Abstract
A distinctive feature of the US, since its inception, is a remarkably steady and persistent division between whites and blacks. This distinction was based on the premise of a natural, real and durable racial difference between Africans and Europeans. Still today, the black/white binary sustains systematic inequality between the two groups through a set of largely unconscious institutional practices, rules, values, mores, emotions, and beliefs systematically producing for each unequal opportunities, discrepant life-chances, and distinctive social outcomes. This pattern of inequality has sustained itself over time, remaining in place post-slavery, post-Jim Crow, post-desegregation, post-Civil Rights reforms, and post-Obama.
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© 2014 Jeffrey Prager
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Prager, J. (2014). Melancholia and the Racial Order: A Psychosocial Analysis of America’s Enduring Racism. In: Chancer, L., Andrews, J. (eds) The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304582_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304582_14
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