Article Intersectionality as a Useful Tool Anti-O.docx

Article
Intersectionality as a Useful Tool:
Anti-Oppressive Social Work
and Critical Reflection
Tina Mattsson
1
Affilia: Journal of Women and Social
Work
2014, 29(1) 8-17
ª The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0886109913510659
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Abstract
This article introduces intersectionality as a usable tool for
critical reflection, which as a part of the
critical social work tradition aims to challenge oppression and
inequality. It is argued that in critical
reflection, oppression and injustice are often understood in
general terms and that oppression and
inequalities related to gender, sexuality, class, and race
therefore risk being neutralized and
undetected. The suggestion is made that by using an
intersectional approach, which focuses the
interplay and complexity between gender, sexuality, class, and
race, critical reflection gets the
capacity to keep central power relations in urgent focus.
Keywords
anti-oppressive social work, critical social work, critical
reflection, intersectionality, oppression
Introduction: Oppression and Critical Social Work
Critical and radical social work has been occupied with
oppression and the ways through which
social structures shape social work practice since the 1960s. It
criticizes traditional social work for
maintaining and reinforcing oppression and inequality, as social

problems are usually understood as
an effect of the individual’s lack of ability to cope with
everyday life. By the view of critical social
workers and researchers, social work should be a practice with
an ambition to challenge inequality,
marginalization, and oppression at a structural level by using
structural understandings of social
problems (Adams, Dominelli, & Payne, 2002; Bailey & Brake,
1975; Dominelli, 2002; Pease &
Fook, 1999; Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005).
The interest in critical and anti-oppressive social work has
increased during the last decades, and
several critical social work theorists have stressed the need for
critical perspectives in a world
affected by and dependent on globalization and market economy
(Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002;
Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004; Stepney, 2005). Globalization
creates economical standardization and
increasing economical dependency between states. At the same
time, it increases Western, industria-
lized countries’ monopolies of technological, financial,
communications, and weaponry resources.
1

School of social work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Corresponding Author:
Tina Mattsson, School of social work, Lund University, Box 23,
SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden.
Email: [email protected]
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Mattsson 9
Within this context, governmental power is eroding and
democratic control over policy is decreased
as transnational corporations and international banks are
becoming stronger (Dominelli, 2002; Fink,
Lewis, & Clarke, 2001; Fook, 2002; Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004;
Stepney, 2005). Neoliberal prin-
ciples have become dominant and affect the conditions of social
work practice as the welfare states’
services are minimalized. For example, in Sweden, the public
monopoly of welfare services has been
replaced by freer forms and has been exposed to competition
between social services producers. The

social security system is confined and excludes a growing
number of people. These changes are
hardly unproblematic, as they result in increasing social
exclusion, poverty, and marginalization
(Hö jer & Forkby, 2011; Schierup & Å lund, 2011). For critical
social work practice, which aims
to challenge oppression and injustice, these changes implicate
growing demands on usable tools for
critical practice and for the critical social worker in Sweden, as
well in other Western societies.
Critical reflection has been developed as part of this need and
aims to bring knowledge of how
social structures affect social work practice (Brookfield, 2009;
Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002).
Critical theorists have introduced reflection as a way for the
social worker to develop awareness
of how she and social work practice uphold oppression as part
of an unreflective, everyday practice.
By understanding oppression as a result of ordinary people’s
unconscious thoughts and feelings, it is
possible to emphasize how oppression and injustice are upheld
not first and foremost by outspoken
racism, homophobia, or sexism, but by actions, thoughts, and
feelings in everyday life (Essed, 1996;

Young, 1990). For example, as Young (1990) explains,
oppression might be understood as:
. . . the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a
consequence of often unconscious assumptions
and reactions of well meaning people in ordinary interactions,
media, and cultural stereotypes, and struc-
tural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market
mechanisms—in short, the normal processes of
everyday life. (Young, 1990, p. 21)
For social work practice, this implies that a social worker might
uphold and reproduce social
structures and oppression even though they might just be doing
their job with good intentions.
Critical reflection deals with this challenge and focuses on the
social worker and her unconscious
assumptions and actions as part of reinforcing and maintaining
oppression. By critical reflection, the
social worker is getting knowledge and insights of how social
structures work in everyday life, and
therefore becomes capable of working against oppression and
injustice (Brookfield, 2009; Domi-
nelli, 2002; Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mattsson,

2010; Morley, 2004; Pitner & Sakamoto,
2005). In this article, I will argue that critical reflection is an
important but challenging approach to
social work. In the tradition of critical reflection, oppression
and inequality are understood and
explained in general terms, and gender, sexuality, class, and
race are not emphasized as central cate-
gories of oppression and injustice. They therefore risk being
unrecognized and neutralized when
critical reflection is used in practice, especially since it is often
particularly challenging to visualize
oppression and inequality that relates to the social worker
herself, her professional role and her
private life, and not just to the client’s vulnerability and
exclusion. As a critical and anti-
oppressive practice, social work needs a usable tool to be able
to stay focused on gender, sexuality,
class, and race to be able to visualize and understand oppression
and injustice. Combing critical
reflection and intersectionality might be a useful premise for
this purpose.
Intersectionality: Oppression as Complexity
Intersectionality might be explained as an analytical ambition to

explore gender, sexuality, class, and
race as complex, intertwined, and mutual reinforcing categories
of oppression and social structures
(Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005). The background
of intersectionality is found in fem-
inist theory, which started to work with this complex
understanding of gender to capture women’s
10 Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work 29(1)
different experiences of oppression during the 1990s. A main
point for feminists was the ability to
capture inequality and oppression within groups of women, and
not only among women and men
(Collins, 1989, 1990; Crenshaw 1991; hooks, 1989; Lorde,
1984; Rich, 1993).
Intersectionality has become a central way for feminist research
to understand how women are
positioned in patriarchy as well as within other systems of
oppression, for example, those of class
and race (Davis, 2008). Although the perspective is quite well
used, it is also conceptualized and

used inconsistently. For example, intersectionality has been
described as a theory, a method, a per-
spective, a concept, and a framework (Carbin & Edenheim,
2013; Davis, 2008; Mehrotra, 2010).
Different understandings and uses of intersectionality argue that
the perspective might be used as
a way to understand individuals’ multiple identities,
interlocking systemic inequalities at the level
of social structures or multiplicity of social, historical, and
cultural discourses (Chang & Culp,
2002; Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005; Lykke,
2010; McCall, 2005; Yuval-Davis,
1997).
In social work, intersectionality has been used as an analytical
approach during recent years and it
has been a way to understand both complex identities and how
social structures affect people’s living
conditions (Eliassi, 2010; Fahlgren, 2013; Fahlgren & Sawyer,
2005; Gro¨nvik & Sö der, 2008;
Mattsson, 2005, 2010; Mehrotra, 2010; Murphy, Hunt, Zajicek,
Norris, & Hamilton, 2009; Pease,
2010; Sawyer, 2012). Mehrotra (2010) argues that
intersectionality is usable in social work and that
different intersectional approaches in analysis strengthen the

field. Drawing on McCall’s (2005)
typology, she describes different approaches in intersectional
analysis usable for social work: an
intercategorical approach that aims to understand how different
social groupings are affected by
structural inequalities and how identity is determined and
shaped by social structures. Intracatego-
rical approaches focus on diversity within social groups and
illuminate lived experiences, multiple
identities, and standpoints of people who are situated in the
intersections of numerous oppressions.
The third approach, the anticategorical, are generally aligned
with a poststructuralist feminism that
challenges the idea of social categories such as gender,
sexuality, class, and race, and problematizes
categories as real, fixed, homogenous, and bound by social
structures (McCall, 2005; Mehrotra,
2010).
Using intersectionality, critical reflection might be understood
as a mix of the different
approaches (cf. Sandberg, 2013). A central aim for the
reflection should be to understand the com-
plexity of categories and power relations. At the same time, it
must be stressed that the aim is to

disclose and challenge social structures and oppression, which
is why the anticategorical approach
should be combined with an intercategorical approach which
stress structural inequalities between
different groups and how identity is shaped by social
structures.
Critical Social Work and Critical Reflection
A dilemma for the critical tradition in social work during the
1960s and 1970s was the difficulties in
using the structural understandings of social problems in
clinical social work on an individual level.
A structural understanding of social problems tends to be far
away from the client’s everyday life.
Social workers works and adapts in relation to organizations
and bureaucratic rules, managers
demands, and sometimes also to community cultures. In this
context, it’s easy to feel powerless and
without personal responsibility and it is sometimes hard to hold
on to ideological and political ideals
focusing structural change (Brookfield, 2009; Fook, 1993, 2002;
Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mclaugh-
lin, 2005; Morley, 2004; Stepney, 2005). Critical social work
aims to challenge these problems and

in recent years important works has been done by Jan Fook, who
has also been working together with
Fiona Gardner (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). Fook
(2002) might be understood as develop-
ing critical social work by changing the focus from how social
structures affect people’s living
conditions, to focusing on how social structures affect social
work practice, and the social workers’
Mattsson 11
ideas, emotions, and reactions. Fook argues that critical social
work needs to be a critical reflection
which helps the social worker to develop her professional role
in relation to an understanding of
social structures and the globalization context. She argues that
critical reflection is a way to bring
practice and theory together in a way that develops awareness
of the ability to contribute to social
change (Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007; cf. Brookfield,
2009; Dominelli, 2002; Mattsson, 2010;
Morley, 2004; Pease, 2006; Pitner & Sakamoto, 2005; Sakamoto

& Pitner, 2005).
1
The critical reflection that Fook introduces aims to deconstruct
our experiences and knowledge in
a way that gradually illustrates how we are part of and sustain
social structures and oppression
(Fook, 2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). To reflect critically means
to focus on a chosen event or sit-
uation and to analyze the feelings, thoughts, and actions it
involves in a way that opens up alternative
ways of understanding. By the new ways of comprehending, it is
possible for the social worker to
become more aware of how social structures affect her, the
client, and social work practice. The
reflection gives alternative and more dynamic ways to
comprehend, and therefore develops more
complex understandings of social problems, the client, the
social workers’ positions, and the inter-
action with the client. By using a complex way of thinking, the
social worker not only can develop an
understanding of her own assumptions and conceptions, she
might also in time change her way of
thinking and acting as a result of her increasing knowledge
(Brookfield, 2009; Fook & Gardner,

2007; Pitner & Sakamoto, 2005; Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005). By
this process, a possibility to chal-
lenge social structures and oppression is created, as the social
worker develops an ability to work
in ways that might challenge social structures and stereotypical
images of clients. The critical
reflection, therefore, is seen as a potential for social work to be
a profession which actually changes
society, since the social worker is able to change her actions
when she understands how social
structures affect social work practice.
In Fook’s critical reflection, gender, sexuality, class, and race
are implicit, but not in focus. She
opens up the space for working on power and oppression related
to, for example, gender and race;
yet, she does not put them in the foreground, as she uses general
understandings of power and
oppression (also see Fook & Gardner, 2007; Morley, 2004). I
would like to argue for taking one
more step by using critical reflection with the specific ambition
of analyzing and changing gender,
sexuality, class, and race oppression. My argument is that
critical reflection with the ambition to

explore and disclose social structures and oppression needs to
stay focused on gender, sexuality,
class, and race, since these are elementary power relations with
respect to marginalization, oppres-
sion, and injustice. It is also important to stress how these
power relations tend to be habitual and
taken for granted, which makes them particularly hard to make
visible and keep in analytical focus;
this is why it is especially important to work with a clear
ambition to recognize them in critical social
work practice.
An intersectional analysis aims to explore oppression and
inequality focusing the interplay
between different categories of oppression. The approach is
based on a key understanding that gen-
der, sexuality, class, and race are intertwined and reinforced
‘‘in and through relation to each other’’
(McClintock, 1995, s. 5, emphasis in original). No structure or
category is homogenous, and the
intersection between gender, sexuality, class, and race creates
oppression and inequality both within
and among groups (Davis, 2008; de los Reyes & Mulinari, 2005;
Lykke, 2010). Intersectionality is a
usable approach for critical social work since it highlights

gender, sexuality, class, and race and
makes it possible to understand and problematize the unequal
relation between the social worker and
the client in a complex way.
Theoretical Points of Departure
The critical tradition in social work has traditionally found its
theoretical framework in structural
theories. When developing the theoretical base for critical
reflection, Fook finds her theoretical
framework in postmodern and poststructural theories. She
argues for the possibility of using these
approaches, as they manage to dispute and deconstruct the
presupposed in a way that opens up for
variations, subordinated narratives, contradictions, and
complexities. The poststructural approach
brings an understanding of reality to be a reflection of both
external and internal structures of think-
ing. This places power relations situated in both external and

internal structures—an understanding
which opens up for the individual as a bearer and reproducer of
social structures. Postmodernism
calls the production of knowledge into question and understands
knowledge as socially constructed.
It recognizes the importance of context and highlights how
knowledge is mediated by cultural,
political, and social assumptions. The scientific idea of
external, objective reality is problematized,
as knowledge is understood as intimately connected with
subjective values and judgments. Facts
become facts as they are constructed as parts of historical,
social, and political interests. For post-
modernism, the aim is to open up for different experiences and
to give them place and legitimacy
in a way that gives room to question dominating truths and
knowledge (Fook, 2002, s. 11ff; Fook
& Gardner, 2007, s. 33; Morley, 2004). This approach is useful
and important for critical reflection
since it provides space for reflection which manages to question
dominating ways of understanding
social problems, clients, and the social work profession.
Fook (2002) starts with the postmodern understanding of
knowledge and then she develops a

splendid theoretical framework for critical reflection. She uses
poststructural understandings of lan-
guage, power, and discourse in a way that brings understanding
of how social structures affect social
workers at an individual level. Without a doubt, when her
theoretical approach is used in critical
refection, the reflection surely becomes a way to bring theory
and practice together in a way that
can make oppression and power relations visible. Even though,
there are two problems with Fook’s
theoretical framework worth discussing. One is the incapacity
of postmodernism to handle power
relations. The postmodern aim to open up and investigate
alternative knowledge and experiences
in a way that is not interested in what is true or more accurate,
also opens up for relativism where
all knowledge and experiences are equally truthful.
Postmodernism is focused on the deconstruction
of the truth rather than to actually investigate and illustrate
power relations and social structures. If
critical reflection aims to explore and change social structures,
postmodernism is not unproblematic
since it bears the risk of falling into relativism. Fook’s solution
of this problem is to combine her

postmodern approach with Foucault’s theory on power (Fook,
2002; Fook & Gardner, 2007). Even
though I really do like this solution, I see a problem in that
Fook stays with an understanding of
power which does not emphasize the specific aspects of social
structures related to gender, sexuality,
class, and race. This is the second problem in her theoretical
framework; that is, gender, sexuality,
class, and race are not highlighted as central social structures
and forms of oppression.
Using intersectionality as a basis for the reflection would take
the critical reflection one step fur-
ther. Understanding intersectionality as a way to explore how
power relations are created and rein-
forced by the interplay between gender, sexuality, class, and
race, it is possible to keep them in
urgent focus. In theoretical practice, this means to combine
postmodern thinking and poststructural
theories on gender, sexuality, class, and race. As
intersectionality is not a theory in itself, there is a
need for developing a theoretical framework. It is possible to
use the same general understandings of
how structures, power, and identities work and affect our lives
as Fook recommends, but with the

difference that specific theories which explain aspects of
gender, sexuality, class, and race
structures, are necessary. Intersectionality gives a specific
ambition to hold on to and understand
interaction between gender, sexuality, class, and race as a basis
for—and upholding of oppression
and inequality (cf. Davis, 2008, p. 73). By using an
intersectional approach and, for example, post-
structural feminist and postcolonial theory, the reflection would
be based in a tradition of under -
standing how social structures affect people’s living conditions
which also emphases gender,
sexuality, class, and race (cf. Carbin & Edenheim, 2013). This
would solve both the problem with
the postmodern relativism and the problem with the risk of
neutralizing or making aspects of gender,
Mattsson 13
sexuality, class, and race invisible when not emphasizing them
in the theoretical framework. Gender,
sexuality, class, and race are crucial categories for

understanding oppression and injustice. At the
same time, they tend to be normalized and invisible, which
makes them challenging to recognize,
explore, and transform (Dominelli, 2002). Critical reflection
needs a powerful understanding of the
relation between oppression and the intersection of gender,
sexuality, class, and race. A reflection
carried out without that kind of understanding risks reinforcing
oppression and injustice.
Intersectionality in Social Work Practice
Following is a structure in three steps for how to critically
reflect on a specific incident: (inspired by
Fook, 2002, p. 43, 89ff; Fook & Gardner, 2007; Mattsson, 2010;
Morley, 2004).
Step 1: Start with identifying a critical incident and describe it
with as much specific details as
possible. It could be any practice experience that made you stop
and think, and react on what
have happened. Write down your description, as writing is a
good way to think the incident
through, and to actually remember it and its different parts. It is
natural that your description

develops as you are writing it.
Step 2: Make a critical reflection on your description. Start with
identifying power relations
operating in the incident. By using intersectionality as a base
for the reflection, it is possible
to stay focused on gender, sexuality, class, and race as central
categories of oppression and how
they actually work in and affect social work practice. When
understanding how power relations
might affect the social worker, the client, and the social work
organization, it is possible to
investigate alternative understandings and actions.
Step 3: Reconstruct and redevelop new and emancipating
strategies for theory and practice which
are possible, as the social worker identifies and understands the
means of social change and
recognizes her agency and her own construction of power.
The three steps give structure for critically working through an
incident or situation. By making
reflections, it is possible to explore new ways of thinking and
feeling about the chosen incident. It is
possible to find other ways to understand what has happened
and the role the social worker plays in

the situation. The structure is important in doing the reflection,
as its various steps are what keeps
focus on analysis and evolves new insights and understandings.
Step 2 is a crucial analytical part of the reflection, and using
intersectionality as a tool especially
affects this step. It is in this step that intersectionality as an
approach is practiced, and where analysis
and theory are in focus. Theory is important in critical
reflection; without theory it is hard for the
reflection to actually bring new understandings of the incident,
understandings that reveal the effects
of power in the situation. Power relations related to gender,
sexuality, class, and race are difficult to
actually see, recognize, and acknowledge. For example, in
Sweden, a gendered-balanced workforce
is often stressed as important in social work practice. Gender
balance is understood as necessary both
according to gender equality policies and to an understanding of
women and men as completing each
other in corresponding to what is perceived as males and
females different needs in treatment.
Indirectly, male and female social workers come to represent
femininities and masculinities that are
supposed to be heterosexual, middle class, and ‘‘Swedish.’’ As

a result, they tend to uphold and
reproduce stereotype gender and class hierarchies, heterosexual
norms, and white Swedish
supremacy (Fahlgren, 2013; Mattsson, 2005; Sawyer, 2012; cf.
Lewis, 2001). By using feminist and
postcolonial theory which both use a critical approach to shed
light on social orders that are usually
taken for granted and therefore reinforce and uphold oppression
and injustice at the same time, the
critical reflection enables understanding power beyond the
common sense that usually makes us
blind to it and its effects. The critical reflection with its focus
on gender, sexuality, class, and race
brings awareness and knowledge on how power relations work
and affect the social worker, and how
the social worker herself functions as a bearer of these
structures. By using an intersectional
approach in critical reflection, the reflection will show how
conceptions of social workers,

‘‘clients,’’ and social problems are constructed and upheld. It
will do this by asking deconstructing
questions about used understandings and concepts: What is
included and incorporated in the social
workers understandings of herself and of the ‘‘client?’’ What is
excluded? What is visualized? What
remains unnoticed and invisible? How does this contribute to
the positions of the social worker as
normal and the ‘‘client’’ as deviant? And most importantly, how
does these constructs uphold con-
ceptions and power relations related to gender, sexuality, class,
and sexuality?
By these kinds of questions, raised with poststructural feminist
and postcolonial understandings
which are used when reflecting on the answers, critical
reflection will give urgent answers on how
these constructions reinforces oppression and injustice in case
of gender, sexuality, class, and race,
and it will make a more complex understanding of the social
worker, the ‘‘client,’’ and of social
problems possible. The reflection becomes a usable tool to make
the ‘‘unconscious assumptions and
reactions of well meaning people’’ (Young, 1990, p. 41)
conscious and visible.

Step 3 in the critical reflection reminds us of the importance of
the reflection being anti-
oppressive and challenging of power relations. It is at this point
that the social worker can explore
alternative ways of handling different power relations. When
understanding the effects of power
relations and how gender, sexuality, class, and race intersect
and reinforce each other, the social
worker can develop an alternative thinking and alternative
actions. By understanding, she can start
working in a way that challenges, rather than reinforces
oppression and injustice. This work,
however, demands continuous reflection; there is no finishing or
end point in doing critical social
work or in being a critical social worker. The critical social
worker never knows it all.
Critical Reflection and Intersectionality Challenges
Intersectionality practiced in critical reflection is probably best
described as a combination of the
anticategorical and the inter-categorical approach (McCall,
2005; Mehrotra, 2010). The reflection
aims to understand and challenge the complexity of different
categories which are intertwined and

reinforce each other. This also means that the reflection might
end up in dissolution of gender, sexu-
ality, class, and race where it is actually hard to see or
understand structural inequalities, as they
appear too complex and dynamic. I would like to stress the
importance of understanding that using
intersectionality in critical reflection means to understand and
analyze the intersection of gender,
sexuality, class, and race at maybe the most complex level.
Observing the effects of social structures
is generally easier on a structural level than in a micro context
or at an individual level where struc-
tural patterns easily become invisible in the complexity that
tends to dominate. This is why it might
be fruitful to understand the use of intersectionality in critical
reflection as a combination of the
anticategorical and the intercategorical approach, where the
latter one stresses and focuses on struc-
tural inequalities between different groups and the effects of
social structures on identity (cf. Sand-
berg, 2013). Otherwise, the reflection bears the risk of ending
up unable to reflect on structures at all
(Pease, 2010). Once again, this also stresses the importance of
using theory when reflecting; theory

is what gives the ability to go beyond the unconscious
assumptions of everyday life that reinforce
and uphold oppression and injustice.
2
Conclusion
The last decade’s increasing inequality, discrimination, and
marginalization in Western societies has
created tensions and demands on equality and social justice, and
an increasing interest in critical and
anti-oppressive social work (Dominelli, 2002; Fook, 2002;
Lewis, 2001; Morley, 2004; Stepney,
Mattsson 15
2005). Critical reflection, developed by those such as Fook
(2002), for example, is part of this tradition
which aims to challenge oppression and change society as it
brings awareness and knowledge of social
structures, inequalities, and oppression to the social worker. It
focuses especially on how the social
worker reinforces oppression and social structures by her ways

of thinking, feeling, and taking action.
The argument made in this article is that combining critical
reflection with intersectionality is a way to
stress the importance of focusing on how social structures
related to gender, sexuality, class, and race,
contribute to oppression of marginalized groups. Critical
reflection tends to understand social structures
and power relations in general, rather than in specific terms,
which risks neutralizing the power relations
of gender, sexuality, class, and race. To combine critical
reflection with intersectionality is to create
space for work on power relations and oppression. It gives a
tool to keep focus on gender, sexuality, class,
and race as power relations, and challenges the potential risk of
neutralization.
Intersectionality is a useful way of thinking in social work and
in critical reflection; it gives an ana-
lytical tool which is able to capture dynamic power relations
and oppression in a way that is sensitive
to differences and oppression both within and among groups.
This way of understanding social struc-
tures and power relations as complex and dynamic is a possible
way to avoid stereotyping and simpli-
fying understandings of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity

as homogenous and static categories. In
critical reflection, the understanding of these power relations as
complex and dynamic, combined with
the ambition of understanding power relations, keeps social
structures and oppression in focus.
Critical social work points out the need for a social work
practice that contributes to equality,
social justice, and social change. By working with critical
reflection using intersectionality as a way
of understanding and analyzing, it is possible for social workers
to become more aware and
conscious of social structures and oppression in social work and
within their own practice. By being
more conscious of how social structures affect social work and
reinforce oppression and power
relations, it is possible for social workers to change both the
way they think and act.
The development and use of critical reflection also carries the
risk of critical social work
becoming reduced to an individual level only, which actually
might result in a loss of the critical
dimension. Critical social work has raised important critiques of
traditional social casework for
working on an individual level where social problems are

understood as individual problems and
not as problems related to greater social structures and society
(Adams et al., 2002; Dominelli,
2002; Fook, 1993, 2002; Pease & Fook, 1999). At the same
time, critical reflection places critical
social work on an individual level and focuses on the social
worker’s prejudices, conceptions,
thoughts, and actions. There is also a risk of critical reflection
becoming a reflection work for social
workers, not addressing transformations of social structures and
power relations. Critical reflection,
therefore, needs to keep reminding itself of the critical
dimension in the reflection, as well as the aim
of working on power relations and oppression. Critical social
work has to be working on several
levels of society: the individual, the organizational, and the
structural.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.
Funding

The author received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
1. Sakamoto and Pitner (2005) define critical consciousness in a
way similar to Fook’s critical reflection.
Critical consciousness is a reflection where the social worker
becomes aware how she perceives difference
and power dynamics. Their thinking is very interesting, but they
don’t present a method for reflection, which
is why I focus on Fook’s ideas in this article.
2. If interested in critical reflection Fook (2002), Social work
Critical Theory and Practice, Fook and Gardner
(2007) Practicing critical reflection. A resource handbook, and
in Swedish, Mattsson (2010) Intersektiona-
litet i social arbete. Teori, reflektion och praxis, are
recommended.
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Author Biography
Tina Mattsson has a PhD in social work and is an associate
professor in the School of Social Work, Lund
university, Lund, Sweden; e-mail: [email protected]
mailto:[email protected]
Beam Event Planning
What is Working:
· Tara and the team at Beam are very clear when communicating
expectations in regards to staff and event logistics. Frequent
conference calls and event updates serve as useful forms of
clear communication. Direct communication with vendors and
venue staff is encouraged.
· My experience in the field is often considered when making
planning decisions, post event feedback is always welcomed and
improved strategies are implemented in future event planning.
· Ordering supplies and arranging transport are done with ease
by utilizing vendor accounts with Whole Foods, RAW Juice
Company, Amazon Prime, SF Restaurant Supply, Ryder and San
Francisco Small Moves.
What Can be Improved:
· Tara has been the at the frontline for all event
communications, with several events happening simultaneously
she is spread thin leaving room for error. Once the initial

negotiations have been made I would like to be in the position
to take on an active role in planning and handle vendor
communications.
· Event budgets have not been communicated, often resulting
over spending.
· Cocktail ingredient needs are too often miscalculated resulting
in over spending and excessive waste. I suggest leveraging help
from our contracted bartenders when planning.
Support Needed:
· A system for handling emergency/last minute needs with a
clear understanding of cost for such situations. An on call/all
hours “courier” is needed.
On Site Activation
What is Working:
· A solid team of brand ambassadors, production assistants and
bartenders are in place who have built relationships with Beam
management and the sales team. They are trained professionals
who can speak to Beam brands. All members of my production
crew possess brand education and are often contracted to set up,
activate and strike, maximizing the efficiency of labor costs.
· Beam’s Luxury Brand Specialists and Ambassadors take a
hands-on role in executing events and offer support when
needed.
Warehouse Management
What is Working:
· The warehouse space is practical in the sense that it is large
enough to house 5 bars and all of Beams special event pos. It
also serves as office space, has wifi, 24 hour access and free
parking.

