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Research Articles

Racial gaslighting

Angelique M. Davis Political Science, Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USAORCID Iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0270-4055
ORCID Icon &
Rose Ernst Political Science, Seattle University, Seattle, WA, USACorrespondenceernstr@seattleu.edu
ORCID Iconhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1803-9424
ORCID Icon
Pages 761-774
Received 14 Sep 2016
Accepted 17 Jul 2017
Published online: 23 Nov 2017

Research Articles

Racial gaslighting

ABSTRACT

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.

Racial gaslighting (v)

The political, social, economic and cultural process that perpetuates and normalizes a white supremacist reality through pathologizing those who resist.

Racial spectacle (n)

Narratives that obfuscate the existence of a white supremacist state power structure.

Introduction

In the 1944 mystery-thriller film, Gaslight, actor Charles Boyer manipulates his home environment in an attempt to control his wife, played by Ingrid Bergman. Unbeknownst to Bergman, Boyer is a murderer and a thief who has married her in order to return to the scene of his original crime, Bergman’s house. His goal is to search the attic for the treasure of his original victim. As he must keep this a secret, he leaves his wife at home, alone, while he ostensibly socializes with friends in the evenings. In reality, he creeps up to the attic, makes ominous noises – dragging trunks and furniture across the floor – and turns on the lights in the attic, thus creating a flickering effect of the gaslights in the floors below. Night after night, Bergman becomes increasingly disturbed by these unexplained occurrences. She confesses this to her husband. He dismisses her experiences as flights of fancy; when she persists in telling him about them, he begins to question her sanity. She, in turn, begins to doubt her own perceptions. Boyer isolates her from friends and family on the pretext that she is unwell. Bergman’s familial and social circle gradually disappears; Boyer is able to control her through this manipulation game for his own personal gain.

Conceptual framework

The film, Gaslight, made the term popular, particularly among psychologists who used it to refer to a type of abusive relationship. Following the film, The Oxford English Dictionary defines “gaslighting” as “[t]he action or process of manipulating a person by psychological means into questioning his or her own sanity” (2016). In popular discourse, the gaslighting metaphor appears in entertainment, self-help, and more recently, social justice, and political arenas (Waltman 2016). In the field of psychology, it “describe[s] the effort of one person to undermine another person’s confidence and stability by causing the victim to doubt [their] own senses and beliefs” (Kline 2006), 1148). In the area of family therapy, gaslighting describes a situation in which one partner attempts to control the other. A classic example is a philandering partner who tells their significant other that their perceptions of inappropriate or deceitful behavior are untrue. These scenarios often emerge in “male–female” relationships, though either partner may be the instigator. A typical pattern in the literature is a man’s use of gendered stereotypes – such as the jealous or insecure woman – to not only deflect attention away from his activities but to also control her thoughts by causing her to doubt her perceptions (Gass and Nichols 1988).

Education scholars have used gaslighting to explain sociohistorical factors that led to the “disenfranchisement, marginalization, and overall invisibility of African American teachers writ large in the profession” (Roberts and Carter Andrews 2013, 70). They posit that the “normalized master narrative” about “the limited presence of Black teachers in teaching” has been used throughout U.S. history as an “abuse tactic” to delude the US public into believing the Black community is solely at fault for the failure of the teaching profession to recruit and retain Black teachers. This normalized master narrative fails to address structural barriers and how the presence of Black teachers benefits all students (Roberts and Carter Andrews 2013, 70).

This manipulation of perception is powerful because our reality – how we perceive the world and our place in it – is socially constructed. In the context of race politics, scholars agree that race is not biological; instead, the construct race and how it affects our perceptions are sociopolitical (Davis 2012). Interpretations of emotion can also be sociopolitical. Burrow (2005) posits that the dismissal of feminist anger is a

key tool for leveraging women into their rightful place in society through subverting dominant ideologies … . Dismissing such anger does not then seem to be a matter of innocent oversight. Rather, dismissal silences one’s political voice and, at the same time, compromises a valuable source of self-worth and self-trust. (27)

Burrow discusses how this form of judgment is used to oppress others:

