it allows us to think of how CRT is a practical social theory in the way that it theorizes ‘about the social in defense of economic and social justice’ (Collins 1998: xiv). This dynamic is captured in the racialized social system approach.
Towards the racialized social system approach
The racialized social system approach is interesting because while it is linked to both the law and education CRT scholarship, citationally it is quite sectioned off from the rest of the CRT oeuvre. Thus, the name of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva – pioneer of the racialized social system approach – is not mentioned in Delgado and Stefancic’s (2001) introduction to CRT, or in the central edited collections on CRT in education (Dixson and Rosseau 2006; Ladson-Billings 2003; Parker et al. 1999). This is quite surprising given that the racialized social system approach offers a host of concepts that deepen the mission of the first two CRT ‘waves’.
As articulated by Bonilla-Silva, central to the racialized social system approach is the idea that racism is a structural phenomenon which provides material and symbolic benefits to those racialized as white.24 In this regard, Bonilla-Silva shares with the first two waves of CRT scholarship a definition of racism that goes far beyond acts of individual prejudice or bigotry, and instead seeks an analysis of racial inequality as having a material base which is reproduced via processes at the micro, meso and macro levels. Bonilla-Silva (1997) argues that racism begins with racialization – the process whereby society’s ‘economic, political, social, and ideological levels are partially structured by the placement of actors in [socially constructed] racial categories’ (Bonilla-Silva 1997: 469). This racialization of society leads to the formation of a ‘racialized social system’. Within such a racialized social system, Bonilla-Silva (1997: 469–70) clarifies:
The race placed in the superior position tends to receive greater economic remuneration and access to better occupations and/or prospects in the labor market, occupies a primary position in the political system, is granted higher social estimation (e.g., is viewed as ‘smarter’ or ‘better looking’), often has the license to draw physical (segregation) as well as social (racial etiquette) boundaries between itself and other races, and receives [...] a ‘psychological wage’.
Through this lens, the racialized social system approach gives us a threefold materialist definition of racism as involving:
1 the social construction of race,
2 the placement of racialized people into a distinctive racial hierarchy, and
3 the unequal distribution of societal resources across this racial hierarchy.
Part of the reason why this approach is so convincing is that it does not just leave us with this threefold definition, but also analyses how the realms of racialization and the unequal distribution of resources across the racial hierarchy are reproduced. To do this, the following concepts are invoked:25
First is the concept of racial interests, referring to how ‘whites […] develop a racial interest to preserve the racial status quo’.26 For instance, this may involve the sorts of realities described by Du Bois,27 where white workers sided with white capitalists rather than their Black counterparts, thus prioritizing the psychological benefit of being racialized as white.
Second is the concept of racial ideology, described as ‘the racially based frameworks used by actors to explain and justify […] the racial status quo’.28 For instance, in many countries, post-racial ideology – the belief that structural racism no longer exists – is used by the racially dominant to explain racial inequality away as being the result of non-racist events; this may involve ‘Black educational disadvantage [being] recast as Black students being “unacademic” […] and Black overrepresentation in the criminal justice system [being] reinterpreted as Black criminality’.29
Third is the concept of racial grammar, which refers to ‘how we see or don’t see race in social phenomena, [and] how we frame matters as racial or not race-related’.30 For instance, in the US we speak of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), but not of historically white colleges and universities (the existence of which necessitated HBCUs), and we have notions of ‘Black music’ and ‘Black TV’, but we do not have white inverses.31 Such a racial grammar, therefore, universalizes and invisibilizes whiteness in the racial structure, reproducing the situation whereby ‘Whiteness constitutes normality and acceptance without stipulating that to be White is to be normal and right.’32
Fourth is the concept of racialized emotions, described as ‘the socially engendered emotions in racialized societies’.33 Such racialized emotions form the basis for generating a sense of group membership in the racial structure, and act as vehicles for the formation and mobilization of racial interests. For instance, in the run-up to Trump’s 2016 presidential election, many white voters shared emotions of devaluation and non-recognition in the context of the US moving to a ‘minority-majority’ demographic.34 Not only did this allow for white people to strengthen their group identity through forming a collective emotional bond, but this emotive bond allowed for the successful implementation of a whole political project – Trumpamerica – built around redistributing value and recognition to ordinary white families.35
Fifth is the concept of the racialized interaction order, which refers to the scheme of unwritten rules for interaction between differently racialized agents (Rosino 2017). These unwritten rules for interaction have both spatial and symbolic extensions. Spatially, the racialized interaction order attempts to limit the face-to-face contact between differently racialized actors (for instance, via Jim Crow segregation in the US or Apartheid in South Africa). Symbolically, the racialized interaction order specifies idealized and routinized norms for how racialized people ought to act in front of differently racialized people; for instance, as highlighted by Garrett (2011: 13), in America Black people are taught to not ‘run through an affluent neighborhood for fear of being mistaken for the body of a thief’.
Last is the concept of racialized organizations. Existing at the meso level, racialized organizations achieve at least two things. Firstly, they exist as organizations – whether that be the workplace, state institutions, housing markets, schools and universities and so on – which ‘limit the personal agency and collective efficacy of subordinate racial groups while magnifying the agency of the dominant racial group’ (Ray 2019: 36). Through this dynamic, ‘the ability to act upon the world, to create, to learn, to express emotion […] is constrained (or enabled) by racialized organizations’ (Ray 2019: 36). Secondly, racialized organizations enable whiteness to be structured as ‘a credential providing access to organizational resources, legitimizing work hierarchies, and expanding White agency’ (Ray 2019: 41). In other words, racialized organizations allow for whiteness to be used as a property, or credential, to access certain resources, such as housing, jobs or university places.36
Through these concepts, Bonilla-Silva’s racialized social system approach thus expanded upon the central tenets of CRT laid out by Delgado and Stefancic to the following:
1 Racism is embedded in the structure of society.
2 Racism has a material foundation.
3 Racism changes over different times.
4 Racism is often ascribed rationality.
5 Racism has a contemporary basis, and is not fully grounded in the events of the past.
Internationalizing CRT: looking for the racialized social system approach
While the racialized social system approach seems to offer a set of useful tools that can be put to the trial of empirical research,
