Racial gaslighting

Abstract

How does white supremacy – the systemic covert and overt version – remain inextricably woven into the ideological fabric of the United States? We argue that racial gaslighting – the political, social, economic and cultural process that perpetuates and normalizes a white supremacist reality through pathologizing those who resist – offers a framework to understand its maintenance in the United States. Racial gaslighting is a process that relies on racial spectacles [Davis, Angelique M., and Rose Ernst. 2011. “Racial Spectacles: Promoting a Colorblind Agenda Through Direct Democracy.” Studies in Law, Politics and Society 55: 133–171]: narratives that obfuscate the existence of a white supremacist state power structure. We trace the production of racial spectacles in Korematsu v. United States (1944) and Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Braden (1955) to highlight how micro-level individual acts are part of a macro-level process of racial gaslighting and the often-catastrophic consequences for individuals who resist white supremacy. A comparison of these cases also reveals different “functions” of gaslighting People of Color versus white people in terms of portrayal, exposure, pathologization, audience, and outcome. Although they occurred in the twentieth century, we argue that racial gaslighting is an enduring process that responds to individual and collective resistance. We contend that naming and clarifying racial gaslighting processes assist in building collective language and strategies to challenge this systemic violence and its manifestations.

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