Chapter One Excerpt for Is It Racist? Is It Sexist?
ONE
White People’s Judgments
Is this racist? Is that sexist? Why do you think so?
We spent years asking strangers these questions. We told Jack a story about a cop who shoots a Black teen after mistaking his cell phone for a gun, and we asked him if the story contained racism.1 A white, Southern, high school dropout, combat veteran, trauma survivor, and truck driver raised to embody traditional masculinity, Jack studied the picture that accompanied the story and then expressed ambivalence that leaned toward no: “It can be a simple mistake, whether he did or not. You don’t know anything. He could’ve possibly thought he saw a gun. But then, again, he could’ve said, ‘Well, my opportunity.’ You don’t know.” We asked the same question of Gavin, a tattooed pizza restaurant worker who is also a white, Southern, high school dropout, combat veteran, and trauma survivor raised to embody traditional masculinity. He disagreed with Jack. He thought the scenario contained racism: “I don’t think he would have fired at a white guy who was pointing his phone at him.”
We told them another story: a Mexican American man dies because he is taken to a hospital that doesn’t have the cardiac equipment necessary to save him from a heart attack, while a white man lives because he is taken to a hospital that does have this equipment. The doctors tried their best to save each man. Is there racism in this story? Again, Jack said no: “If you read the statement, it said doctors tried their best to save both of them. So, I mean, where would it be?” Again, Gavin said yes: “I think it is about systemic racism. The white man probably lives in a more affluent neighborhood, which probably gets more donations and grants versus the minority hospital, which probably has a lot more emergency room visits that don’t pay.”
We asked about situations with potential sexism too. In one, a husband and wife apply for jobs after the wife has been out of the workforce for two years to care for their baby. They both receive the same job with the same company, but the husband is offered a higher salary than his wife. Is this story about sexism? Again, Jack leaned toward no, the story is not about sexism: “Does the husband have more experience? Is he better qualified? Is he better trained? Is his work record better than hers? You have to look at the pros and cons. Now, it could be the fact that she was a female that he got more. It just depends.” Again, Gavin leaned toward yes, the story is about sexism: “It’s just two years of more experience in the same stuff. That shouldn’t equate to a higher salary.”
It’s not just Jack and Gavin who confront questions like these or who disagree. Americans are asked such questions repeatedly. Are affirmative action, public set-asides for Black-owned businesses, and reparations racist because they prioritize helping some racial groups, or are they antiracist because they work to rectify past racial injustices?2 Are stop-and-frisk, expanded authority for immigration officers, the denial of cash bail, and the illegality of marijuana in some states racially neutral policies because they apply to everyone, or are they racist policies because they disproportionately harm people of color?3 How about a white child’s Pocahontas costume, the passing over of actresses of color at the Oscars, or a CEO’s promise to hire more people of color—are any of these racist? The University of California Berkeley created a policy that asks hiring agents to penalize any applicant for a teaching position who “explicitly states the intention to ignore the varying backgrounds of their students and ‘treat everyone the same.’”4 Is the policy racist for asking applicants to treat people of different races differently or antiracist for acknowledging racial differences in typical life experiences? And what’s the best way to combat racism? Is the best way to stop discriminating on race to stop discriminating on race, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts suggested?5 Or, as the former Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and Thurgood Marshall proposed, do we need to treat people unequally to achieve equality?6
Similar questions arise around sexism, though less often and sometimes with less fervor. Is it sexist against women that the country lacks paid maternity leave and free contraception?7 Is it sexist to pay English professors less than physics professors at the same university when the former are mostly women and the latter are mostly men, or is it not sexist because they are doing different jobs?8 Is it sexist that boys and girls are marketed different toys,9 that boys’ sports receive more resources than girls’,10 or that some school dress codes have or enforce more rules for girls than boys?11 Is it sexist against men that courts give shorter criminal sentences to women than to men,12 or that some colleges limit men’s due process after being accused of sexual assault?13 Solutions to sexism again depend on one’s views. Should we do nothing, as most claims of sexism are overblown? Or should we change our ideas, interactions, and institutions to give women and men more equal opportunities?
We’re all asked to make decisions about what’s racist, what’s sexist, and what’s not—to make judgment calls. No matter which judgment calls we issue, in our polarized political climate, millions of Americans make the opposite ones.14 Such differences leave many people confused about how what’s obvious to them isn’t always obvious to others, and sometimes angry as well. After all, much is at stake in making the right call.
