Historical anti-Black racism was substantially endorsed by Black Americans themselves.

Evidence

Similar to arguments proposed by Gramsci, Durkheim, and Moscovici, by the term consensuality we are referring to the degree to which “social representations” and social ideologies are broadly shared within the social system. However, within SD-theory the notion of consensuality is given a much more precise and focused definition than has been generally provided in the past. Among other things, we argue that the notion of “consensuality” is particularly directed at the degree to which HEand HA-LMs are shared across the continuum of social power and within both dominant and subordinate groups alike. For example, for most of American history, classical racism, or the belief that Blacks were inherently inferior to Whites, was not simply a belief held by most Whites, but arguably a belief shared by a substantial number of Blacks as well. Among other things, this implies that Blacks have endorsed anti-Black racism almost as intensively and thoroughly as Whites. This suggests that, from the point of view of system stability, the largest and most important component of anti-Black racism was not simply the beliefs held by Whites, but rather that anti-Black racism was shared by Blacks. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3222

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense, unsettling claim: oppressive ideologies derive their stability less from the dominant group’s beliefs than from subordinates’ internalization of them—a fact that reframes how system maintenance works.
• QUESTION: How is ‘consensuality’ across groups empirically measured? The claim that Blacks endorsed anti-Black racism ‘as intensively’ as Whites would benefit from data on how survey instruments distinguished internalized racism from strategic deference.
• XREF: Echoes Gramsci’s cultural hegemony and also connects to the earlier reading on hierarchy-attenuating mythologies in the book’s own framework; also touches the internalized-oppression literature in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks.