Review: Tacit Racism by Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck

With the relatively recent growth of groups like Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd by police, and the simultaneous emergence of white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys, there is the risk that the national conversation will focus exclusively on overt forms of racism. But the vast majority of racism likely occurs in subtle and inexplicit ways through everyday interactions. After collecting years of primary research on race relations and communication styles between groups, Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck, in their timely book Tacit Racism, explore fascinating and important racial dynamics in various situations, including conversations between strangers, workplace communication, and school interactions.  Many racial tensions and stereotypes, they conclude, come from fundamental misunderstandings of communication styles and preferences. They offer powerful examples of tacit racism, and outline basic strategies to help mitigate racism and racial tensions.

Each chapter of Tacit Racism deals with a particular context in which racism occurs, or helps to deconstruct basic stereotypes held between racial groups. The first chapter, in particular, lays out the most fundamental differences in communication styles by examining the conversations between various pairs of strangers: two Black people, two White people, and a Black and White person who are meeting for the first time and under observation. The chapter, aptly titled “’White People Are Nosey’ and ‘Black People Are Rude’: Black and White Greetings and Introductory Talk,” takes on those racial stereotypes by examining how people from particular races establish intimacy and connection upon meeting initially, and why those assumptions might develop.

Their findings established some striking differences in how Black and White Americans get to know one another, and why one group may find the other group’s approach unsettling. White people generally establish intimacy by asking status questions; that is, questions related to categories like marriage, work, home life, and children. Black people choose to protect this information and prefer autonomy and personhood. They see these types of forward status questions as “nosy” and perhaps even judgmental. Warfield Rawls and Duck attribute this to a kind of doubleness for Black Americans, who are able to see that Black and White worlds exists side by side. White Americans, they contend, do not see these two worlds and approach Black Americans with the same status questions they would ask other White Americans without reproach.

Because Black Americans are aware of an interaction order between races—that is, the assumed entitlements and structures of power in face-to-face interactions–categories may be a threat to personhood, and Black Americans see avoiding these categories as a means of intimacy and safety. As a result, they rarely ask other people about their status and instead focus on immediate surroundings. They might comment on the weather or traffic, for example, if they are chatting with strangers in a line or at a bus stop. But they would rarely, if ever, ask personal questions about another person’s work, home life, education, or family. Warfield Rawls and Duck describe an example of this phenomenon, which was shared by one of the Black women in their study. The young woman had just started teaching in a primarily white, wealthy private school. She described the students as nosey. Why? The students would arrive to class on Monday and ask the teacher, “What did you do this weekend?” The teacher, aware of her interaction order in this exchange, took this question to be inappropriate and as seeking private information. Moreover, she assumed they were making fun of her because they were White and rich, and she was poor and Black. Her reticence as a response to these inquiries could easily be perceived as rudeness, when in fact she was trying to protect her personhood in this interaction.

Warfield Rawls and Duck offer many more examples of tacit racism throughout the book s. Their methods of collecting data over years of focus group studies and observations varied slightly depending on the group or context, but often involved offering a “coat hanger” method devised by Harold Garfinkel (2002) in which they described a scenario and asked participants if they could relate and share similar experiences; in other words, themes on which participants can “hang” their stories. They used this method to collect data for Chapter Two, which focused on institutional racism, specifically how high-status black men experienced racism in workplace settings. The authors called this “Non-Recognition of identity,” and argue, “It threatens basic processes of sense and self-making, prevents mutual understanding, threatens the Black achievement of self, and forces the Black men we studied to take evasive action—which we call a ‘Null-Response.’”  Tacit racism in the workplace makes these Black men’s jobs far more difficult, especially when they are under-represented and face obstinate White (and often male) subordinates.

Black masculinity becomes the focus of the following few chapters, in which the authors explore the notion of masculinity in romantic relationships, Black men’s health, police interactions, and how masculinity manifests as Black men’s sense of responsibility for others. Through their studies and discussions with Black men, they uncover the complicated dynamics of Black masculinity, which White Americans might stereotype as aggressive, hypersexual, and even violent. The anecdotes offered by the authors’ focus groups paint a different and multifaceted picture of Black masculinity and what has shaped it. What many see as stereotypical Black masculinity is merely “a result of comparing Black masculinity to conceptions of masculinity that belong in the White interaction order.” Moreover, Black masculinity has developed as a response to a history of blocked opportunities, oppression, and overt racism. The reality is that Black men more often practice “submissive civility” as a way to achieve egalitarianism, and often will do tasks that are considered “feminine” in the home, such as cleaning and child care. This is in direct opposition to traditional tenets of White masculinity, which rely on the self-interested “Strong Man” ideal. In other words, Black masculinity is often misinterpreted and misread, and these stereotypes are reified by popular culture and news media. The reality is far more complicated.

The final chapters of Tacit Racism turn to other revealing contexts where racism occurs regularly: educational institutions and poor Black neighborhoods. Chapter Six, “’Do You Eat Cats and Dogs?’: Student Observations of Racism in Their Everyday Lives” expands to other racial and ethnic groups including Asian, Latinx/Hispanic, and West Indian/African. As the authors point out, that there is racism on college campuses should not be news to anyone. The big news, they claim, is that white students are “inundated by racist statements, observations, and jokes from their friends, roommates, and family members that they cannot escape from.” The horrific reality is that college students cannot escape the “constant daily downpour” of racism, which might result from a few different factors. For example, they may be encountering more diversity than they had in their home towns or in high school. They might be trying to establish their own politics or identity outside of their upbringing. Universities and campuses have unique cultures and politics, in which students find themselves immersed. As a result, they may become more racist themselves by going to college; that is, unless they actively censure and push back from that racism, which is often met with anger or rejection. Warfield Rawls and Duck call this “Race pollution,” and offer their students strategies for dealing with it and countering it in productive ways.

The final chapter takes on perhaps the most challenging and fraught racialized spaces: impoverished Black communities where “the physical dilapidation of rental housing, vacant storefronts, and the prevalence of empty lots all reinforce this perception of social disorder.” The authors bring up the “twoness”—the White perspective versus Black perspective—as central to the misunderstanding and misconception of what is going on in Black communities. For example, White Americans assume crime rates are astronomically higher in these neighborhoods when a large part of that depends on crime reports filed by the police and not necessarily the number of crimes actually committed; unsurprisingly, Black crime is reported far more than White crime, and Black people are far more likely to be ticketed for the same crimes than White people.

Tacit Racism is a timely and educational study of race relations, stereotyping, and communicative strategies between racial groups. It has much to teach us all about our racial assumptions and communicative practices. Since reading this book I have found myself considering many things in a new light, and questioning my own practices and assumptions. As a White female academic, I greatly appreciated the thorough investigation of various racialized contexts and how participants in the studies were truly given a voice. One anecdote in particular struck me. In the first chapter on introductory talk, a Black woman who lived in a wealthy White suburb and was on the board of directors of several White organizations shared an experience she had at a conference (an institutional space with which I am all too familiar as an academic). While waiting in the refreshments line during a break, a White conference attendee asked her, “What brought you to the conference?” What may have seemed like an innocent question struck the Black woman as presumptuous, as if she didn’t have a right to be at the conference. Reading this anecdote allowed me insight into her perspective, and revealed how a seemingly familiar and friendly interaction can seem strange and uncomfortable to some.

This book is an attempt to make seemingly normal interactions strange, and for good reason. Put simply in the chapter on student observations of racism: “The objective is to get White students to hear themselves—to become self-aware” (166). Tacit Racism, a timely and thorough examination of race in America, aspires to the same goal, and is an optimal resource towards that end, should readers be willing to engage with it.