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Article 1: Bonilla-Silva, E., & Dietrich, D. (2011). The sweet enchantment of color-blind racism in Obamerica. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 634(1), 190-206. doi:10.1177/0002716210389702

Abstract: It has become accepted dogma among whites in the United States that race is no longer a central factor determining the life chances of Americans. In this article, the authors counter this myth by describing how the ideology of color-blind racism works to defend and justify the contemporary racial order. The authors illustrate three basic frames of this ideology, namely, abstract liberalism, cultural racism, and minimization of racism. The authors then examine research that has empirically shown the effects of color-blind racism on whites’ reactions to Hurricane Katrina, among whites who have adopted children of color, and in America’s elite law schools. Finally, the authors examine how the election of Barack Obama is not an example of America becoming a “post-racial” country but reflects color-blind racism. The authors argue that the Obama phenomenon as a cultural symbol and his political stance and persona on race are compatible with color-blind racism. The authors conclude with the prognosis that, under the Obama administration, the tentacles of color-blind racism will reach even deeper into the crevices of the American polity.

Article 2: Embrick, D. G. (2015). Two nations, revisited: The lynching of Black and Brown bodies, police brutality, and racial control in “post-racial” Amerikkka. Critical Sociology. doi:10.1177/0896920515591950

Abstract: In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (NACCD) to examine the 1967 race riots that were taking place in Los Angeles, Chicago, Newark, and Detroit that erupted in the mid-1960s. That report, officially labeled the Kerner Report, outlined structural inequalities in America that privileged whites over other racial and ethnic groups; the report concluded that the United States was headed toward two separate and unequal societies: black and white. Forty-seven years after the Kerner Report where do we stand? In this article, I revisit recent events on police violence toward minorities and give consideration to some thoughts moving forward.