The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing

In this book sociologist Joe Feagin extends the systemic racism framework in previous Routledge books by developing an innovative concept, the white racial frame. Now more than four centuries old, this white racial frame encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology emphasized in other theories of “race,” but also the visual images, array of emotions, sounds of accented language, interlinking interpretations and narratives, and inclinations to discriminate that are central to the frame’s everyday operations. Deeply imbedded in American minds and institutions, this white racial frame has for centuries functioned as a broad worldview, one essential to the routine legitimation, scripting, and maintenance of systemic racism in the United States. Here Feagin examines how and why this white racial frame emerged in North America, how and why it has evolved socially over time, which racial groups are framed within it, how it has operated in the past and present for both white Americans and Americans of color, and how the latter have long responded with strategies of resistance that include enduring counter-frames. In this third edition, Feagin has included much new data from many recent research studies on framing issues related to white, black, Native, Latino/a, and Asian Americans, and on society generally. The book also includes a more extensive discussion of the impact of the white frame on popular culture, including on video games, movies, and television programs, as well as a discussion of the white racial frame’s significant impacts on public policymaking on immigration, the environment, health care, and crime and imprisonment issues.

Joe R. Feagin is a Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University. Feagin has done much research on racism issues for 56 years and has served as the Scholar-in-Residence at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has written more than 70 scholarly books and more than 200 scholarly articles in his research areas, and one of his books (Ghetto Revolts) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Among his major books are Systemic Racism (2006); White Party, White Government (2012); Latinos Facing Racism (with Jose Cobas, 2014); How Blacks Built America (2015); Elite White Men Ruling (with Kimberley Ducey, 2017); Racist America (with Kimberley Ducey, 2019); and Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education (with Edna Chun, 2020). He has received the American Association for Affirmative Action’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the American Sociological Association’s W. E. B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award, and Public Understanding of Sociology Award. He was the 1999–2000 president of the American Sociological Association.