Texas A&M University

Assistant Professor

Wendy worked at Texas A&M University as a Assistant Professor

Texas A&M University

Associate Professor

As a sociologist and lawyer, my work focuses on the intersections of race, law, and legal institutions and the reproduction of social inequality. My areas of expertise include critical race theory; race and racism; intersections of race, class, gender; civil rights and criminal procedure; and race critical and feminist research methodologies.

Dr. Wendy Leo Moore is the author of the award winning book: Reproducing Racism, White Space, Elite Law Schools, and Racial Inequality.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Embodying the White Racial Frame: The (In)Significance of Barack Obama

The Journal of Race and Public Policy

Immediately after Obama’s election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama’s path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States’ first black president combines with Obama’s espousal elements of the white racial frame in such a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama’s focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of ‘diversity.’ The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama’s presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called ‘diversity’ project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Embodying the White Racial Frame: The (In)Significance of Barack Obama

The Journal of Race and Public Policy

Immediately after Obama’s election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama’s path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States’ first black president combines with Obama’s espousal elements of the white racial frame in such a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama’s focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of ‘diversity.’ The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama’s presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called ‘diversity’ project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.

I Thought She Was One of Us, A Narrative Examination of Power and Exclusion in the Academy

Feminist Generations, Feminist Waves, Eds. Hokulani Aikau, Karla Erickson, and Jennifer Pierce

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Embodying the White Racial Frame: The (In)Significance of Barack Obama

The Journal of Race and Public Policy

Immediately after Obama’s election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama’s path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States’ first black president combines with Obama’s espousal elements of the white racial frame in such a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama’s focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of ‘diversity.’ The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama’s presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called ‘diversity’ project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.

I Thought She Was One of Us, A Narrative Examination of Power and Exclusion in the Academy

Feminist Generations, Feminist Waves, Eds. Hokulani Aikau, Karla Erickson, and Jennifer Pierce

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech, White Institutional Space, and the First Amendment

Law & Policy, Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp. 99-120, 2017

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Embodying the White Racial Frame: The (In)Significance of Barack Obama

The Journal of Race and Public Policy

Immediately after Obama’s election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama’s path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States’ first black president combines with Obama’s espousal elements of the white racial frame in such a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama’s focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of ‘diversity.’ The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama’s presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called ‘diversity’ project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.

I Thought She Was One of Us, A Narrative Examination of Power and Exclusion in the Academy

Feminist Generations, Feminist Waves, Eds. Hokulani Aikau, Karla Erickson, and Jennifer Pierce

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech, White Institutional Space, and the First Amendment

Law & Policy, Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp. 99-120, 2017

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.

Reflexivity, Power and Systemic Racism.”Ethnic and Racial Studies, Symposium on Race and Reflexivity

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse

Critical Sociology

This paper examines the way in which the white racial frame works to create and enforce rhetorical boundaries around policies designed to implement racial reform, resulting in the retrenchment of white racial privilege and power. We suggest that the white racial frame operates as a key mechanism in the process of stalling racial progress and reform by imposing tacit boundaries, limitations, and assumptions on the discourse surrounding progressive racial policies which ultimately limits their effectiveness. To illustrate this process, we analyze the discourse concerning affirmative action, a policy designed to both end racial discrimination in employment and education, and to redistribute resources like access to schools and jobs. We focus our analysis on the institutional setting of elite law schools, a setting which is unique, both because it has an influence upon policy making with regard to affirmative action, in the sense that it socializes many of the people who will make and interpret the law with regard to this policy, and because it represents an institution in which affirmative action policy may be utilized in student selection and faculty hiring. Through a discourse analysis of three distinctive textual sources within the institutional setting of law schools, we illustrate how the white racial frame gets employed to do the work of stalling progressive racial policies, thus facilitating the reproduction of white privilege, power, and wealth, without any explicit expression of intentional animosity on the part of whites participating in the discourse.

Red Pill Hangovers, Covert Racism, and the Sociological Machine,” A Review of Covert Racism

Contemporary Sociology

Book Review of Covert Racism, edited by Rodney Coates

The Stare Decisis of Racial Inequality: Supreme Court Race Jurisprudence and the Legacy of Legal Apartheid

Critical Sociology

More than a generation after the civil rights movement, racial inequality persists as a defining characteristic of United States social structure. Scholars from across the political spectrum have discussed and debated the causes of persistent racial inequality, offering various interpretations. Yet in the work of these otherwise different scholars, there is a consistent theme – the post civil rights era is an era of ‘formal legal equality’. Employing a method of structurally situated critical discourse analysis comparing Supreme Court race jurisprudence in the Post-Civil War and the post-Civil Rights Eras, this article interrogates this deployment of the concept of formal equality. The analysis reveals that in both eras the Supreme Court utilizes a discursive frame that asserts the position of formal legal equality, yet simultaneously employs narrative moves that ignore social structural mechanisms of racial inequality. The result is a legacy of legal framing that deploys an ‘epistemology of ignorance’ as a mechanism to protect white privilege, power, and wealth.

Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality

Rowman & Littlefield

Law schools serve as gateway institutions into one of the most politically powerful social fields: the profession of law. Reproducing Racism is an examination of white privilege and power in two elite United States law schools. Moore examines how racial structures, racialized everyday practices, and racial discourses function in law schools. Utilizing an ethnographic lens, Moore explores the historical construction of elite law schools as institutions that reinforce white privilege and therefore naturalize white political, social, and economic power.

“Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches

Sociological Inquiry Volume 87, Issue 2 May 2017 Pages 282–302

How and why do nominally open organizations remain racially segregated in the post-civil rights era? What role do interpersonal interactions play in the perpetuation of segregation? Using ethnographic data gathered from seven, majority white, evangelical churches across four states, we find that social actors (i.e., clergy and congregants) play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing “race tests” on people of color who attempt to gain entry to these spaces. Race tests are performances by white individuals and groups, in the presence of incoming people of color. They utilize racial microaggressions, playing on persistent racist stereotypes and/or histories of racial violence, to preclude or precondition people of color's participation in predominantly white social spaces. White actors in white social spaces initiate utility-based race tests to determine whether people of color are willing to serve the interests of whites in the space, or execute exclusionary race tests to coerce people of color into leaving the space. We provide examples of both types of race tests and discuss the role of such microaggressions and the racialized emotions at play in the reproduction of segregation in historically white social spaces like white evangelical churches.

Embodying the White Racial Frame: The (In)Significance of Barack Obama

The Journal of Race and Public Policy

Immediately after Obama’s election, within both popular and scholarly discourse, claims that his election signified a post-racial America emerged. In this paper we examine these claims by situating Barack Obama’s path to the presidency within the context of the post-civil rights politics of race. We assert that the symbol of the United States’ first black president combines with Obama’s espousal elements of the white racial frame in such a way that is potentially dangerous to racial reform. Obama’s focus on a colorblind, abstract liberal individualistic notion of race lends credibility to conceptions of race that recognize difference but disavow structural inequality. We demonstrate how this frame has been employed by the Supreme Court in a manner that limited and ultimately stalled the remedial potential of affirmative action policy largely through an abstract conceptualization of ‘diversity.’ The contemporary legal and political atmosphere is thus particularly hostile to remedies aimed at creating structural change. As such, we assert that while Obama’s presidency is touted as proof of racial equality, given his discursive commitment to abstract liberalism and white racial framing, his presidency actually propels a so-called ‘diversity’ project which functions to reify structural racial inequality. We warn against the use of the symbol of Barack Obama to stall racial progress.

I Thought She Was One of Us, A Narrative Examination of Power and Exclusion in the Academy

Feminist Generations, Feminist Waves, Eds. Hokulani Aikau, Karla Erickson, and Jennifer Pierce

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech, White Institutional Space, and the First Amendment

Law & Policy, Vol. 39, Issue 2, pp. 99-120, 2017

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.

Reflexivity, Power and Systemic Racism.”Ethnic and Racial Studies, Symposium on Race and Reflexivity

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Still Killing Mocking birds: Narratives of Race and Innocence in Hollywood’s Depiction of the White Messiah Lawyer

Qualitative Sociology Review

Through a narrative analysis of movies confronting issues of race and racism in the post-civil rights era, we suggest that the movie To Kill a Mockingbird ushered in a new genre for movies about race which presented an image of a white male hero, or perhaps savior, for the black community. We suggest that this genre outlasted the era of the Civil Rights Movement and continues to impact popular cultural discourses about race in post-civil rights America. Post-civil rights films share the central elements of the anti-racist white male hero genre, but they also provide a plot twist that simultaneously highlights the racial innocence of the central characters and reinforces the ideology of liberal individualism. Reading these films within their broader historical context, we show how the innocence of these characters reflects not only the recent neo-conservative emphasis on “color blindness,” but presents a cinematic analogue to the anti-affirmative action narrative of the innocent white victim.