The Everyday: Repetitiveness and Familiarity

The first component that distinguishes everyday racism from other forms of racism is ‘the everyday’. What ‘the everyday’ specifically entails is hard to define. For decades, well-known philosophers and sociologists such as Henri Lefebvre and Christine Levich (Reference Lefebvre and Levich1987) and Erving Goffman (Reference Goffman1996), have attempted to formulate a demarcated definition. The academic controversy around this concept, however, remains. Nevertheless, Essed defines the everyday through Agnes Heller’s (Reference Heller1984, Reference Heller1990) conceptualization in which she distinguishes the everyday from non-everydayness.

In sociology, everyday life is described as a “known-in-common world” (Zimmerman and Pollner, Reference Zimmerman, Pollner and Douglas1970, p. 85) and “the realm of common-sense and taken-for-grantedness” (Felski Reference Felski1999, p. 17). It is everything that is not extra-ordinary, and is the background of mundane human activities. Everyday life exists out of constant and variable features of which the former play a crucial role in the maintenance of social order. This “regularity, repetition, repeatability, and uniformity which are the order of living things” (Heller Reference Heller1990, p. 47) is a relevant characteristic of everyday life for Essed’s theory. Therefore, the everyday as the first component of everyday racism consists of two aspects: repetitiveness and familiarity.

The repetitiveness is grounded in the macro-system of time. Our contemporary notion of time emerged during nineteenth-century industrialization as daily lives became visibly repetitive. The factory clock demarcated life into work and leisure. This ‘natural’ repetition contains ‘rational’ repetition referring to the monotony in our daily human activities (Lefebvre and Levich, Reference Lefebvre and Levich1987). Most of our days consist of ordinary interactions and practices in identical settings. The repetitiveness of everyday life makes interactions and practices habitual and familiar, which results in them becoming second nature over time.

The familiarity of the performed day-to-day practices and interactions is based on our common sense, which consists of scripts that individuals internalize and use implicitly. As such, they provide instructions on how to behave and how to interpret the behavior of others (Garfinkel Reference Garfinkel1967). Essed (Reference Essed1991) contributes to the idea of common sense by indicating that “socialized racist notions are integrated into meaning that make practices immediately definable and manageable” (p. 52). She describes how internalized scripts are not neutral but are instead influenced by society’s dominant ideology and structures. This is where racism comes into play as these scripts are shaped by society’s common racist notions resulting in different consequences for minority and majority groups.

The repetitiveness and familiarity of everyday life operate differently for minority and majority groups. Minorities, on the one hand, encounter the same racist practices on a day-to-day basis by (non-)strangers. Majority group members, on the other hand, do not perceive the same racist practices and interactions as racist. This is caused by the majority’s ability and power to normalize these acts. To them, racist interactions are perceived as harmless because racist notions are an integral part of their everyday scripts. Furthermore, performing racist practices becomes habitual. Consequently, in everyday life which is “the direct reproduction of the person embedded in social relations” (Essed Reference Essed1991, p. 48), it is those social relations that lead to everyday racism.

Racism: Racial Formation Theory

The second component of everyday racism is ‘racism’. In the past decades, racism has been conceptualized from a micro-individual perspective. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Reference Bonilla-Silva1997) pinpointed how the existent body of research on racism was heavily reduced to a social psychologic approach. This means that racism was, and still is, predominantly interpreted and subsequently studied as the result of personal prejudices, attitudes, and a set of negative ideas. The macro-structural perspective on racism has more or less slowly faded away. With the concept of everyday racism, Essed has tried to bring back this macro-perspective on racism. Essed’s work draws substantially from the racial formation perspective and combines this with feminist theory which she later uses to construct the intersectional concept of ‘gendered racism’.