What Can Be Improved:
· Removing sampling event kits would allow more room for
organization.
· Beam’s sales team and ambassadors often take liquor and POS
items from the unit without logging them, if the items are
returned they are simply left in piles making managing the
inventory very difficult.
· Pallets of POS are sent to the warehouse without notice, since
they cannot be stored due to limited space I am left with the
laborious task of breaking them down and finding space for the
POS without help.
Support Needed:
· I am prepared to manage the inventory and take full
responsibility of maintaining the warehouse to Beams standards.
However, an organized system of removing and returning items
needs to be in place. One option would be requiring that all POS
requests be sent to me at least 5 days in advance (when
possible) in the form of a POS Request Doc. I could then pull
the items myself and stage them in a designated area and log.
Once items are returned (in designated “returns” space) I would
update the inventory accordingly. Beam has a warehouse in
Union City that is managed this way.
· Shipments cannot be received unless someone is present to
receive them. I am currently in the unit every Monday and
Friday and open to making any adjustments needed. However, it
would be costly for myself to work five days a week from the
unit. We have hired warehouse help in the past to receive
shipments and clean up/organize but they were promotional
staff contracted from our events roster and paid $30/hr. I feel
that we could hire part time warehouse help for a far more
reasonable rate. I’d be comfortable working two or three days
from the unit and having a part time warehouse assistant 2 days
a week. I would train said person to work special events and
perhaps also serve as our “on call courier”.

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SYMBOLIC RACISM, HISTORY, AND REALIPr' 73
celebrate what Ishmael Reed has described as a society "unique"
in the world because "the
world is here"—a place "where the cultures of the world
crisscross." M u c h of America's
past, they point out, has been riddled with racism. At the same
nme, these people offer
hope, affirming the struggle for equality as a central theme in
our country's history. A t its
conception, our nation was dedicated to the proposition of
equality. What has given con-
creteness to this powerful national principle has been our
coming together in the creation
of a new society. "Stuck here" together, workers of different
backgrounds have attempted
to get along with each other.

People harvestmg
Work together unaware
Of racial problems,
wrote a Japanese immigrant describing a lesson learned by
Mexican and Asian farm labor-
ers in California.
Symbolic Racism, History, and Reality
The Real Problem with Indian Mascots
Kimberly Roppolo ^
T h e stadium hghts starburst above the misty football field. T h
e band blares and pounds
out the school's fight song like only a hometown high school
band can do. Blond, perky
cheerleaders clap as they hop from foot to foot, rousing the fans
to a controlled roar. Two
of them hold a huge sign, painted painstakingly while sprawled
across a dusty, linoleum-
lined corridor. The men of the hour prepare to enter the arena of
combat. They begin a
slow trot, then burst through the paper to shouting
cheerleaders—"Kill the Indians!" they
scream.
Many people would say I am overreacting to be offended by this
scenario. After all,
what's more American than high school football? What could be
a more wholesome activ-
ity for young people in today's age, when so many more
dangerous temptations beset them
at every side—drugs, alcohol, unprotected sex, and gang
activity? I think the danger of

this situation is that it is so precisely American. Americans in
general see the Indian mascot
controversy as " s i l l y , " and there are admittedly American
Indians who see it the same
way. . . . However, I think the danger of this use is more than
just its potential to offend.
It is representative of an endemic problem: racism against
America's First Peoples. Despite
the fact that racial problems still exist in our country, for the
most part we are in a day and
age where racial tolerance and tolerance for all kinds of
diversity has increased. But this is
not the case with racism against American Indians, largely
because racism against American
Indians is so ingrained in the American consciousness that it is
invisible.
RACISM
Dr. Cornell Pewewardy of the University of Kansas calls this
kind of racism "dyscon-
scious racism," or, in other words, racism that the people
themselves who exhibit it are
unaware of. The use of American Indian mascots falls under this
category. The grossly
exaggerated features of the Cleveland Indian, the cartooned
vicious savages decorating
high school spirit ribbons, the painted, dancing, fake-buckskin-
clad white kids running
down the sideline doing tomahawk chops, are all unintentionally
stereotypical and aren't
even perceived by most Americans as negative. They fall in the
same category as rock singer
Ted Nugent's ridiculous stage antics in a fluorescent mockery of

a Plains chief's headdress.
They fall under the same category as cigar store Indians topping
car dealerships. They fall
under the same category as words hke "squaw," "papoose,"
"wagon burner," and " I n d i a n
giver." They fall under the same category as Disney's painted
bombshell Pocahontas and
the 3 6 - 2 4 - 3 6 asking-for-it Aztec seductress from El Dorado
or her grotesquely depicted
male counterparts. . . . T h e average American engages in this
behavior without ever being
aware of it, much less realizing that it is racism.
Every semester I ask my students what is in the front foyer of
Applebee's restaurant.
None of them, not even if they work there, are ever able to tell
me there is a statue of an
Indian man, in nonspecific tribal attire, often with a "special of
the day" sign around his
neck. Applebee's claims this statue "points to the next nearest
Applebee's"; I guarantee that
if a major restaurant chain placed a statue of an African
American man in supposed tribal
dress in the front of each of its restaurants pointing to the next
nearest one, people would
realize these statues were inappropriate. I n the same way, as
many others have pointed out,
if we had sports teams named the N e w York Niggers or the
Jersey Jigaboos, Americans
would know this was wrong. The average American, who would
clearly perceive the
Louisville Lynched Porch Monkeys as a problematic name for a
team doesn't even realize
the Washington Redskins emerges from a history of the literal
bloody skins of American
Indian men, women, and children being worth British C r o w n

bounty money—no one's
skin is red. American Indian skin is brown, at least when it is
on our bodies and not
stripped from us in the name of profit and expansionism.
African Americans, thank G o d ,
have raised the consciousness of Americans enough through the
civil rights movement
to keep the more obvious forms of racism usually hidden,
though it took publicly armed
Black Panthers, the burning of Chicago, and even the riots of
Los Angeles to get this point
across. American Indians are frankly so used to being literally
shot down if we stick our
heads up, we aren't nearly as likely to do so. I n fact, from our
own civil rights movement
with A I M , we still have Indians like Leonard Peltier, who
stuck their heads up although
incarcerated for over twenty years when even the F B I admits
its evidence was fabricated.
Racism against American Indians is so intrinsically part of
America's political mythol-
ogy, . . . that without it this country would have to do
something it is has never done:
face colonial guilt. Everything we see around us was made from
stolen American Indian
resources, resources raped from this Earth that we consider
sacred, an Earth in danger
of global disaster from unbalanced greed. We live like no
people in the history of the
world have ever lived. Our poorest are rich in comparison to the
world's average citizen.
We all—Indian, E u r o American, Asian American, African
American, or Chicano—have
benefited at least in some material way from the murders of an
estimated one hundred

milhoii people, crimes that are still going on in this hemisphere,
in M e x i c o , in Argentina,
in Oklahoma, in South Dakota, in N e w jMexico, Arizona,
Adontana, and more. These
acts, along with innumerable rapes, along with untold numbers
of sterilizations of women
even up to the past few decades, along with the removal of
children without cause from
their parents' homes, from their cultures, along with the
destruction of language, with the
outlawing of religious freedom up until 1978, constitute what is
defined as genocide under
the United Nations Convention on Genocide's definition, a
document never signed by the
United States, because under it, that very government owes
restitution to both American
SYMBOLIC RACISM, HISTORY AND REALITY |
Indians and to African Americans, an estimated forty to sixty
million of whom were killed
during the slave trade before they ever reached the shores of the
" N e w W o r l d . "
A n estimated six million Jews died in the atrocities committed
in N a z i Germany, being
treated before and after death in ways the world w i l l never
forgive—starved, herded naked
like cattle, poisoned to an excruciating death, made into
curios—lampshades, little col-
lectibles for the N a z i ehte. But this we recognize as inhuman,
not the kind of behavior we
as people can tolerate. We see the sins of Germany and the sins
of Bosnia, where former

