Over the past 100 years, sociologists have been exploring and debating the components, origins, and effects of racism in every social institution in the United States. Although scholars have studied the structural racism inherent in the institution of welfare, no sociologist has fully applied a critical framework to understand the contemporary manifestations of gendered color-blind racism within the institution. This article combines Bonilla-Silva’s theory of color-blind racism with Hill-Collins’s concept of controlling images to advance the framework of gendered color-blind racism that can help to critically examine and understand the experiences of Black women within the social welfare system.
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