Antiracists are cast as cultural elites out of touch with working whites

Evidence

Given how embedded whitening and the myth of racial equality are in popular thought throughout much of Latin America, it seems plausible that the elite appropriated elements of nonelite discourses when formulating these ideologies. Thus the historical development of racist ideologies advanced in the literature, that of elite discourses trickling down or being imposed on the masses, is likely too unidirectional. Such a causal narrative overstates the determinant power of the elite. To assume, as Gramsci himself did, that “common sense” is the “sedimentation of philosophical currents,” is probably a misreading of the genealogy of racial consciousness in Latin America. And as a result, scholars fail to appreciate precisely how organic these ideologies actually are and therefore misdiagnose, as in the case of Burdick above, the reasons why they resound so profoundly with nonelites. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3619 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Roots unearthed legions of racist ideas of backward Africa, of civilizing American slavery, of the contented slave, of stupid and imbruted slaves, of loose enslaved women, and of African American roots in slavery. The plantation genre of happy mammies and Sambos was gone with the wind. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1059 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A popular antiracist cultural work can discredit entrenched racist myths — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 1059; Symbolic elites drive the reproduction of racism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1068; Racist ideologies often originate outside the white elite and are organic to nonelite communities — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3619

Broader Connections

• Racist ideologies often originate outside the white elite and are organic to nonelite communities #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3619
• A popular antiracist cultural work can discredit entrenched racist myths #complicates (0.75) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1059