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

Deeply embedded in American minds and institutions, the white racial frame has functioned for centuries as a broad worldview that maintens the systemic racism in the United States. Here Feagin examines how and why this white racial frame emerged, how and why it has evolved socially over time, which racial groups are framed within it. In the first edition, sociologist Joe Feagin developed an innovative concept - the white racial frame - to describe a white worldview more than four centuries old. This omnipresent worldview 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 embedded in American minds and institutions, white racial framing has functioned for centuries 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 white Americans and Americans of color, and how the latter have long responded with strategies of resistance, including enduring antiracist counter-frames. In this new edition, Feagin has included much new data from many recent research studies on framing issues related to white, Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Asian Americans, and U.S. society generally. The book also includes a more extensive discussion of the impact of the white frame on popular culture, including 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, housing, health care, crime issues, and artificial intelligence (AI).