The stakes are high because judgment calls help identify differential treatment by race and gender, including differential treatment that contributes to unfair inequalities. Such inequalities are common in contemporary America, even as they are neither natural nor inevitable. Instead, they are created and maintained at three overlapping levels: institutional, interactional, and ideological. Institutions can create inequality through their policies, rules, and routines, such as when precincts police Black neighborhoods with little crime more heavily than white ones,15 when manufacturers place their toxic waste in places where the pollution disproportionately affects Black and brown people,16 when religious organizations prohibit women from taking their most prestigious jobs,17 and when banks set policies that favor men in setting credit limits and approving business loans.18 Interactions also create racial and gender inequality, doing so, for example, when real estate agents direct residents to different neighborhoods according to their race,19 when promotion committees decide together that Asian Americans are unfit for leadership positions,20 when managers suggest women apply only for lower-paying “women’s jobs,”21 or when school officials call mothers more than fathers to talk about their children.22 Ideologies also matter for inequality.23 As packages of ideas about what is true, what used to be true, and what could become true, ideologies shape views about what institutional and interactional changes are necessary, if any.
Judgment calls challenge or sustain inequalities at each level. Identifying an institutional rule or an interaction as racist or sexist is a morally charged way of calling for it to change; doing this for the real sources of inequalities helps root them out while also spreading a reality-based ideology about their extent and nature. But many people deny or misidentify these inequalities’ true sources. Denying that institutions and interactions are racist or sexist when they produce unfair inequalities by race or gender causes harm. Such denials let them continue unabated, all while spreading a false message that these real problems don’t exist. But even those who acknowledge that racism or sexism are widespread problems may sometimes exaggerate or misidentify the sources of unfair inequalities. This distracts attention from their real drivers, creating a lesser but arguably still significant setback in the fight for equality.
Individuals’ judgment calls ripple through our society, aggregating up to create a more or less fair social order.24 In this way, everyone’s judgment calls matter. But white people’s judgment calls are particularly impactful. White people hold disproportionate institutional power; they hold the most leadership roles in places where rules are created and enforced, such as in government, business, media, schools, and courts of law.25 White people are also the largest racial group,26 so they are part of the most interactions that matter for inequality. Their size also gives them the most power to spread racial and gender ideologies. They tell their children, colleagues, and companions what they believe is racist, sexist, and not.
But it’s not just their institutional and numerical power that makes white people’s judgment calls vital to understand, it’s also that their views are increasingly up for grabs. From the 1980s until the early 2000s, most white people tended to hold stable views of what’s racist and sexist. Since then large numbers of white people have begun to change their minds.27 People of all races noticed this change, and some have increased their efforts to win white people to their side. Some have advised white people to recognize their white privilege, end their “white fragility,” and become antiracists; to quit mansplaining and stop perpetuating rape culture; and to join movements for social justice.28 Some white people have pushed in the other direction, banning books they believe sow racial or gender division, defunding diversity initiatives, defending sexual harassers, and rallying to keep Confederate statues in place.29 At least for a time, it seemed as though everyone thought their side could win if they convinced more white people to adopt their views. But as white people increasingly split,30 no one was quite sure how or why some white people saw the world so differently than others, or what to do to convince others to make the “right” judgment calls.
So how do white people decide what’s racist and sexist? What thought processes lead them to disagree? And what drives the difference?31 We asked ourselves these questions at a moment when the stakes were high, after the country elected a president that half of white Americans believed was racist and sexist and that half did not.32 Determined to find answers, we posted ads on occupational listservs, Craigslist, and social media sites, offering to pay people to participate in the American Lives and Viewpoints Study, a purposefully vague title meant to attract both people who think about racism and sexism and those who don’t. Of those who responded,33 we talked to white working-class people and white professionals,34 white Southerners and white Northerners,35 white men and white women, white conservatives and white liberals,36 all of whom were middle-aged voters born after the civil rights movement and second-wave feminism.37 We met them at fast-food restaurants, coffeehouses, ice cream shops, their living rooms, their front porches, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, on Zoom or FaceTime, and asked about their life stories and then about racism and sexism. Did they notice racism and sexism in their own lives or on the news, and how did they determine that’s what happened? Had they ever thought something wasn’t racist or sexist that other people said was? Did they know of any organizations, rules, and laws that were racist or sexist, and what made them so? We also presented them with various public controversies and cartoon vignettes and then asked: “Is this racist? Is this sexist? Why or why not?” Altogether, we talked to over 125 people.
From these conversations, we offer new insights into how white people make decisions about what’s racist, what’s sexist, and what’s not. We show how people like Jack and Gavin arrive at different conclusions, what lies behind their differences, and how some white people’s judgment calls do more to create an equal society than others. We also hope our book helps you answer a question: How can all of us better identify the factors that do unfairly increase inequality, while not sustaining accusations against people and processes that don’t?
