Feeling Race: Theorizing the Racial Economy of Emotions

ASRXXX10.1177/0003122418816958American Sociological ReviewBonilla-Silva 816958research-article2018 2018 Presidential Address American Sociological Review 2019, Vol. 84(1) 1 –25 Feeling Race: Theorizing the © American Sociological Association 2018 https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418816958DOI: 10.1177/0003122418816958 Racial Economy of Emotions journals.sagepub.com/home/asr Eduardo Bonilla-Silvaa Abstract In this presidential address, I advance a theoretical sketch on racialized emotions—the emotions specific to racialized societies. These emotions are central to the racial edifice of societies, thus, analysts and policymakers should understand their collective nature, be aware of how they function, and appreciate the existence of variability among emoting racial subjects. Clarity on these matters is key for developing an effective affective politics to challenge any racial order. After the sketch, I offer potential strategies to retool our racial emotive order as well as our racial selves. I end my address urging White sociologists to acknowledge the significance of racism in sociology and the emotions it engenders and to work to advance new personal and organizational anti-racist practices. Keywords emotion, racialized emotions, racism, race, interests, feelings “It is not possible to enslave men [sic] with- grammar (Bonilla-Silva 2011), the Latin out logically making them inferior through Americanization of racial stratification in the and through. And racism is only the emo- United States (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich tional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation of this inferiorization.” — Frantz Fanon (1967b:40) aDuke University Many asked me why I selected race and emo- Corresponding Author: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University, 276 tions as the theme for my meeting. After all, I Soc/Psych Building, 417 Chapel Drive, Durham, am known for work on racial theory, color- North Carolina 90088 blind racism, racism and methodology, racial Email: [email protected] 2 American Sociological Review 84(1) 2008), whiteness (Doane and Bonilla-Silva those who see racial stratification (“race rela- 2003), racial ideology among the Western tions”) as the product of actors’ prejudice or nations of the world-system (Bonilla-Silva irrationality. I argued that racism forms a social 2000), and a few other things, but not for work system organized around practices, mecha- on emotions. Some even pondered why an old nisms, cognitions, and behaviors that reproduce structuralist like me would be concerned racial domination. Consequently, racism has a about emotions? After all, structuralists material foundation—Whites, as the dominant believe that “impulses and emotions explain race, are invested in preserving the system nothing,” as they are “always the results, because they receive tangible benefits, either of the power of the body or the impo- whereas non-Whites fight to change it. The tence of the mind” (Lévi-Strauss 1962:71). driver of racial history then is not stupidity, Ponder no more. Despite my historical alle- ignorance, or irrationality, but the process of giance to a version of structuralism,1 I have racial contestation. been feeling race all my life. I felt race even Although racial affairs cannot be properly before I knew what race was and long before understood without a structural perspective I recognized myself as a Black Puerto Rican on racism, I no longer regard racial domina- (Bonilla-Silva 2010) because, as James Bald- tion as just a matter of presumably objective win wrote in The Fire Next Time (1963:26), practices and mechanisms driven by the soc- “Long before the Negro child perceives this ioeconomic material interests of actors. difference [socially imposed White superior- Racial actors, both dominant and subordinate, ity and Black inferiority], and even longer simply cannot transact their lives without RE. before he understands it, he has begun to react While Whites believe the system is fair to it, he has begun to be controlled by it.” Race (Jensen 2005), the racially subordinate expe- has affected my life in and out of the academy, rience the unfairness of the system, leading making me realize the terrible truth of Fanon’s each group to develop emotions that match (1967a:116) dictum about people of color their “perceptual segregation” (Robinson being “overdetermined from without.” But I 2008). Accordingly, races fashion an emo- am not alone in feeling race—whether con- tional subjectivity generally fitting of their sciously or not, we all feel race because the location in the racial order. category is produced not just “objectively” but I hope to influence sociologists with this subjectively. Much like class and gender, race address in at least three