ABSTRACT
Human beings easily rationalize societal oppression, including racial oppression. Researchers Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner have explained how in the human mind the accepted views of oppression of a particular group are easily blended with an ordinary bureaucratic frame. The dominant racial frame still views whites as a group to be generally superior and people of color as groups to be generally of less social, economic, and political consequence. For a system of oppression to persist for long periods it is necessary not only to develop a strong rationalizing frame but also to build that frame's ideas, images, and emotions into the everyday operation of important organizational structures. From the founding era in the late 1700s until the 1960s, moreover, most federal court decisions on racial matters interpreted the Constitution from a very strong version of the white racist frame and perpetuated over the generations most elements of the system of extreme racial oppression.
