From Traditional to Liberal Racism: Living Racism in the Everyday
This article examines hundreds of entries in student journals collected at a university in the Mountain West and captures a striking contradiction between an articulated understanding of racism as “a thing of the past” and the reality of a persistent and pervasive racism. This qualitative study documents everyday racist events taking place in the life of students. These events are coded into either a traditional or modern “liberal” category to demonstrate the link between past and present race projects. The authors conclude that the contemporary “colorblind” discourse of the liberal era suggests an ongoing race project centered on the maintenance of white privilege. The mediating role institutions play between individual and structural relations of inequality implicates the university in the maintenance of white privilege.