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

In this book Joe R. Feagin extends the systemic racism framework by developing an innovative new concept, the white racial frame. Now four centuries-old, this white racial frame encompasses not only the stereotyping, bigotry, and racist ideology accented in other theories of "race," but also the visual images, array of emotions, sounds of language, interlinking interpretations, and inclinations to discriminate that are still central to the frame’s everyday operation.

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 in the 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.

Joe R. Feagin is Ella C. McFadden Professor at Texas A & M University. Feagin has done research on racism and sexism issues for forty-five years and has served as the Scholar-in-Residence at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has written 54 scholarly books and nearly 200 scholarly articles in his research areas, and one of his books (Ghetto Revolts) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His recent books include Systemic Racism (Routledge 2006) and Two Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage (Routledge 2007). He is the 2006 recipient of a Harvard Alumni Association lifetime achievement award and was the 1999-2000 president of the American Sociological Association.