Emotional abusers often divert issues from legitimate targets by instead placing the focus on the way in which one expresses oneself. The implication is that the person raising the issue is herself inadequate to express that concern or she is to blame for how she has raised the issue. Diversion is a way of controlling the communication between the persons involved. This sort of abuse is common to women’s lives. Restricting freedom of expression is a similar sort of abusive tactic used to oppress groups of persons. (31)

An example of this type of diversion is the colloquial use of the phrase “tone policing.” Dominant groups use tone policing to chastise the communication style of marginalized people who challenge their oppression. It focuses on the emotion behind a message rather than the message itself. Through focusing on the manner in which the message is delivered, no matter the legitimacy of the content, tone policing prioritizes the comfort of the privileged (Hugs 2015) and minimizes marginalized peoples’ experiences, “by placing sanctions on how they will or will not be heard” (Zevallos 2017). For example, tone policing emerged in media coverage of the 2017 Women’s March. Mainstream media chastised Women of Color who challenged white women to think about racial divides. Women of Color’s attempts to center race in dialogues about the march were criticized as “contentious.” A New York Times article published before the march focused on the claims made by white women who felt “unwelcome,” thereby prioritizing the comfort of white women (Stockman 2017). In what follows, we provide a sociopolitical contextualization of interpersonal relationships not only in individual level interactions, but also in the maintenance of white supremacy.1

The process of racial gaslighting

Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States ([1986] 2014) became a classic text in race and ethnic politics, in part, because these two sociologists provided an innovative framework for understanding why and how racial categorization changes. Racial formation, first and foremost, is a process: “the sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed” (109). Unlike a system – such as capitalism, an ideology – such as colorblind racism, an institution – such as a prison, or even a political era – such as the first Reconstruction, a process does not have particular content in and of itself; rather, it is a web of relationships, perceptions, and social control mechanisms.

In the vein of Omi and Winant’s focus on process, racial gaslighting offers a way to understand how white supremacy is sustained over time. We define racial gaslighting as the political, social, economic and cultural process that perpetuates and normalizes a white supremacist reality through pathologizing those who resist. Just as racial formation rests on the creation of racial projects, racial gaslighting, as a process, relies on the production of particular narratives. These narratives are called racial spectacles (Davis and Ernst 2011).2 Racial spectacles are narratives that obfuscate the existence of a white supremacist state power structure. They are visual and textual displays that tell a particular story about the dynamics of race. For example, former President Bill Clinton gave a speech in 2012 (and again in 2016) in which he lamented the increasing number of deaths among white working-class people,

They could have said these people are dying of a broken heart … . Because they’re the people that were raised to believe the American Dream would be theirs if they worked hard and their children will have a chance to do better – and their dreams were dashed disproportionally to the population as the whole. (Scheiner 2012)

This racial spectacle obfuscates how the white supremacist state power structure actively – since Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 and onward – has kept poor white people poor. If Clinton had said, “white people are dying of a broken heart because the pathology of whiteness is killing them,” then this narrative would reveal the existence of white supremacy and call into question the role of the state as well.

Racial spectacles may be ongoing cultural narratives that generate media stories and private conversations and, in other cases, are momentary blips in the sea of media stories designed to elicit racial responses. They may become part of a larger, ongoing narrative, or they may fade from view, only to be resurrected 50 years later. Take, for example, the narratives surrounding anti-affirmative action initiative campaigns that began in the 1990s. They used the presumption of white innocence to frame the beneficiaries of affirmative action as undeserving. The synergy created between the public media campaigns and their solicitation of private “everyday opinion” formed a particularly virulent form of racial spectacle that informed voters and thereby created a direct link between the promulgation of these narratives and the creation of law (Davis and Ernst 2011).

Not all narratives about race are racial spectacles. One example of a narrative that is not a racial spectacle is the Black Lives Matter movement, emerging in response to the historical and ongoing dehumanization of Black lives in the United States. While this movement’s narrative is not a racial spectacle, the colorblind-narrative in response – All Lives Matter – is. The Black Lives Matter narrative illuminates the dehumanization of Black lives and is in no way suggesting other lives do not matter – instead, it shifts the focus away from whiteness by the assertion that Black lives matter, too. The Black Lives Matter movement exposes the white supremacist state power structure and how it dehumanizes Black life in the United States. The All Lives Matter colorblind-narrative is a racial spectacle, however, because it disguises the prioritizing of white lives. The All Lives Matter movement achieves three core tasks: first, it co-opts Black social justice intellectual work; second, it pushes Black communities further to the margins of society by insisting that all lives in the United States are valued equally and treated as such. Consequently, it erases the centuries of brutalization and dehumanization of Black bodies. Finally, it obfuscates the role of the white supremacist state power structure by eliding over the specific targeting of Black lives by state institutions and actors, such as prisons and police.