students report seeing little girls with dolls still in their arms,
dead with open eyes in mass
graves, for what they are. But unlike the rest of the w o r l d ,
we as Americans cannot see our
own. We are not taught in school that Columbus's men smashed
babies' heads on rocks
in front of their mothers. We are not taught that they sliced
people in two for fun, in bets
over whose sword was the sharpest. We are not taught they tied
men up after slaving in
silver mines all day, threw them under their hammocks, and
raped their wives above them.
We aren't taught that the Pilgrims were called the "cut-throat
people" by the Indians,
who taught them survival and feasted with them because, at one
meal the good Chrisuans
invited them to, those very Christians took their knives and slit
them from ear to ear. We
aren't taught that our "forefathers" roasted Pequot men, women,
and children alive in
their beds. We aren't taught that Thomas Jefferson promoted
miscegenation as a means
of eradicating the "Indian problem." We are not taught that
American soldiers collected
labia and breasts and penises for curios after slaughtering
women, children, and old men
on what must be considered, when we look at the primary
evidence of American history,
a routine basis. The list goes on and on. We aren't, indeed,
taught a lot of things. And we
aren't taught them for a good reason. . . .
American Indian Nations are the only sovereign nations the
United States government
has ever broken over five hundred treaties w i t h , violations
that Russell Means righdy sug-

gests gives these nations the legal justification to issue one
huge eviction notice to the
United States, the only nations whose citizens are owed . . .
billions of dollars in money
that was held in "trust" for Indians thought incapable of being
responsible for it, billions
of dollars that same United States government has lost. Despite
this, American Indians
serve this country in its military forces in higher numbers per
capita than any other ethnic
group—and have in every war since the American Revolution.
Despite this, American
Indians on the whole maintain a huge amount of respect for this
country and the flag that
flies above it.
The real problem w i t h the kind of dysconscious, symbolic,
abstract racism that is per-
petuated today by sports mascots and the kind of historical,
intentionally inculcated, politi-
cally motivated racism that enabled the near total genocide of
American Indian peoples
is that it enables very real, very concrete, and very conscious
acts of violent racism that
American Indian people still face in this country and this
hemisphere on a daily basis. It is
our conceptualization of people that dictates our behavior
toward them. Most Americans
don't come into contact with Indians on a daily basis because of
that very genocide, or
when they do, because of the campaign of rape and encouraged
miscegenation through
intermarriage, they don't realize they do. To most Americans,
American Indians themselves
are invisible. . . . But for Americans who live near or on
reservations or tribally controlled

lands and for our neighbors to the south, who very much still
realize an Indian presence in
" t h e i r " countries, . . . and because of the atmosphere of
hatred that the dysconsious racism
of the rest of the country allows and even promotes, violence
abounds.
T h i s is not to say that no other group in America is still
subject to prejudice-induced vio-
lence. There are occasionally still unspeakable acts against
African Americans like the one
in Jasper, Texas. There are also unfortunately incidents of
violent bigotry against homo-
sexuals, like the one in Laramie, Wyoming, that led to the
creation of federal hate-crime
legislation. But the fact is that American Indian women are
twice as likely as black men to
RACISM
die of homicide. White males commit most of these murders;
most involve alcohol sold by
white proprietors on reservation borders; many are never
prosecuted. L i k e the murders
in the 1970s that instigated the American Indian movement to
begin with and the rash of
Indian killings that followed it, these murders go largely
unnoticed by mainstream America.
So do the beatings. So do the rapes. If " r e a l " Indians don't
exist in the American mind, then
hate crimes against them have no room in the American
imagination of possibility. A n d the
media, the same media that descends from that which actively
promoted the extermination

of Indians through the early 1900s, don't cover that continued
extermination now because
of their early effectiveness in our erasure.
Perpetuators of conscious racism in more Indian-populated
regions of this country w i l l
justify their behavior w i t h accusations that Indians themselves
act in such a way that it
encourages the negative stereotype—we are all unemployed,
government-money-grubbing
drunks. Yes, as w e l l as having a higher rate of homicides,
American Indians have a higher
rate of every cultural malaise that can be imagined—a higher
rate of unemployment, a
higher rate of high school dropouts, a higher suicide rate, a
higher rate of drug abuse, a
higher rate of alcoholism, a higher rate of teen pregnancy, a
higher rate of infant mortal-
ity . . . but one must consider the kind of low self-esteem that
both conscious historical
racism and dysconscious contemporary racism in the form of
things like sports mascots
brings about. N o t only do Indian people have to deal w i t h
the fallout of being "conquered"
people, the "survivor guilt" from being alive and suckered in by
colonialist capitalism
when so many were butchered in its creation, the shame of
being men who descended
from those unable to protect our women and children in the face
of a demonic kilhng
machine we could have never envisioned in our traditional
cultures, the shame of being
women who descended from those raped and tortured, or those
who married or enconcu-
bined themselves to European men as a means of survival. We
have to deal with images of

ourselves that do not match who we are—human beings.
Moreover, Indian people them-
selves sometimes unconsciously internalize the stereotypical
images projected on them by
mainstream culture—"of course I can't succeed, I ' m an Indian.
I ought to either be dead
or dead d r u n k . " In comparison, the noble-savage ideal
promoted by those who claim to
be honoring Indians by using mascots based on Native peoples
seems complimentary. N o
wonder some Indians find no problem with racially based
mascots. American Indians are
not all stereotypical unemployed drunks. Most are hardworking
struggling, long-suffering
individuals who despite the rarity of opportunity for mainstream
success fight daily to
keep alive what proud cultural and spiritual traditions we have
remaining after the near
extermination of our peoples, fight daily to minimize the risks
of the negative impact of
colonization on our children and promote education for them
both in our traditional ways
and in the mainstream ways that w i l l ensure their success in
both of the worlds in which
they must live. N o , we are not all dead. Neither are our
extremely diverse cultures. A n d far
from being the beneficiaries of government welfare, the average
American Indian lives far
below poverty level—if you have never visited a reservation
like the Northern Cheyenne
live on in Lame Deer or that Lakota people hve on in Pine
Ridge or Rosebud, then you
have never seen what poverty in this country really is, not even
if you have lived in the
poorest of poor urban ghettos. . . . [Gjovernment "handouts"
like commodity cheese, the

far-below-standard medical treatment dispensed by the Indian
Health Service, or money
distributed to the tribe for housing or other needs is dispensed,
it falls way short of the
government's promises to Indian peoples—that our ancestors
and their descendants (us,
even those of us with the lowest blood quantums) would be
provided for in perpetuity in
exchange for our means of providing for ourselves: our lands,
the lands that we cultivated
for agricultural products, the lands we obtained our game from,
the lands our ancestors
THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS |
lived on for centuries and our cultures are tied to, the lands our
ancestors rest i n . We are
more than aware of what we have lost—and cartoonish
depictions that make light of both
those very losses and us do nothing to encourage mainstream
"achievement" among our
peoples. A n d though money from casinos has recently created
an influx of capital that
some tribes are using to promote economic development, it has
by no means enriched the
average Indian, and the existence of the casinos themselves,
which the tribes as sovereign
nations under the United States Constitution have the right to
legally create on their own
ever-shrinking land bases, is continually under attack from the
states, which have no legal
jurisdiction over the tribes or their lands.
Sports mascots might indeed seem to be a small issue in light of

all of this. A n d while,
admittedly, American Indians have much greater problems to
worry about, I would con-
tend that the mascots are both symptomatic of racism and
promote it. Some contend that
other mascots, like Notre Dame's Fighting Irish, are based on
racial identity and that no
other group has raised issue w i t h this. However, I would
suggest that this is because the
creation of " w h i t e " as an ethnicity in America's great
melting pot has both cooked off
cultural identification and a strong sense of heritage for the
descendants of late immigrants
and early indentured servants and erased colonial guilt for the
still-at-the-top-of-the-heap
descendants of those who actually engaged in active genocide. T
h e descendants of Irish
American immigrants—me included, as some of my ancestors
were Irish, along w i t h
those who were Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, German, and
Welsh—aren't offended by the
Fighting Irish because they don't have a great stake in Irish
identity, unlike those who live
in Dublin and deal daily with what being Irish, much less
Catholic Irish or Protestant Irish,
entails. . . .
After all of the offenses our peoples have suffered throughout
the history of Europeans
in the Americas and in light of the kind of racism to which
American Indians are still
subject, it seems a small thing to me that some of us ask that
sports mascots that depict
American Indians be eliminated. After all, it is not that we are
asking for what we w i l l never
receive—we aren't asking for a return of our stolen lands or

even payment for them, we
aren't asking that all of the broken treaties be honored or that
the United States pay full
restitution to us under the United Nations Convention on
Genocide. We aren't even asking
for a formal apology by a United States president for the
atrocities our ancestors suffered.
We are simply asking for the same respect that other ethnic
groups receive in this country.
We are simply asking to be recognized as people, not as
television images, not as cartoons.
11
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
George Lipsltz
Whiteness is everywhere in U.S. culture, but it is very hard to
see. As Richard Dyer sug-
gests, "[W]hite power secures its dominance by seeming not to
be anything in particular."
As the unmarked category against which difference is
constructed, whiteness never has
I RACISM
to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an
organizing principle in social
and cultural relations. To identify, analyze, and oppose the
destructive consequences of
w h i t e n e s s , . . . requires an understanding of the existence
and the destructive consequences
of the possessive investment in whiteness that surreptitiously

