Racism In The Heart Thesis

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Tommie Shelby wrote his paper, Is Racism in the "Heart"?, in response to J.L.A. Garcia's paper, The Heart of Racism. Shelby writes in opposition to Garcia's view, that explains, Race-based noncognitive attitudes are the key to racism (Shelby, 413). Non-cognitive attitudes are ethical views that cannot be proven true or false. These attitudes are what make an individual a racist, which also means that they are morally vicious. Garcia views racist beliefs as secondary and inessential for racism to exist. Garcia believed that in a typical racist, "race-based animosity or contempt is the root cause of the racist's belief in the superiority of his own "racial group" and in the inferiority of another, and that this belief is just a convenient rationalization …show more content…
He then goes on to give this example in her paper to prove this statement. "If all we know, is that Stephen (a white person) dislikes Andre (a black person), then we don't yet know whether Stephen's dislike for Andre is racist" (Shelby, 414). This proves for Shelby that a vicious attitude that has a "racial basis" is not enough to be racism. Shelby goes on to later say in his paper that we should view racism as a type of ideology. "Ideologies are widely accepted illusory systems of belief that function to establish or reinforce structures of social oppression" (Shelby, 415). Racial ideologies came to be during the time of the American Slave Trade and the European imperialist domination of "darker" people. These people were "racialized" in an effort to legitimize their exploitation (Shelby, 415). This carried over through the years from the legitimization of segregation, uneven socioeconomic development, a racially segmented labor market, and social neglect of the urban poor. It even carries though to today through the influence it has on culture, politics, race relations, and economic conditions of the United States (Shelby,