The process of racial gaslighting invites intersectional and multiplicative understandings of domination and resistance precisely because the process is a binary of normalization versus pathologization that can take place with or without individual agency. For those who are aware of racial gaslighting, it can be almost impossible to combat their pathologization by the dominant narrative, due to the ubiquitous nature of white supremacy. Nevertheless, activists have challenged the white supremacist power structure, counted the cost, and still sacrificially engaged in acts of resistance. Some have resisted with less political motivation, but simply because they believed they were standing up for what was just. And others, like Bergman, were manipulated into believing their actions or mental state was problematic. Just as the process of white supremacy does not require those who are complicit to understand the racist nature of their actions, awareness is also not determinative of whether the process of racial gaslighting is taking place.

In the following sections, we provide examples of racial gaslighting, noting the role of racial spectacles in this process. We examine two historical court cases from Japanese American internment/incarceration and the Civil Rights Movement that highlight how micro-level individual actions are part of a larger, macro process of racial gaslighting. In both cases, Korematsu v. United States (1944) and Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Braden (1955), plaintiffs resisted white supremacist violence. As we delineate in more detail in each case discussion section, the process of racial gaslighting is markedly different for People of Color and white people who resist white supremacy in five ways: portrayal, exposure (or risk), pathologization, audience, and outcome.

Korematsu v. United States (1944): criminalizing resistance

The two conflicting orders, one which commanded him to stay and the other which commanded him to go, were nothing but a cleverly devised trap to accomplish the real purpose of the military authority, which was to lock him up in a concentration camp. (Justice Owen Roberts, Dissent, Korematsu v. United States, 1944, 232)

Background and context

Although anti-Asian sentiment in the United States preceded the bombing of Pearl Harbor and World War II, these events resulted in the use of racial gaslighting to obfuscate state-sanctioned racism against those of Japanese ancestry. In 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set into motion state forced removal of over 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from their West Coast homes. Segregated schools, anti-miscegenation laws, alien land laws, and anti-Japanese wartime propaganda pre-dated WWII, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor accelerated the level of concrete state action against them. The fact that two-thirds were US citizens by birth highlights the racism and xenophobia at play. The state did not file individual charges against them, nor was proof provided they had engaged in acts of espionage or sabotage. Failure to comply was a federal crime (Bannai 2005).

Japanese Americans who challenged these laws did so at great personal cost.3 One of these individuals, Fred Korematsu – a US citizen of Japanese ancestry – refused to report to a detention center in San Leandro, California. He was jailed for violation of a detention order and classified as an “enemy alien.” Mr Korematsu challenged the constitutionality of the order under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. On December 18, 1944, the majority of the US Supreme Court upheld Executive Order 9066 and General DeWitt’s orders. They acknowledged that racial discrimination should receive close scrutiny:4 “all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect” (Korematsu 1944, 216). Yet, even with this acknowledgement, the majority denied the laws were a form of racial discrimination; instead, they provided a public necessity justification:

To cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely confuses the issue. Korematsu was not excluded from the Military Area because of hostility to him or his race. He was excluded because we are at war with the Japanese Empire. (Korematsu 1944, 223–224)

Racial spectacle

The US government used racial spectacles at the macro-level to publicly justify its use of concrete state action against of those of Japanese ancestry during World War II. At the macro level, the federal government perpetuated and normalized its actions through the use of euphemistic language. The Supreme Court’s decision and its objection to the characterization of the camps as concentration camps reflects this obfuscation: “Regardless of the true nature of the assembly and relocation centers – and we deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps, with all the ugly connotations that term implies – we are dealing specifically with nothing but an exclusion order” (Korematsu 1944, 223). The labels of assembly and relocation centers do not adequately explain their existence and serve to obscure reality:

Over time, researchers and scholars, studying historical artifacts, documents, and accounts of the period, have increasingly pointed out the euphemistic nature of the language employed by the US government during WWII in relation to the concentration camps in which Japanese American citizens were incarcerated. (National JACL 2013, 8)

To authentically explain what happened to Japanese Americans requires accurate vocabulary: exclusion, or forced removal, not evacuation; incarceration, not relocation; US citizens of Japanese ancestry, not non-aliens; detention orders, not civilian exclusion orders; and American concentration camp, incarceration camp, or illegal detention center, not relocation center or internment camp (Ishizuka 2006).