shapes so much of our public
and private lives.
Race is a cultural construct, but one with sinister structural
causes and consequences.
Conscious and deliberate actions have institutionalized group
identity in the United States,
not just through the dissemination of cultural stories, but also
through systematic efforts
from colonial dmes to the present to create economic
advantages through a possessive
investment in whiteness for European Americans. Studies of
culture too far removed from
studies of social structure leave us w i t h inadequate
explanations for understanding racism
and inadequate remedies for combating it.
Desire for slave labor encouraged European settlers in North
America to view, first.
Native Americans and, later, African Americans as racially
inferior people suited "by
nature" for the humihating subordination of involuntary
servitude. The long history of the
possessive investment in whiteness stems in no small measure
from the fact that all subse-
quent immigrants to North America have come to an already
racialized society. From the
start, European settlers in North Ajnerica established structures
encouraging a possessive
investment in whiteness. T h e colonial and early national legal
systems authorized attacks
on Native Americans and encouraged the appropriation of their
lands. They legitimated
racialized chattel slavery, limited naturalized citizenship to " w
h i t e " immigrants, identified
Asian immigrants as expressly unwelcome (through legislation

aimed at immigrants from
China in 1882, from India in 1917, from Japan in 1924, and
from the Philippines in 1934),
and provided pretexts for restricting the voting, exploiting the
labor, and seizing the prop-
erty of Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Native
Americans, and African Americans.
The possessive investment in whiteness is not a simple matter
of black and white; all
racialized minority groups have suffered from it, albeit to
different degrees and in different
ways. T h e African slave trade began in earnest only after
large-scale Native American slav-
ery proved impractical in N o r t h America. T h e abolition of
slavery led to the importation
of low-wage labor from Asia. Legislation banning immigration
from Asia set the stage for
the recruitment of low-wage labor from M e x i c o . The new
racial categories that emerged in
each of these eras all revolved around applying racial labels to
"nonwhite" groups in order
to stigmatize and exploit them while at the same time
preserving the value of whiteness.
Although reproduced in new form in every era, the possessive
investment in whiteness
has always been influenced by its origins in the racialized
history of the United States—by
its legacy of slavery and segregation, of " I n d i a n "
extermination and immigrant restriction,
of conquest and colonialism. Although slavery has existed in
many countries without any
particular racial dimensions to it, the slave system that emerged
in North America soon took
on distinctly racial forms. Africans enslaved in N o r t h

America faced a raciahzed system of
power that reserved permanent, hereditary, chattel slavery for
black people. White settlers
institutionalized a possessive investment i n whiteness by
making blackness synonymous
w i t h slavery and whiteness synonymous with freedom, but
also by pitting people of color
against one another. Fearful of alliances between Native
Americans and African Americans
that might challenge the prerogatives of whiteness, white
settlers prohibited slaves and
free blacks from traveling in " I n d i a n country." European
Americans used diplomacy and
force to compel Native Americans to return runaway slaves to
their white masters. During
the Stono Rebellion of 1739, colonial authorities offered Native
Americans a bounty for
every rebeUious slave they captured or killed. At the same time,
British setders recruited
black slaves to fight against Nadve Americans within colonial
militias. The power of white-
ness depended not only on white hegemony over separate
racialized groups, but also on
manipulating racial outsiders to fight against one another, to
compete with each other for
THE POSSESSIVE INVESTMENT IN WHITENESS
white approval, and to seek the rewards and privileges of
whiteness for themselves at the
expense of other raciahzed populations.
Yet today the possessive investment is not simply the residue of
conquest and colo-

nialism, of slavery and segregation, of immigrant exclusion and
" I n d i a n " extermination.
Contemporary whiteness and its rewards have been created and
recreated by policies
adopted long after the emancipation of slaves in the 1860s and
even after the outlawing
of de jure segregation in the 1960s. There has always been
racism in the United States,
but it has not always been the same racism. Political and
cultural struggles over power
have shaped the contours and dimensions of racism differentiy
in different eras. Antiracist
mobihzations during the C i v i l War and civil rights eras
meaningfully curtailed the reach
and scope of white supremacy, but in each case reactionary
forces engineered a renewal
of racism, albeit in new forms, during succeeding decades.
Racism has changed over time,
taking on different forms and serving different social purposes
in each time period.
Contemporary racism has been created anew in many ways over
the past five decades,
but most dramatically by the putatively race-neutral, liberal,
social democratic reforms
of the N e w Deal E r a and by the more overtly race-conscious
neoconservative reactions
against liberalism since the N i x o n years. It is a mistake to
posit a gradual and inevitable
trajectory of evolutionary progress in race relations; on the
contrary, our history shows
that battles w o n at one moment can later be lost. Despite hard-
fought battles for change
that secured important concessions during the 1960s in the form
of civil rights legislation,
the racialized nature of social pohcy in the United States since

the Great Depression has
actually increased the possessive investment in whiteness
among European Americans over
the past half century.
During the N e w Deal E r a of the 1930s and 1940s, both the
Wagner Act and the Social
Security Act excluded farm workers and domestics from
coverage, effectively denying those
disproportionately minority sectors of the work force
protections and benefits routinely
afforded whites. T h e Federal Housing Act of 1934 brought
home ownership w i t h i n reach
of millions of citizens by placing the credit of the federal
government behind private lend-
ing to home buyers, but overdy racist categories in the Federal
Housing Agency's ( F H A )
"confidential" city surveys and appraisers' manuals channeled
almost all of the loan money
toward whites and away from communities of color. In the post-
World War I I era, trade
unions negotiated contract provisions giving private medical
insurance, pensions, and job
security largely to the white workers who formed the
overwhelming majority of the union-
ized work force in mass production industries, rather than
fighting for full employment,
medical care, and old-age pensions for all, or even for an end to
discriminatory hiring and
promotion practices by employers in those industries.
Each of these pohcies widened the gap between the resources
available to whites and
those available to aggrieved racial communities. Federal
housing policy offers an important
illustration of the broader principles at w o r k in the possessive

investment in whiteness.
By channeling loans away from older inner-city neighborhoods
and toward white home
buyers moving into segregated suburbs, the F H A and private
lenders after World War I I
aided and abetted segregation in U.S. residential neighborhoods.
. . .
T h e federal government has played a major role in augmenting
the possessive invest-
ment in whiteness. For years, the General Services
Administration routinely channeled the
government's own rental and leasing business to realtors who
engaged in racial discrimina-
tion, while federally subsidized urban renewal plans reduced the
already limited supply
of housing for communities of color through "slum clearance"
programs. In concert w i t h
F H A support for segregation in the suburbs, federal and state
tax monies routinely funded
the construction of water supplies and sewage facilities for
racially exclusive suburban
communities in the 1940s and 1950s. . . . j
I RACISM
At the same time that F H A loans and federal highway building
projects subsidized the
growth of segregated suburbs, urban renewal programs in cities
throughout the country
devastated minority neighborhoods. During the 1950s and
1960s, federally assisted urban
renewal projects destroyed 20 percent of the central-city
housing units occupied by blacks,

as opposed to only 10 percent of those inhabited by whites.
More than 60 percent of those
displaced by urban renewal were African Americans, Puerto
Ricans, M e x i c a n Americans,
or members of other minority racial groups. T h e Federal
Housing Administradon and the
Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth
of new housing between
1934 and 1962, but less than 2 percent of this real estate was
available to nonwhite fami-
lies—and most of that small amount was located in segregated
areas.
Even in the 1970s, after most major urban renewal programs
had been completed,
black central-city residents continued to lose housing units at a
rate equal to 80 percent
of what had been lost in the 1960s. Yet white displacement
declined to the relatively low
levels of the 1950s. In addition, the refusal first to pass, then to
enforce, fair housing laws
has enabled realtors, buyers, and seUers to profit from racist
collusion against minorities
largely without fear of legal retribution. During the decades
following World War I I , urban
renewal helped construct a new " w h i t e " identity in the
suburbs by helping to destroy
ethnically specific European American urban inner-city
neighborhoods. Wrecking balls and
bulldozers eliminated some of these sites, while others were
transformed by an influx
of minority residents desperately competing for a declining
supply of affordable housing
units. As increasing numbers of racial minorities moved into
cities, increasing numbers of
European American ethnics moved out. Consequently, ethnic

