Editing Racism (section)

=== Humanities ===
[[Language]], [[linguistics]], and [[discourse]] are active areas of study in the [[humanities]], along with literature and the arts. [[Discourse analysis]] seeks to reveal the meaning of race and the actions of racists through careful study of the ways in which these factors of human society are described and discussed in various written and oral works. For example, Van Dijk (1992) examines the different ways in which descriptions of racism and racist actions are depicted by the perpetrators of such actions as well as by their victims.<ref>{{cite book |title=Analyzing Racism Through Discourse Analysis Some Methodological Reflections in Race and Ethnicity in Research Methods |publisher=[[SAGE Publications]] |last=Van Dijk |first=Tuen |year=1992 |location=Newbury Park, CA |pages=92–134 |isbn=978-0-8039-5007-8}}</ref> He notes that when descriptions of actions have negative implications for the majority, and especially for white elites, they are often seen as controversial and such controversial interpretations are typically marked with quotation marks or they are greeted with expressions of distance or doubt. The previously cited book, ''[[The Souls of Black Folk]]'' by W.E.B. Du Bois, represents early [[African-American literature]] that describes the author's experiences with racism when he was traveling in the [[Southern United States|South]] as an African American.

Much American fictional literature has focused on issues of racism and the black "racial experience" in the US, including works written by whites, such as ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'', ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]'', and ''[[Imitation of Life (novel)|Imitation of Life]]'', or even the non-fiction work ''[[Black Like Me]]''. These books, and others like them, feed into what has been called the "[[white savior narrative in film]]", in which the heroes and heroines are white even though the story is about things that happen to black characters. [[Content analysis|Textual analysis]] of such writings can contrast sharply with black authors' descriptions of African Americans and their experiences in US society. African-American writers have sometimes been portrayed in [[African-American studies]] as retreating from racial issues when they write about "[[Whiteness studies|whiteness]]", while others identify this as an African-American literary tradition called "the literature of white estrangement", part of a multi-pronged effort to challenge and dismantle [[white supremacy]] in the US.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Souls of White Folk: African American Writers Theorize Whiteness |publisher=[[University Press of Mississippi]] |last=Watson |first=Veronica T. |year=2013 |location=Jackson |page=137 |isbn=978-1-4968-0245-3}}</ref>