The Everyday Language of White Racism

In The Everyday Language of White Racism, Jane H. Hill provides an incisive analysis of everyday language to reveal the underlying racist stereotypes that continue to circulate in American culture.

• provides a detailed background on the theory of race and racism
• reveals how racializing discourse—talk and text that produces and reproduces ideas about races and assigns people to them—facilitates a victim-blaming logic
• integrates a broad and interdisciplinary range of literature from sociology, social psychology, justice studies, critical legal studies, philosophy, literature, and other disciplines that have studied racism, as well as material from anthropology and sociolinguistics
• Part of the Blackwell Studies in Discourse and Culture Series

Jane H. Hill is Regents' Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Arizona. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served as President of the American Anthropological Association, and was awarded the Viking Fund Medal in Anthropology in 2005.

Preface and Acknowledgments vi

1 The Persistence of White Racism 1

2 Language in White Racism: An Overview 31

3 The Social Life of Slurs 49

4 Gaffes: Racist Talk without Racists 88

5 Covert Racist Discourse: Metaphors, Mocking, and the Racialization of Historically Spanish-Speaking Populations in the United States 119

6 Linguistic Appropriation: The History of White Racism is Embedded in American English 158

7 Everyday Language, White Racist Culture, Respect, and Civility 175

Notes 183

References 197

Index 217