For Essed the ‘racial formation’ theory is imperative as she critiques the structure-agency gap within the social sciences. She disagrees with the categorization of racism into structural, institutional, and individual racism as, according to her, these are intertwined (Essed Reference Essed1991). Therefore, she aims to overcome this micro-macro problem by building on Randall Collins’ (Reference Collins1981) aggregation hypothesis and Aaron V. Cicourcel’s (Reference Cicourcel, Knorr-Cetina and Cicourcel1981) representation hypothesis stating that a macro reality cannot stand on its own, but is built on micro-situations. More specifically, entities such as nations that are studied holistically in macro sociology exist because of the continual and repetitive patterns of interaction and behavior among individuals rather than in its physical-material state (Porpora Reference Porpora1989). At the same time, this means that race relations are not the product of individuals exercising power but it is their membership in a group defined as dominant that influences their practices within interactions.

Micro-Macro Link: Between Interactions and Structures

A third and final major component, bringing ‘the everyday’ and ‘racism’ together, is the mutual interdependent link between micro-interactions and macro-structures. As explained above, everyday interactions follow scripts that are influenced by society’s socio-historic framework. Following this argument, Heller (Reference Heller1984) explains that when talking about ‘contact’ between individuals, the position of the individual in the division of labor must be accounted for—which, for Heller’s Marxist perspective, is the main structure in society. In terms of everyday racism, daily interactions between individuals constantly shape and are shaped by underlying power relations (Essed Reference Essed1991). Furthermore, racist practices during interactions reproduce racist structures in society and vice-versa. This essentially means that individuals do not interact and perform within a vacuum. Therefore, Essed pays particular attention in her conceptualization of everyday racism to overcome the structure-agency gap. According to Essed, it is essential to take the macro-perspective into account because the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions of society decide which form racism takes on. In the colonial past, for example, racism took an overt form due to its legitimizing feature for colonialism. People from colonies were considered inferior, therefore, the horrible living conditions and treatment were supposedly justified. However, in modern liberal societies, racism is less tolerable, hence the emergence of ‘new’ racism. This did not eliminate racism, but rather made it covert (Bonilla-Silva Reference Bonilla-Silva2017; Gaertner and Dovidio, Reference Gaertner, Dovidio, Gaertner and Dovidio1986; McConohay Reference McConohay, Dovidio John and Gaertner1986).

This then brings us to the objectives of this systematic review:

• • From a conceptual point of view, the aim is to examine what scholars understand by everyday racism: What is everyday racism? Do they study all three components of the concept of everyday racism?

• • The way in which scholars have measured everyday racism is investigated from a methodological point of view. This part considers both their research designs, methodologies and chosen samples/populations: How is everyday racism studied?

• • Based on the previous questions: Which research gaps still need to be explored?

Microaggressions are Part of Everyday Racism, but Everyday Racism is Not the Same as Microaggressions

As previously mentioned, racism is primarily studied from a social-psychological perspective. This perspective studies the perpetrator’s thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs and whether they were conscious of their racist practices (Figure 1, micro-level). Within this field, the concept of microaggressions has gained ground. An adverse effect of this evolution is that it has overshadowed the concept of everyday racism. Our results have shown that the concepts of microaggressions and everyday racism are often used interchangeably. Their shared principles make researchers perceive that they describe a similar form of racism. They both focus on the experiences of minority members. While Sue and colleagues (Reference Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal and Esquilin2007) create a taxonomy of microaggressions categorizing specific acts and practices, Essed distinguished three main mechanisms (marginalization, problematization, and containment) behind everyday racism. In addition, they both discuss the interpretation process individuals go through when experiencing a racist event. In contrast to Essed, Sue’s aim is to measure the coping-strategies, emotions, and health consequences of minorities (Figure 1, micro-level).

Fig. 1. Schematic framework of everyday racism

Although they have the same heuristic principles, it could be said that microaggressions are part of everyday racism, but everyday racism is not the same as microaggressions. Their theoretical foundations are particularly distinct. As previously mentioned, Essed bases her work on the ‘racial formation’ theory, an alternative perspective that considers racism structurally and deals with the construction of race relations on the micro-level and the perpetuating connection with the macro-level. Sue’s (Reference Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal and Esquilin2007) conceptualization is, on the contrary, grounded in social psychology where the macro-level is disregarded.