Racial gaslighting

The government’s use of macro-level racial spectacles to obscure the existence of a white supremacist state power structure provided a narrative that set the stage for the racial gaslighting of Japanese Americans at a micro level. In this way, the political, social, economic, and cultural process of racial gaslighting utilized racial spectacles to perpetuate and normalize a white supremacist state by pathologizing those who resisted. The government’s call to engage in acts of patriotism such as military service and loyalty questionnaires compelled compliance through manipulating the requirements for Japanese Americans to be seen as loyal to the United States: “the central loyalty question was phrased in such a way that an affirmative answer implied that internees were previously loyal to the Japanese Emperor” (Fong 2013, 242). White politicians as well as leaders within Japanese American communities called for voluntary compliance with the military orders and the attendant loss of personal liberty as well as land, businesses, homes, and the majority of personal possessions. Many also joined the military to defend the United States against Japan and became highly decorated war heroes. Those who refused to comply with detention orders, such as Mr Korematsu, became convicted criminals who were ostracized by many in the Japanese American community (Bannai 2005).5

The use of racial spectacles and racial gaslighting by the government to hide white supremacist state action under the guise national security continues after Japanese American incarceration, albeit in different sociopolitical contexts. For decades after incarceration, the convergence of the trauma and spectacle of incarceration resulted in silence by many Japanese Americans (Roxworthy 2008). The racial gaslighting of Japanese Americans did, however, eventually subside due to ongoing advocacy efforts of the Japanese American community. Almost 40 years after Mr Korematsu’s conviction, a writ of coram nobis was filed to reverse his conviction based upon newly discovered evidence that was not available at the time of his trial. It revealed that the government knowingly withheld evidence that undermined its assertions of disloyalty by those of Japanese ancestry. The US Solicitor General’s office did not challenge the petition. The incongruent result was the widely applauded reversal of Mr Korematsu’s individual conviction in 1983 by a federal district court – a micro-level legal action – while at the macro level the 1944 Supreme Court decision remained in effect.

In Korematsu, the racial gaslighting of People of Color is not only symbolic – sending a message to Japanese Americans in particular – but also linked to concrete state action. If, for example, the Supreme Court decided to affirm Korematsu’s argument, a concrete change to state action would have followed: incarceration/internment would halt. If not halted, other state action would need to occur to maintain the camps.6 In the case of Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Braden (1955), however, the outcome of the case did not stifle or enable a particular state action.

Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Braden (1955): racial sedition

The process of racial gaslighting white people fundamentally differs from that of People of Color for two reasons. First, white people may be pathologized like People of Color, but the narrative is distinctive: they are viewed as traitors to their race. Second, the purpose of gaslighting individual white people is largely symbolic or pedagogical. We do not mean these individuals do not suffer harm at the hands of the state or white society – as in the case of Anne and Carl Braden, discussed in this section. Instead, they are used symbolically as an example, or warning, to other white people.

Background and context

On June 27, 1954, someone firebombed Andrew and Charlotte Wade’s house near Louisville, Kentucky. Fortunately, the Wades were not at home when the explosion occurred; the perpetrators placed the dynamite underneath the bedroom of their child, Rosemary. This attack followed weeks of white neighbors’ violent intimidation of the Wades (Braden 2001, 184, 186; Minter 2013, 362). The culprit, never brought to trial, was most likely an ex-policeman (Braden 2001, 187). We offer a brief overview of events linked to this racial terrorism, and then discuss the case through the lens of racial gaslighting.

