ABSTRACT
The "everydayness" of contemporary racist framing among white’s means that it operates in many situations of intergroup contact and regularly gets translated into alienated racial relations—that is, into relationships of white-on-black discrimination. Anti-black stereotyping and prejudice are part of an expansive racial framing and are rooted in the everyday defense of white power and privilege. Historical data on white images of and attitudes toward black Americans suggest that for centuries the overwhelming majority of whites have been openly and unapologetically racist. The specific attitudes that whites hold toward themselves and toward black Americans often take the form of, on the one hand, a model of white virtue, merit, and superior morality and, on the other, an "antimodel" of black deficiency, pathology, and threat. Specific negative representations of African Americans are critical parts of the contemporary racial framing. One particularly strong and age-old representation is that of black laziness.