Notes
1. All names are pseudonyms.
2. For more on this debate, see Eligon (2021); Mitchell and Malveaux (2021).
3. For more on this debate, see Bedi (2020); Cardella (2020); Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang (2018); Pagano (2021); Seminara (2018).
4. University of California Berkeley (2021)
5. Demby (2014)
6. Caplan (2015); New York Times (1985)
7. For an example of these debates, see Divito (2021).
8. Flaherty (2020)
9. Auster and Mansbach (2012)
10. A. Wilson (2022)
11. For more on this debate, see S. Jones (2018) and Zhou (2015).
12. Mustard (2001); Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee (2006)
13. Barthélemy (2020); McNeely (1998); Men’s Rights (2021)
14. See, for example, the HuffPost/YouGov (2019) survey and the Morning Consult and Politico (2018) poll that find divides about whether Americans think Donald Trump is racist and sexist, the HuffPost/YouGov (2020) survey on whether Confederate symbols are racist, and the Ipsos (Newall and Machi 2020) poll on whether institutional racism exists.
15. Grunwald and Fagan (2019)
16. Tessum et al. (2019)
17. Masci (2014)
18. Hao (2019); Prakash (2020)
19. Korver-Glenn (2018)
20. Gee and Peck (2018)
21. Fernandez and Mors (2008)
22. Brush et al. (2018); Buzard, Gee, and Stoddard (2023)
23. Variations of these three levels are broadly known to matter for the perpetuation of inequality (Acker 1992; Adams et al. 2023; C. P. Jones 2000; Lorber 1994; Risman 2004).
24. These claims are based in symbolic interactionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Blumer 1969).
25. White people form the majority of voters, educators, journalists, publishers, lawyers, judges, human resources managers, and CEOs (US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019). We say “white people” rather than “white men” as some of these industries are dominated by white women (US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019).
26. N. Jones et al. (2021); US Census Bureau (2021b)
27. Engelhardt (2020); Jardina and Ollerenshaw (2022); Scarborough, Sin, and Risman (2019); Yglesias (2019)
28. DiAngelo (2018); Friedersdorf (2020); Kendi (2017, 2019); Solnit (2014); Stollznow (2021)
29. HuffPost/YouGov (2020); Liptak (2017); López Restrepo (2023); Mckay (2023); Tolentino (2018)
30. Engelhardt (2020); Jardina and Ollerenshaw (2022); Scarborough, Sin, and Risman (2019); Yglesias (2019)
31. Other research on white people’s views centers on whether they subscribe to older and more explicit forms of racism and sexism versus newer and more subtle kinds, racial color-blindness versus racial consciousness, gender traditionalism versus egalitarianism, and individual versus institutional attributions for inequalities (L. Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997; Bonilla-Silva 2018; Kinder and Sears 1981; Kluegel and Smith 1986; Scarborough, Sin, and Risman 2019). While these frameworks are helpful, they do not tell us what white Americans think racism and sexism are; which specific incidents they see as racist, sexist, or neither; why white people like Jack and Gavin look at the same incident and come to different conclusions about it; or how these broad views feed into judgments of more discrete issues and events. None of these questions are self-evident, as is apparent by the extent of dissension, both among white people and more broadly.
32. Morning Consult and Politico (2018); Rasmussen Reports (2018)
33. We recruited respondents until about an eighth of our sample fit into each of the following groups: working-class Republican-leaning men; working-class Republican-leaning women; working-class Democratic-leaning men; working-class Democratic-leaning women; professional, middle-class Republican-leaning men; professional-middle-class Republican-leaning women; professional middle-class Democratic-leaning men; and professional middle-class Democratic-leaning women. Though we include respondents who identify as independents in our analysis, for the sake of recruiting, we classified independents according to the political party they supported in the last presidential election.
34. We defined working class as not having a professional job or four-year college degree, and we defined professional middle-class as having both a professional job and at least a four-year college degree. Those with mixed class indicators were left out of the analysis.
35. Northerners are located in New England, with a few also in the mid-Atlantic and Ohio. Southerners are located in North Carolina.
36. We defined political affiliations by self-reports. When recruiting respondents, we also checked respondents’ self-identifications against their party registration when we could. For our North Carolina respondents, this was possible because party registration is public. In many New England states, party registration is not public, so we relied on self-reports alone.
37. Our respondents were thirty-five to fifty-nine years old at the time of the interview.