After facing institutional practices of redlining and outright intimidation, Andrew Wade approached a white activist couple, Carl and Anne Braden, about purchasing a home in an all-white suburb on his behalf in 1954 (1989). The Bradens agreed with alacrity. After the Wades moved into their new home, white people in the neighborhood reacted violently with threats and intimidation. The Wade Defense Committee formed as a result. After the bombing attack, prosecutors charged the Bradens with orchestrating the explosion themselves. Found guilty of “teaching or advocating sedition or Criminal Syndicalism,” the state of Kentucky sentenced Carl Braden to 15 years of hard labor at the State Penitentiary at LaGrange and fined him $5000 (Kentucky v. Braden). His $40,000 bond was the highest ever in the history of Kentucky as of 1955 (Fosl 2006). The lead prosecutor’s case rested on demonstrating the Bradens were communists:

There is no question of white and colored in this case. There has been no colored man indicted. I don't know why [defense attorney] … wanted to harp on white supremacy and all that sort of thing … . The only question is whether or not Carl Braden advocated sedition, criminal syndicalism, or had material to circulate and display for that purpose of join assemblages of persons for that purpose. (Braden transcript 1955, 161)

During this period, Anne Braden described how the shape-shifting term communist was linked to fights against racism in the South: “To the white supremacist in the South, it means somebody fighting segregation” (Fosl 2006, 165). In the closing argument to the case, one of the prosecutors accused Braden of actually creating racial tension as a part of a communist plot:

[W]e should let this be a milestone in the historic fight of America today to stop this evil pitting race against race, white against black, Catholic against Protestants, Jew against the Gentile, rich against the poor … . We must ruthlessly cut out this cancer of communism, and here is the one place to start. (Braden transcript 1955, 2467–2468)

Unsurprisingly, the prosecutor’s argument is contradictory: white supremacy is not at issue, but then it is because communists apparently instigate the “pitting” of “white against black.” Though the Bradens never considered the legal ramifications of purchasing the Wades’ home, nor anticipated what followed (Fosl 2006), prosecutors and other Kentucky officials decided to use the Braden case for their own purposes:

In my opinion, this is a test case for the white supremacists … . So far as I know, this is the first major case where an attempt has been made to place the blame for [anti-Negro] violence on the people fighting segregation. (Anne Braden, quoted in Fosl 2006, 165)

Racial spectacles

The racial intimidation culminating in the bombing of the Wades’ home represented the first of many racial spectacles7 in this case. While state entities were complicit in setting the conditions for the bombing, the characterization of this act of racial terror as an isolated private action served to hide the existence of a white supremacist state power structure. The prosecutor laid forth two lines of inquiry in the grand jury hearing: “[e]ither it had been set by neighbors who resented the entry of blacks into a white neighborhood or it had been an ‘inside job,’ part of a communist plot to stir up racial friction in an otherwise contented community” (Fosl 2006, 156). Though the prosecutor chose not to actively pursue the first theory – though it is most likely what occurred – it still comports with a narrative of private action. The same is true for the second line of inquiry. Even if Kentucky tried the ostensible white perpetrator, the “backstage” white narrative (Feagin and Picca 2007) would have been one of justification or provocation. This is in contrast to the official “frontstage” state narrative of the bomber “going too far” – which would still leave the apartheid system undisturbed.

Racial gaslighting

Individual white people may attempt to divest from or subvert their own power because they recognize what they have to gain by dismantling white supremacy (Jackson 2011). White society and the state will ignore or label them as obsessive, dangerous, or “crazy” people. Their whiteness may protect or cushion them from the violence visited upon People of Color, and sometimes it will not (Table 1). The difference, regardless of whether or not they are individually punished, is that they are singled out as subversive individuals, not as white subversive individuals. Ironically, though they are seen as dangerous individuals, their punishment is a collective message to white people as a whole. These messages feed into the macro-level process of racial gaslighting.

Table 1. Racial gaslighting.

One of the most important points about the Braden case is that the possibility of a non-prosecution or acquittal would have not had any direct concrete effect on state action. This is the opposite of possible outcomes against People of Color. The decision in Braden might have provoked some additional policymaking attempts and spurred further cracks in the façade of the Southern “police state” (Anne Braden, quoted in Fosl 2006, 208), but it would not have halted enforcement of segregation. This is precisely because the charges were masked as ostensibly non-racial: sedition. Again, though the process appears targeted at individual action at a micro level, the messaging to all white people fuels macro-level narratives about white supremacy.