A second relevant difference is that microaggressions are described as part of a specific form of racism, namely aversive racism (Gaertner and Dovidio, Reference Gaertner, Dovidio, Gaertner and Dovidio1986). Aversive racism is defined as the implicit negative biases held by egalitarian individuals. Individuals in a so-perceived ‘postracial’ era believe that they only carry egalitarian beliefs; however, they often use their prejudices to interact with minorities. Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio (Reference Gaertner, Dovidio, Gaertner and Dovidio1986) explain this process as primarily unintentional and unconscious, which brings us to the last major difference with everyday racism. While unawareness and unintentionality are essential for the study of microaggressions, Essed considers this to be a dangerous pitfall for anti-racism. She argues that if focus is on the ‘goodwill’ of individuals, underlying power relations will be neglected. It would bring us back to a renewed form of “social control” (Essed Reference Essed1991, p. 210). Therefore, Essed instead aims at explaining why the performance of certain acts and interactions are racist instead of explaining why an individual is racist. Due to their different perspectives and aims, researchers should be careful not to use these concepts interchangeably and instead make a choice based on their research objective.

The Relevance of Space in Defining Everyday Racism

As mentioned in our theoretical framework, everyday life is defined by Essed based on the characteristic of repetitiveness and familiarity. In our selected literature, most papers do not refer to the repetitiveness or familiarity of everyday life to contrast everyday racism to other forms of racism. Instead, they use space as a feature for defining everyday racism. When Essed (Reference Essed1984) speaks about space, she uses the concept of the ‘setting,’ which can include specific locations like the workplace, academic institutions, and stores as well as abstract macro contexts including politics, culture, sciences, and the media. Even though Essed did not pay particular attention to space, this can be innovative and give a new direction on the conceptualization of everyday racism. To this end, the discussion should be widened by using an interdisciplinary lens to explain everyday racism.

The social sciences have not paid particular attention to the spatial context in which race relations take place and how this shapes racist practices. To our knowledge, Goffman’s (Reference Goffman1996) work has concerned itself with the context that inhibits social interactions, something which he calls ‘gathering’. With the concept of gathering, he delineates the social space based on the interaction between two or more people who are in one another’s immediate presence. Furthermore, the ‘situation’ is what he describes as the spatial environment in which the gathering takes place. Essed (Reference Essed1991), however, mentions that everyday racism does not only occur in direct interactions but exists also indirectly. One of her examples is the racist communication in media that spreads throughout society and with which targeted individuals are confronted on a daily basis.

Joe R. Feagin’s (Reference Feagin1991) theory of public discrimination has also received a lot of attention. He divides space into public and private settings to explain the chances of being confronted with racism. However, in contemporary society, his theory is becoming outdated. As one of the papers shows, everyday racism is also emerging on social media platforms (Patton et al., Reference Patton, Brunton, Dixon, Miller, Leonard and Hackman2017). Social media cannot be considered either a public or a private space. It is an area that can be accessed from the privacy of your own home just as well as from public spaces. This requires a perspective that is more encompassing. Therefore, a sociological perspective should be complemented with a social geographic perspective.

A social geographic perspective can bring more precision to the definition of the everyday space. According to social geographers, repetitive interactions happen within ‘micro-publics’. These are public spaces or semi-public spaces, in which individuals from different backgrounds encounter others for short or long interactions (Peterson Reference Peterson2017). Not all (semi-)public spaces automatically result in intergroup exchanges (Dines et al., Reference Dines, Cattell, Gesler and Curtis2006; Holland et al., Reference Holland, Clark, Katz and Peace2007). Some spaces are more likely to force people into intergroup relations than others. To understand everyday racism, more focus should be placed on the semi-public spaces in which individuals are not able to live side-by-side (Amin Reference Amin2002). These spaces are also defined as ‘zones of encounters’ (Wood and Landry, Reference Wood and Landry2008). The workplace is a good illustration; it is a setting that forces people to have recurrent interactions with colleagues and strangers. Different dynamics come into play depending on whom you are closer to, both spatially as well as emotionally, consequently influencing the chance to be confronted with racist practices and interactions. Furthermore, the settings mentioned in our systematic review can be defined as ‘zones of encounters’. They are all (semi-)public spaces in which individuals often are forced to interact with others. Because of these inevitable interactions, individuals rely on their racist scripts thus forming racialized interactions. This concept also offers a solution to new spaces, such as social media. In this case, social media is a digital rather than a physical ‘zone of encounter’.

