
ance from government programs and were unable
to build up wealth comparable to that of white
families.

WHITENESS DEVELOPS IN RELATION TO

BLACKNESS

From the beginning of the nation, the ideas of
‘‘whiteness’’ and ‘‘blackness’’ were created by whites
as an integral part of the increasingly dominant
racist ideology. The first serious research on white-
ness was perhaps that of Du Bois (1992 [1935]),
who showed how white workers have historically
accepted lower monetary wages in return for the
public and psychological wage of white privilege. In
return for not unionizing or organizing with black
workers, and thus accepting lower monetary wages,
white workers were allowed by employers to par-
ticipate in a racist hierarchy where whites enforced
deference from black Americans. Several social
scientists (Roediger 1991; Allen 1994; Brodkin
1998) have shown how nineteenth-century and
twentieth-century immigrants from Europe—who
did not initially define themselves as ‘‘white’’ but
rather as Jewish, Irish, Italian, or other European

identity—were pressured by established elites to

view themselves and their own groups as white.

Racial privileges were provided for new European

immigrants as they aligned themselves with the

native-born dominant Anglo-American whites and

actively participated in antiblack discrimination.

Today, whites still use numerous myths and

stereotypes to defend white privilege (Frankenberg

1993; Feagin and Vera 1995). Such fictions often

describe whites as ‘‘not racist’’ or as ‘‘good people’’

even as the same whites take part in discriminatory

actions (for example, in housing or employment)

or express racist ideas. In most cases, the positive

white identity is constructed against a negative

view of black Americans.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION TODAY

Racial discrimination involves the practices of domi-

nant group members that target those in subordi-

nate groups for harm. Discrimination maintains

white wealth and privilege. A National Research

Council report noted that by the mid-1970s many

white Americans believed ‘‘the Civil Rights Act of

1964 had led to broad-scale elimination of dis-

crimination against African Americans in public

accommodations’’ (Jaynes and Williams 1989, p.

84). However, social science research still finds

much racial discrimination in housing, employ-

ment, education, and public accommodations.

Many scholars accent current black economic

progress. In the 1980s and 1990s the number of

black professional, technical, managerial, and ad-

ministrative workers has increased significantly.

Yet African Americans in these categories have

been disproportionately concentrated in those jobs

with lower status. Within the professional-techni-

cal category, African Americans today are most

commonly found in such fields as social and rec-

reational work, public school teaching, vocational

counseling, personnel, dietetics, and health-care

work; they are least often found among lawyers

and judges, dentists, writers and artists, engineers,

and university teachers. Within the managerial-

administrative category African Americans are most

commonly found among restaurant and bar man-

agers, health administrators, and government offi-

cials; they are least commonly found among top

corporate executives, bank and financial manag-

ers, and wholesale sales managers. Such patterns