Racist ideologies often originate outside the white elite and are organic to nonelite communities

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

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that Latin American racial ideologies are organic rather than elite-imposed is contested; worth chasing the primary evidence for who originated whitening discourse.
• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s hegemony and common sense concepts, and to debates about subaltern agency in racial formation. — connects to: Pre-existing white-supremacy folkways, projected onto new immigrants, powered southern and western nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 989; White neighborhoods needed outside elite intervention to preserve segregation, exposing hollow appeals to community. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 201
• DEEPTHINKING: This challenges a foundational assumption in critical race scholarship: the elite-imposition model of racist ideology. It reframes nonelites as co-producers of racial discourse, which changes how resistance and consent are theorized.