The final important contrast is that in the case of white people resisting, the effects of gaslighting only directly harm those individual white (and People of Color as in the case of the Wades) people involved. In the case of directly gaslighting People of Color, the opposite is true. The Wades’ experience with racial gaslighting illuminates this point. Their house was bombed – and they would have been killed if at home – and they suffered a lifetime of consequences from the case. As Anne Braden herself noted, however, it became the Braden case, rather than the Wade case. The Wades’ sacrifice is invisible, but if they were somehow to contest that fact, they would be subject to ridicule and violence. Moreover, Kentucky charged the Bradens precisely because the official state version of the story was that Black people were satisfied with racial apartheid. This is the crux of racial gaslighting: to dismantle the racial spectacle that Black people were satisfied with racial apartheid, the Wades would have had to claim they bombed their own home to orchestrate a sedition campaign.

Bridging past and present

The process of racial gaslighting, as described in Korematsu and Braden, is markedly different for People of Color and white people in five ways: portrayal, exposure (or risk), pathologization, audience, and outcome. Fred Korematsu, a person of Japanese ancestry, was portrayed by state and society in a racist light. In contrast, Anne and Carl Braden, a white couple, were labeled as communists and race traitors. Second, the exposure of Fred Korematsu was both individual (to him) and to the collective of Japanese Americans, though that collective exposure remains regardless of individual action. The Bradens’ exposure was individual – white people as a whole had nothing to immediately gain or lose with the decision in the case. Third, the pathologization of Fred Korematsu, like his portrayal, was part of a process of projecting racist stereotypes on the entire group. Kentucky pathologized the Bradens as individual subversives, and also as subversives who made an active decision to become communists. Fourth, the audience for the racial spectacle of the Korematsu case was both People of Color and white people. In the case of the Bradens, white people were the primary audience, warned against the dangers of resisting white supremacy. Fifth, in terms of the outcome of racial gaslighting, Korematsu resulted in symbolic messages and concrete, racialized state-sanctioned action, in contrast to Braden, which resulted in individualized punishment and symbolic warnings to other white people.

The reader may be tempted to agree with our analysis of Korematsu and Braden, yet wonder how these examples are connected to the current state of white supremacy in the United States. Returning to Korematsu, we can see how the process of racial gaslighting continues, girded by the power of stare decisis and fueled by the narrative of national security. In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act provided an official apology and reparations to those individuals who were incarcerated. Mr Korematsu’s resistance was recognized and he was widely considered a hero (Bannai 2005). In 1998, President Clinton awarded Fred Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Although the Korematsu decision has been undermined over time, the case has not been overturned and still has precedential value. It was used as precedent to support the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 “War on Terror” (Green 2011) and the racialization of Muslims in the United States (Chon and Arzt 2005). In 2011, the Office of the Solicitor General issued a confession of error admitting it withheld reports on Japanese Americans’ loyalty in the incarceration cases (Office of the Solicitor General 2011). Yet, in 2013, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to the Hedges v. Obama case, which challenged legislation permitting the US government to indefinitely detain people suspected of substantially supporting terrorist organizations. Review of this Second Circuit decision would have provided them the opportunity to formally overrule Korematsu. Add to this the plethora of state action focused on groups of People of Color, such as incarceration of immigrant families in camps in Texas and Pennsylvania (Hennessy-Fiske 2015), calls by politicians to incarcerate Syrian refugees (Varner 2015), as well as the executive order to temporarily ban travel from seven majority-Muslim countries in January 2017. These state actions underscore how the process of racial gaslighting ripples through time.

Racial gaslighting moves the ball forward in race politics scholarship in the tradition of both critical race and racial formation theories. Racial formation remains a touchstone for both theoretical and empirical scholarship (Pagliai 2009; HoSang, LaBennett, and Pulido 2012; Lawrence 2012; Feagin and Elias 2013; Golash-Boza 2013; Omi and Winant 2013; Wingfield 2013; Winant 2015), grappling with the persistence of racism in the United States. A rather heated series of exchanges in Ethnic and Racial Studies (2013) underlines the continuing relevance of racial formation theory. Feagin and Elias critique racial formation theory as unable to conceptualize “the deep foundation, layered complexities, and institutionalized operations of systemic racism in the USA” (2013, 931). Omi and Winant respond that Feagin and Elias’ account of systemic racism as a totalizing force and as an alternative framework to racial formation theory has unintended consequences:

they dismiss the political agency of people of colour and of anti-racist whites. In Feagin/Elias’s view, “systemic racism” is like the Borg in the Star Trek series: a hive-mind phenomenon that assimilates all it touches. As the Borg announce in their collective audio message to intended targets, “Resistance is futile”. (2013, 962)

