Racism persists without explicit racial language, operating through denial and apology

Evidence

These anthraxic racisms without the ostensive reference of racism exacerbate humiliation and degradation, debilitation and desecration, desacralization and distortion. They underpin torture in denial (“We don’t torture” even as “we” waterboard) and collateral damage under apology (“Sorry, we didn’t mean it, they got caught in the firing zone”). So as racisms have become more difficult to track and trace, more blurred, new targets and their rationalization have appeared. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1867

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Bonilla-Silva’s ‘racism without racists’ but pushes one step further — connects to the reader’s earlier work on moral panics over dress and the ‘conditions without the category’ pattern. — connects to: Race quietly continues to structure membership even where racial talk is silenced. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 290; Institutional apologizing without sustained action lets churches evade real racial reckoning — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 159; Apology-focused racial reckoning can sidestep demands for reparative action — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 166
• DEFINE: Introduces the concept of ‘anthraxic racisms’ — racism whose identifying reference has been erased but whose modes persist.