differences among whites
became a less important dividing line in U.S. culture, while race
became more important.
T h e suburbs helped turn Euro-Americans into "whites" who
could live near each other
and intermarry with relatively littie difficulty. But this " w h i t
e " unity rested on residential
segregation, on shared access to housing and life chances
largely unavailable to communi-
ties of color.
In 1968, lobbyists for the banking industry helped draft the
Housing and Urban
Development Act, which allowed private lenders to shift the
risks of financing low-income
housing to the government, creating a lucrative and thoroughly
unregulated market for
themselves. One section of the 1968 bill authorized F H A
mortgages for inner-city areas
that did not meet the usual eligibility criteria, and another
section subsidized interest
payments by low-income families. I f administered wisely, these
provisions might have
promoted fair housing goals, but F H A administrators deployed
them in ways that actually
promoted segregation in order to provide banks, brokers,
lenders, developers, realtors,
and speculators with windfall profits. As a U.S. Commission on
C i v i l Rights investiga-
tion later revealed, F H A officials collaborated with
blockbusters in financing the flight of
low-income whites out of inner-city neighborhoods, and then
aided unscrupulous realtors
and speculators by arranging purchases of substandard housing
by minorities desperate
to own their own homes. T h e resulting sales and mortgage

foreclosures brought great
profits to lenders (almost all of them white), but their actions
led to price fixing and a
subsequent inflation of housing costs in the inner city by more
than 200 percent between
1968 and 1972. Bankers then foreclosed on the mortgages of
thousands of these unin-
spected and substandard homes, ruining many inner-city
neighborhoods. In response, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development essentially red-
lined inner cities, making
them ineligible for future loans, a decision that destroyed the
value of inner-city housing
for generations to come.
Federally funded highways designed to connect suburban
commuters with downtown
places of employment also destroyed already scarce housing in
minority communities and
often disrupted neighborhood life as well. Construction of the
Harbor Freeway in Los
Angeles, the G u l f Freeway in Houston, and the M a r k Twain
Freeway in St. Louis displaced
thousands of residents and bisected neighborhoods, shopping
districts, and political pre-
cincts. T h e processes of urban renewal and highway
construction set in motion a vicious
cycle: population loss led to decreased political power, which
made minority neighbor-
hoods more vulnerable to further urban renewal and freeway
construction, not to mention

more susceptible to the placement of prisons, incinerators, toxic
waste dumps, and other
projects that further depopulated these areas.
Minorities are less likely than whites to receive preventive
medical care or costly opera-
tions from Medicare. Eligible members of minority communities
are also less likely than
European Americans to apply for food stamps. T h e labor of
migrant farm workers from
aggrieved raciahzed groups plays a vital role in providing
adequate nutrition for others, but
the farm workers and their children suffer disproportionately
from health disorders caused
by malnutrition. In her important research on health policy and
ethnic diversity, Linda
Wray concludes that "the lower hfe expectancies for many
ethnic minority groups and
subgroups stem largely from their disproportionately higher
rates of poverty, malnutrition,
and poor health care." j
Just as residential segregation and urban renewal make minority
communities dispro-
portionately susceptible to health hazards, their physical and
social location gives these
communities a different relationship to the criminal justice
system. A 1990 study by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse revealed that while only 15
percent of the thirteen mil-
lion habitual drug users in the United States were black and 77
percent were white, African
Americans were four times more likely to be arrested on drug
charges than whites in the
nation as a whole, and seven to nine times more likely in
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ilhnois,

Florida, Massachusetts, and N e w Jersey. A 1989 study by the
Parents' Resource Institute
for D r u g Education discovered that African American high
school students consistently
showed lower levels of drug and alcohol use than their
European American counterparts,
even in high schools populated by residents of low-income
housing projects. Yet, while
comprising about 12 percent of the U.S. population, blacks
accounted for 10 percent of
drug arrests in 1984, 40 percent in 1988, and 42 percent in
1990. In addition, white
drug defendants receive considerably shorter average prison
terms than African Americans
convicted of comparable crimes. A U.S. Sentencing Commission
study found in 1992 that
half of the federal court districts that handled cases involving
crack cocaine prosecuted
minority defendants exclusively. A Los Angeles Times article in
1995 revealed that "black
and Latino crack dealers are hammered w i t h 10-year
mandatory federal sentences while
whites prosecuted in state court face a minimum of five years
and often receive no more
than a year in j a i l . " Alexander Lichtenstein and Michael A .
K r o l l point out that sentences
for African Americans in the federal prison system are 20
percent longer than those given
to whites who commit the same crimes. They observe that if
blacks received the same sen-
tences as whites for these offenses, the federal prison system
would require three thousand
fewer prison cells, enough to close completely six of the new
five-hundred bed institutions.
Racial animus on the part of police officers, prosecutors, and

judges accounts for only
a small portion of the distinctive experience that racial
minorities have with the criminal
justice system. Economic devastation makes the drug trade
appealing to some people in the
inner city, while the dearth of capital in minority neighborhoods
curtails opportunities for
other kinds of employment. Deindustrialization, unemployment,
and lack of intergenera-
tional transfers of wealth undermine parental and adult
authorit}' in many neighborhoods.
T h e complex factors that cause people to turn to drugs are no
more prevalent in minority
communities than elsewhere, but these communities and their
inhabitants face more stress
while having fewer opportunities to receive private counseling
and treatment for their
problems.
RACISM
T h e structural weaknesses of minority neighborhoods caused
by discriminadon in hous-
ing, educadon, and hiring also play a crucial role in relations
between inner-city residents
and the criminal justice system. Cocaine dealing, which initially
skyrocketed among white
suburban residents, was driven into the inner cit)' by escalating
enforcement pressures in
wealthy white communities. Ghettos and barrios became
distribution centers for the sale
of drugs to white suburbanites. Former N e w York and Houston
police commissioner Lee
B r o w n , head of the federal government's antidrug efforts

during the early years of the
Clinton presidency and later mayor of Houston, noted, "There
are those who bring drugs
into the country. That's not the black communit)'. T h e n you
have wholesalers, those who
distribute them once they get here, and as a rule that's not the
black community. Where
you find the blacks is in the street dealing."
You also find blacks and other minorities in prison. Police
officers in large cities, pres-
sured to show results i n the drive against drugs, lack the
resources to effectively enforce
the law everywhere (in part because of the social costs of
deindustrialization and the tax
limitation initiatives designed to shrink the size of government).
These officers know that
it is easier to make arrests and to secure convictions by
confronting drug users in areas
that have conspicuous street corner sales, that have more people
out on the street w i t h no
place to go, and that have residents more likely to plead guilty
and less likely to secure the
services of attorneys who can get the charges against them
dropped, reduced, or wiped off
the books with subsequent successful counseling and
rehabihtation. In addition, politicians
supported by the public relations efforts of neoconservative
foundations often portray
themselves to suburban voters as opponents of the "dangerous
classes" in the inner cities.
Minority disadvantages craft advantages for others. Urban
renewal failed to provide
new housing for the poor, but it played an important role in
transforming the U.S. urban

economy from one that relied on factory production to one
driven by producer services.
Urban renewal projects subsidized the development of
downtown office centers on previ-
ously residential land, and they frequently created buffer zones
of empty blocks dividing
poor neighborhoods from new shopping centers designed for
affluent commuters. To help
cities compete for corporate investment by making them
appealing to high-level execu-
tives, federal urban aid favored construction of luxury housing
units and cultural centers
like symphony halls and art museums over affordable housing
for workers. Tax abatements
granted to these producer services centers further aggravated
the fiscal crisis that cities
faced, leading to tax increases on existing industries,
businesses, and residences.
When housing prices increased dramatically during the 1970s,
white homeowners
who had been able to take advantage of discriminatory F H A
financing policies in the past
realized increased equity in their homes, while those excluded
from the housing market
by earlier policies found themselves facing even higher costs of
entry into the market in
addition to the traditional obstacles presented by the
discriminatory practices of sellers,
realtors, and lenders. T h e contrast between European
Americans and African Americans
is instructive in this regard. Because whites have access to
broader housing choices than
blacks, whites pay 15 percent less than blacks for similar
housing in the same neighbor-
hood. White neighborhoods typically experience housing costs

25 percent lower than
would be the case if the residents were black.
When confronted w i t h evidence of systematic racial bias in
home lending, defenders
of the possessive investment in whiteness argue that the
disproportionate share of loan
denials to members of minority groups stems not from
discrimination, but from the low
net worth of minority apphcants, even those who have high
incomes. T h i s might seem a
reasonable position, but net worth is almost totally determined
by past opportunities for
asset accumulation, and therefore is the one figure most likely
to reflect the history of
discrimination. Minorities are told, in essence, "We can't give
you a loan today because
we've discriminated against members of your race so effectively
in the past that you have
not been able to accumulate any equit)' from housing and to
pass it down through the
generations."
Most white families have acquired their net worth from the
appreciation of property
that they secured under conditions of special privilege in a
discriminatory housing market.
I n their prize-winning book Black Wealth/White Wealth, M e l
v m Oliver and Thomas
Shapiro demonstrate how the history of housing discrimination
makes white parents more