Reading Between the Lines: Meso-Level

However, the focus should not only be on the micro-macro link, but the importance of the meso-level (see Figure 1, meso-level) must also be considered. Once it has been established that spaces in which everyday racism occurs can be defined as ‘zones of encounters’, the next step is specifying the unique features that influence the intensity and type of racism. Until now, most papers have specified a particular space but have not considered the characteristics that influence the appearance of everyday racism. The situational context has both generic characteristics that appear in similar contexts and unique characteristics that are not transferable to other contexts. One example is the workplace, where everyday racism frequently occurs. The form everyday racism takes on, however, differs due to characteristics such as the institutional hierarchy and workplace culture, policies, and regulations. Towibah Mjdoob and Avihu Shoshana (Reference Mjdoob and Shoshana2017) present an exemplary study in which they showed the experiences of Palestinians with everyday racism in different work organizations. They suggested that everyday racism differs in civil service organizations and corporate organizations due to different workplace policies. So, to understand the dynamics of everyday racism, the situational characteristics at the spatial meso-level have to be accounted for.

This makes it necessary to construct a typology of situational characteristics that are generic for similar spaces before customizing them to a particular space of study. Referring back to the example of the workplace, a generic feature that could influence everyday racism in European and North American contexts is the presence of Whiteness. Following the argument of Frantz Fanon’s (Reference Fanon1986) and Sarah Ahmed’s (Reference Ahmed2007) theory on Whiteness, a space relies on a particular historic-racial framework. Ahmed explains how some spaces are familiar to some bodies but not to all. Due to the history of colonialism and slavery, White bodies have shaped their world in accordance with their characteristics. As history is inherited through time and generations, White bodies have an ease of moving around within such a space compared to non-White bodies. Also, the Whiteness of some-bodies is transmitted into the social space, making it White space. The non-White bodies become hyper-visible as they do not resemble the White space. This leads to feelings of non-belonging and feelings of uneasiness for non-White bodies and superiority feelings for White bodies. Consequently, the stronger the presence of Whiteness in the workplace, the higher the chances that non-White bodies will be confronted with everyday racism. By creating a more ‘inclusive’ and diverse workplace, the White workplace culture can be disrupted and, consequently, may decrease everyday racism or possibly change the appearance of everyday racism.

The Culture-Economy Gap

Finally, there is a culture-economy gap at the macro-level. The macro dimension is oftentimes divided into two parts. The most commonly accepted macro dimension is the cultural-symbolic context (Figure 1, first macro-level) in which the ideological mental framework is interrelated with the history, culture, and political discourse of a particular society. A racialized worldview is diffused through cultural beliefs and discourse, as well as everyday interactions, reproduced over generations (Jones Reference Jones1997). These power relations create asymmetrical interactions in a daily setting. Most researchers, Essed included, often operate from a cultural or historical perspective.

The second macro dimension, however neglected in recent years, refers to the economic context (Figure 1, second macro-level). Many Black and anti-colonial authors (e.g. W. E. B Du Bois (Reference Bois and William1911) and bell hooks (Reference hooks1981)) point out the relationship between economic structures and racism. Their work draws attention to the dialectic forces of racism and capitalism, demonstrating exploitation as the basic principle behind these forces. They believe that the construction of ‘race’ as a concept was necessary for the operations of capitalism. From this perspective, Black slavery in U.S. history was institutionalized for the sake of capitalism in need of a ‘super-exploited’ labor class (Spector Reference Spector2014).

The cultural and economic perspectives can in some ways be conflicting. However, the trap is to fall into the idea of economic determinism or cultural determinism. They are strongly interrelated and influence behavior in specific ways. Even though Essed’s point of departure was to neutralize economic differences because many scholars before her had paid attention to the race-class nexus but not to race-gender solely, future research should combine race, class, and gender and thus make the effects of the cultural and economic forces upon everyday behavior more explicit.