Racial Gaslighting:from the crude to the sophisticated, what matters is power

This paper examines racial gaslighting, whereby racially minoritized people are told that their experiences of white racism are really patterns born of their own making or, at the very least, a combination of factors that are beyond the control of white powerholders. Several examples are discussed, including the deployment of a falsified image of Martin Luther King Jr, the perversion of civil rights language to equate white success with merit, and the use of statistical techniques to erase evidence of racist inequity. A common factor, in each example, is the significance of the racist status quo, which amplifies, legitimizes and benefits from the gaslighting.