Our racial gaslighting framework addresses both concerns through a complementary analysis that addresses the primary critiques and rejoinders of racial formation theory. First, racial gaslighting emphasizes a structural and systemic analysis of white supremacy. Like racial formation theory, however, we view racial gaslighting as an iterative process. Second, while we agree with Feagin and Elias’ emphasis on white supremacy, we also agree with Omi and Winant that resistance is not futile, but that certain types of resistance can be easily co-opted or have unintended consequences.8

Conclusion

Racial spectacles lurk everywhere, from our daily interpersonal interactions to the grotesque political theatre of the presidency. These visual and textual narratives align in a process of racial gaslighting that not only targets micro-level players in the particular story, but taps into broader historical white supremacist myths. Korematsu and Braden represent the often-catastrophic consequences of racial gaslighting for individuals who resist white supremacist violence and their subsequent effects on collectivities. While the individuals in these cases were pathologized and punished, the cases reflect the different “functions” of gaslighting People of Color versus white people in terms of portrayal, exposure, pathologization, audience, and outcome. Again, the process of racial gaslighting targets those who resist. By design, the survival, existence, resilience, and/or success of People of Color is an act of resistance on both macro and micro levels that results in racial gaslighting.

We contend that naming and clarifying this process of racial gaslighting enables us to build a common language in the struggle against white supremacy. Recognizing the process and developing narratives to resist the confines of gaslighting – or at the very least name it as what it is – automatically diminishes some of its power. At the close of the film Gaslight, Bergman regains her agency once she understands the manipulations of her husband and can clearly identify his attempts to discredit her. In the case of Fred Korematsu and the Bradens, they exercised their individual agency to challenge white supremacy in their own ways, but were pathologized for noncompliance. And, in addition to the societal structures designed to punish their noncompliance, their pathologization was facilitated by the lack of language to name and expose this duplicitous tool of white supremacy. We do not suggest that naming and clarifying are enough; rather, we posit that recognizing our collective historical and contemporary patterns is a powerful step towards building movements equipped to stop fueling white supremacy’s racial gaslight.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 We use Ellinger and Martinas’ definition of white supremacy:

White supremacy is an historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege. (1994)

2 Our definition of racial spectacles builds on our previous work on the subject. The addition of the overarching process of racial gaslighting illustrates the specific role of racial spectacles in this context.

3 Others also resisted the incarceration through the court system, such as Yosh Kuromiya and Gene Akutsu (Bannai 2005).

4 While this is the first case to introduce the concept of strict scrutiny by the Supreme Court to equal protection analysis, it was not developed until later cases due to the majority's refusal to acknowledge the racism inherent in these orders.

5 Fred Korematsu's biography, Enduring Conviction, discusses his decision to resist:

Fred said he knew remaining in Oakland had been wrong and that he had intended to turn himself in. One might wonder now, over half a century later, why Fred didn't tell Mansfield that he had done nothing wrong – that he, as an American citizen, had a constitutional right to remain free. Maybe he was scared or intimidated or both. Maybe he wanted to protect his [girlfriend] Ida. Most importantly, however, he, as an American citizen, did not have to invoke his constitutional rights to be able to exercise them. While Fred may not have asserted his rights in words, he had asserted his right to liberty by choosing to stay.  …  while not quoting the Constitution, he was seeking the freedom it promised. (Bannai 2015, 42)

6 Concrete state action can also include state omission or delayed action. For example, during the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, local public safety officials’ complicity and failure to intervene allowed white mobs to injure and murder hundreds of African Americans and destroy more than 1000 Black-owned homes and businesses (Oklahoma 2001).

7 The other racial spectacles include multiple trials, arrests, hearings, press coverage, and the like.

8 Though racial gaslighting illustrates how white supremacy survives, we are aware of possible critiques of a single axis analysis along racial lines. Rather than view this framework as following a single axis analysis, however, racial gaslighting invites intersectional and multiplicative understandings of domination and resistance precisely because the process is a binary of normalization versus pathologization.

References

 

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