able to borrow funds for their children's college education or to
loan money to their
children to enter the housing market. I n addition, much
discrimination in home lending is
not based on considerations of net w o r t h ; it stems from
decisions made by white banking
officials based on their stereotypes about minority communities.
The Federal Reserve Bank
of Boston study showed that black and Latino mortgage
applicants are 60 percent more
hkely to be turned down for loans than whites, even after
controlling for employment,
financial, and neighborhood characteristics. . . .
Yet bankers also make money from the ways in which
discrimination creates artificial
scarcities in the market. Minorities have to pay more for
housing because much of the
market is off hmits to them. Blockbusters profit from exploiting
white fears and provoking
them into panic selling. Minority home owners denied loans in
mainstream banks often
turn to exploitative lenders who make " l o w end" loans at
enormously high interest rates. I f
they fail to pay back these loans, regular banks can acquire the
property cheaply and charge
someone else exorbitant interest for a loan on the same
property.
T h e policies of neoconservatives in the Reagan and Bush
administrations during the
1980s and 1990s greatly exacerbated the racialized aspects of
more than fifty years of these
social welfare policies. Regressive policies that cut federal aid
to education and refused to
challenge segregated education, housing, and hiring, as w e l l

as the cynical cultivation of
an antiblack consensus through attacks on affirmative action
and voting rights legislation
clearly reinforced possessive investments in whiteness. In the
U.S. economy, where 86
percent of available jobs do not appear in classified ads and
where personal connections
prove the most important factor in securing employment, attacks
on affirmative action
guarantee that whites w i l l be rewarded for their historical
advantage in the labor market
rather than for their individual abilities or efforts.
Yet even seemingly race-neutral policies supported by both
neoconservatives and liber-
als in the 1980s and 1990s have increased the absolute value of
being white. In the 1980s,
changes in federal tax laws decreased the value of wage income
and increased the value of
investment income—a move harmful to minorities, who suffer
from a gap between their
total wealth and that of whites even greater than the disparity
between their income and
white income. The failure to raise the minimum wage between
1981 and 1989 and the
decline of more than one-third in the value of A i d to Families
with Dependent Children
( A F D C ) payments injured all poor people, but they exacted
special costs on nonwhites,
who faced even more constricted markets for employment,
housing, and education than
poor whites.
Similarly, the "tax reforms" of the 1980s made the effective rate
of taxation higher
on investment in actual goods and services than on profits from

speculative enterprises.
T h i s change encouraged the fhght of capital from industrial
production with its many
employment opportunities toward investments that can be
turned over quickly to allow
the greatest possible tax write-offs. Government policies thus
discouraged investments
that might produce high-paying jobs and encouraged investors
to strip companies of
their assets to make rapid short-term profits. These policies hurt
almost all workers.
I RACISM
but they fell particularly heavily on minority workers, who
because of employment dis-
crimmation in the retail and small business sectors were
overrepresented in blue-collar
industrial jobs.
Subsidies to the private sector by government agencies also tend
to enhance the rewards
of past discrimination. Throughout the country, tax increment
financing for redevelop-
ment programs offers tax-free and low-interest loans to
developers whose projects use
public services, often without having to pay taxes to local
school boards or country govern-
ments. In St. Louis, for example, tax abatements for wealthy
corporations deprive the city's
schools (and their majority African American population) of
$17 million a year. E v e n if
these redevelopment projects eventually succeed in increasing
municipal revenues through

sales and earnings taxes, their proceeds go to funds that pay for
the increased services these
developments demand (fire and police protection, roads, sewers,
electricity, lighting, etc.)
rather than to school funds, which are dependent upon property
tax revenues. Nationwide,
industrial development bonds resulted in a $7.4 billion tax loss
in 1983, which ordinary
taxpayers had to make up through increased payroll taxes.
Compared to white Americans,
people of color, more likely to be poor or working class, suffer
disproportionately from
these changes as taxpayers, as workers, and as tenants. A study
by the Citizens for Tax
Justice found that wealthy Californians spend less than eleven
cents in taxes for every
dollar earned, while poor residents of the state pay fourteen
cents out of every dollar in
taxes. As groups overrepresented among the poor, minorities
have been forced to subsidize
the tax breaks given to the wealthy. W h i l e holding property
tax assessments for businesses
and some home owners to about half of their market value,
California's Proposition 13
deprived cities and counties of $13 billion a year in taxes.
Businesses alone avoided $3.3
billion to $8.6 billion in taxes per year under this statute.
Because they are ignorant of even the recent history of the
possessive investment in white-
ness—generated by slavery and segregation, immigrant
exclusion and Native American
policy, conquest and colonialism, but augmented by liberal and
conservative social policies
as well—Americans produce largely cultural explanations for
structural social problems.

T h e increased possessive investment in whiteness generated by
disinvestment in U.S. cities,
factories, and schools since the 1970s disguises as racial
problems the general social prob-
lems posed by deindustriahzation, economic restructuring, and
neoconservative attacks on
the welfare state. It fuels a discourse that demonizes people of
color for being victimized by
these changes, while hiding the privileges of whiteness by
attributing the economic advan-
tages enjoyed by whites to their family values, faith in
fatherhood, and foresight—rather
than to the favoritism they enjoy through their possessive
investment in whiteness.
Yet public opinion polls of white Americans reflect htde
recognition of these devastat-
ing changes. Seventy percent of whites in one poll said that
African Americans "have the
same opportunities to live a middle-class life as whites," and
nearly three-fourths of white
respondents to a 1989 poll beheved that opportunities for blacks
had improved under
Reagan. I f such optimism about the opportunities available to
African Americans does
not demonstrate ignorance of the dire conditions facing black
communities, it indicates
that many whites believe that blacks suffer deservedly, because
they do not take advan-
tage of the opportunities offered them. In opinion polls,
favorable assessments of black
chances for success often accompanied extremely negative
judgments about the abilities,
work habits, and character of black people. A National Opinion
Research Report in 1990
disclosed that more than 50 percent of U.S. whites viewed

blacks as innately lazy and less
intelhgent and less patriotic than whites. More than 60 percent
said that they believed that
blacks suffer from poor housing and employment opportunities
because of their own lack
of w i l l power. Some 56.3 percent said that blacks preferred
welfare to employment, while
44.6 percent contended that blacks tended toward laziness. Even
more important, research
by M a r y Edsall and Thomas Byrne Edsall indicates that many
whites structure nearly all
of their decisions about housing, education, and politics in
response to their aversions to
black people.
. . . As long as we define social life as the sum total of
conscious and dehberative
individual activities, we w i l l be able to discern as racist only
individual manifestadons
of personal prejudice and hostihty. Systemic, collective, and
coordinated group behavior
consequently drops out of sight. Collective exercises of power
that relentlessly channel
rewards, resources, and opportunities from one group to another
w i l l not appear "racist"
from this perspective, because they rarely announce their
intention to discriminate against
individuals. Yet they nonetheless give racial identities their
sinister social meaning by giving
people from different races vastly different life chances.

T h e gap between white perception and minority experience can
have explosive conse-
quences. Little more than a year after the 1992 Los Angeles
rebellion, a sixteen-year-old
high school junior shared her opinions with a reporter from the
Los Angeles Titnes. " I don't
think white people owe anything to black people," she
explained. "We didn't sell them into
slavery, it was our ancestors. What they did was wrong, but
we've done our best to make
up for i t . " A seventeen-year-old senior echoed those
comments, telling the reporter, " I feel
we spend more time in my history class talking about what
whites owe blacks than just
about anything else when the issue of slavery comes up. I often
received dirty looks. T h i s
seems strange given that I wasn't even alive then. A n d the few
members of my family from
that time didn't have the luxury of owning much, let alone
slaves. So why, I ask you, am I
constantly made to feel guilty?"
More ominously, after pleading guilty to bombing two homes
and one car, vandalizing
a synagogue, and attempting to start a race war by planning the
murder of Rodney K i n g
and the bombing of Los Angeles's First African Methodist
Episcopal C h u r c h , twenty-year-
old Christopher David Fisher explained that "sometimes whites
were picked on because
of the color of their skin. . . . Maybe we're blamed for slavery."
Fisher's actions were
certainly extreme, but his justification of them drew knowingly
and precisely on a broadly
shared narrative about the victimization of "innocent" whites by
irrational and ungrateful

minorities.
The comments and questions raised about the legacy of slavery
by these young whites
illuminate broader currents in our culture, with enormous
implications for understanding
the enduring significance of race in our country. These young
people associate black griev-
ances solely with slavery, and they express irritation at what
they perceive as efforts to make
them feel guilty or unduly privileged because of things that
happened in the distant past. The
claim that one's own family did not own any slaves is frequently
voiced in our culture. It is
almost never followed with a statement to the effect that of
course some people's families did
own slaves and we w i l l not rest until we track them down and
make them pay reparations.
This view never acknowledges how the existence of slavery and
the exploitation of black
labor after emancipation created opportunities from which
immigrants and others benefited,
even if they did not personally own slaves. Rather, it seems to
hold that, because not all
white people owned slaves, no white people can be held
accountable or inconvenienced by
the legacy of slavery. More important, having dispensed with
slavery, they feel no need to
address the histories of J i m C r o w segregation, racialized
social policies, urban renewal, or
the revived racism of contemporary neoconservatism. O n the
contrary, Fisher felt that his
discomfort with being "picked o n " and "blamed" for slavery
gave him good reason to bomb
homes, deface synagogues, and plot to kill black people.

Article Intersectionality as a Useful Tool Anti-O.docx

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