ways. First, like the cannot come to life without being infused with addresses of other ASA presidents before emotions, thus, racialized actors feel the emo- (most notably, Cecilia Ridgeway, Doug Mas- tional weight of their categorical location. sey, and Randall Collins), this address is a call My interest in racialized emotions (RE for sociologists to take emotions seriously. henceforth), however, is not a personal explora- Second, I specifically want to persuade schol- tion2 belonging to what some White sociolo- ars doing work on race of the need to expand gists, blinded by their whiteness, label as their analytic scope beyond negative emo- “mesearch” (Hordge-Freeman, Mayorga-Gallo, tions. They need to comprehend that racial and Bonilla-Silva 2011). I am convinced RE domination produces the entire emotional are fundamental social forces shaping the house gamut: hate and love, disgust and pleasure, of racism. Accordingly, my main goal in this aversion and empathy. Finally, I delve into address is to delineate the basic components RE because without understanding their sig- necessary for theorizing the racial economy of nificance, the struggle against racism will emotions. Yet, RE cannot be properly analyzed always be incomplete. Eradicating racism without a structural understanding of racism. In will require a radical process to uproot its vis- previous work, I outlined such an understand- ible, “objective” components as well as ing, namely the “racialized social system” demolish its emotional skeleton. We will approach (Bonilla-Silva 1997), and critiqued need, as political scientist Brigitte Bargetz Bonilla-Silva 3 (2015) has argued, an “affective politics of racialized societies. We are all social subjects emancipation” rooted not in the hope for, but as our bodies are “already and always in the premise of, equality. inscribed within a social, cultural, historical, and political milieu as, for example, female and/or queer and/or of color and/or abled and/ BUILDING BLOCKS FOR or aged” (Lee 2005:288). The relational com- THEORIZING RACIALIZED ponent of RE is the product of race-making EMOTIONS and racial interactions, both relational pro- cesses through and through. Whiteness, for Before outlining the basic components needed example, cannot operate in isolation: it typi- for theorizing RE, let me define a few terms. cally requires a binary racial construction First, I focus on “racialized emotions” because where the Other is viewed as the opposite. I am not examining emotions in general, nor This construction infuses dominant actors do I view them as universal, biologically- with beliefs and emotions about selves (e.g., driven entities. I am not interested in people’s good, beautiful) and Others (e.g., bad, ugly) fear of heights or snakes, but the socially that produce, for example, “negrophobia” engendered emotions in racialized societies. (Whitney 2015). Let me illustrate this point: According to Green (2013:961), these are Whites fear Blacks in interracial encounters “emotions related to race that people experi- and many people of color experience anxiety ence when they engage in interracial interac- and discomfort when entering “white spaces” tion.” I agree with the gist of Green’s (Anderson 2015). On Whites’ fear, I cite definition, but add that RE need not be the social justice writer Rebecca McCray (2015), product of social interactions. RE can surface who in a piece concerning the McKinney, TX, from looking at a picture, reading a newspa- pool incident of 2015,4 reflected on her own per, watching a movie, or walking into—or racialized fears: even thinking about—a location (i.e., a neigh- borhood) (Smith et al. 2009). Second, I am not While it is my job to think and report deeply separating feelings (“mental experiences of on race and justice in my waking life—by body states”) and emotions (“physical states the way, I’m a white woman from a pre- arising from the body’s responses to external dominantly white Midwestern city—I have stimuli”)3 because a growing segment of also instinctively, and unthinkingly, clutched scholars in the field of emotions has moved at my purse while crossing paths with a past the Cartesian division between rationality black man on a dark street, then felt disgust and irrationality (Zembylas 2016). The most at my actions. I have locked my doors while interesting work on emotions begins from the driving through the South Side of Chicago. assumption that “reason” and emotion operate in tandem (Thoits 1989) where feelings and Once a group is racialized as “savage” and emotions are seen as co-constitutive. Finally, I “dangerous,” its members are feared and seen label the effort “racial economy” because my in need of supervision and civilization (for an goal is to map the social production of RE and interesting example, see Kramer

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