ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of the white racial frame, and suggests its utility and importance in making sense out of racial oppression, mainly in North America. This racial frame is an overarching worldview, one that encompasses important racial ideas, terms, images, emotions, and interpretations. The white racial frame has directly protected and shaped this society's inegalitarian structure of resources and hierarchy of power. The liberty-and-justice frame has been routinely trumped by the white racial frame, and has too often been reserved just for rhetorical speeches and sermons. Central to the dominant racial frame in the United States are several "big picture" narratives that connect frame elements into historically oriented stories with morals that are especially important to white Americans. The dominant racial frame regularly overlaps with, and is connected to, other collective frames that are important in viewing and interpreting recurring social worlds. It activates and relates to class-oriented and patriarchal ways of looking at society.
