The terms "racism" and "racist" have been used a lot recently on Daily Kos with, I think, good reason. However, I also think that it might be useful to outline some of the current psychological thought on the issue. In this diary, I will start by briefly describing one of the basic distinctions social psychologists make about the psychological underpinnings of prejudice, that between old-fashioned and contemporary prejudice.
An aside: I prefer the term "prejudice" to "racism" for a couple of reasons. The first is that "racism" is an emotionally loaded term that is not very well defined, whereas "prejudice" seems less loaded and has a more clearly defined meaning: prejudging others based on their group membership (but see this diary for one perspective on racism). However, all the theories that I discuss in this diary were developed to explain White Americans' prejudice against Black Americans, so I'll use that context in describing the theories. Second, the theories I'm going to describe apply not only to racial/ethnic prejudice, but also apply to other forms of prejudice such as sexism and heterosexism.
Another aside: I have drawn my information from a variety of sources, which I have not cited individually. The two books listed in the bibliography are textbooks, each of which has a chapter on this topic and can provide specific references to the research literature for those who are interested.
Old-fashioned prejudice refers to what we typically think of as racism: the blatant hostility displayed by members of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. It is based on belief in the biological superiority of the White race, stereotypes of Black people as stupid and lazy, and formal (de jure) and informal (de facto) discrimination. It entails emotional reactions such as contempt, hostility, anger, fear, and anxiety. These emotions derive from feelings of threat based on stereotypes of the despised group. Different groups can be perceived as posing different threats and so lead to different emotional responses. Some categories of threat include safety (as in the stereotype that Blacks are aggressive), health (gay men are the source of HIV/AIDS), economics (immigrants are stealing our jobs), and cultural values (immigrants are undermining traditional American values). It is important to note that people do not have to feel personally threatened; it is as important (and perhaps more so) that they believe that groups that are important to them are threatened. For example, although they themselves may not be unemployed, people with old-fashioned prejudices may believe that other White people are losing their jobs to immigrants. The old-fashioned racist wants to exclude minority groups from society or dominate and control them if total exclusion is not possible. The prevalence of old-fashioned prejudice has declined steadily since the end of World war II, but has obviously not disappeared. This is the kind of prejudice people have in mind when they say things like "I'm not a racist, but ...."
Old-fashioned prejudice has been replaced by other, more subtle forms that are classified under the heading of contemporary prejudices. The theories that propose these types of prejudice all assume that White Americans grow up in a societal environment that teaches them (even if unintentionally) to stereotype and to be prejudiced. At the same time, they are taught that intergroup equality is good and that prejudice is bad; as a result, they tend to see themselves as unprejudiced (otherwise, they would be bad people). Contemporary forms of prejudice result from attempts to reconcile these two competing processes. Contemporary forms of prejudice are similar to one another in many ways, but can be roughly arranged along a continuum from more to less severe in terms of the feelings of hostility that they entail based on their similarity to old-fashioned prejudice; that is the order in which I will describe them. To some extent, these forms of prejudice are "nested" within one another, so that people with old fashioned prejudices exhibit characteristics of contemporary prejudice, and within contemporary prejudices, modern prejudice includes the characteristics of aversive prejudice, and so on. It is important to bear in mind that just because these forms of prejudice are more subtle than old-fashioned prejudice does not mean that their effects any less severe; the opposite might be true, as NLinStPaul describes in this diary.
Modern prejudice (also known as symbolic prejudice) emerged as American society evolved social norms that hold that intergroup equality is good and desirable and that overt expressions of prejudice are bad and reflect a major character flaw. Instead of being expressed overtly, modern prejudice is expressed symbolically through a number of themes that justify opposition to equality-enhancing social policies while still endorsing equality as an abstract principle. These themes include (1) Prejudice and discrimination no longer exist because of civil rights laws and so are no longer barriers to equality. (2) Any remaining differences between Blacks and Whites in economic and other outcomes are therefore due to Black people's unwillingness to work hard. (3) Because Black people are unwilling to work hard, their continuing complaints of inequality are not justified. (4) Rather than working to get ahead, Black people look for special treatment. (5) Relative to White people, Black people have been getting more than they deserve.
Unlike people with old-fashioned prejudice, those with modern prejudices endorse intergroup equality, but focus on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes: Distribution of outcomes should be based on merit and if members of minority groups can't compete now that discrimination is longer a factor, then that's just too bad. Modern prejudice entails emotions such as dislike, anxiety, and resentment (of the "special treatment" given to minority groups), but is generally at a lower level than that found in old-fashioned prejudice. Expressions of modern prejudice are generally framed in ways that permit the denial of racial bias, such as "I oppose President Obama because of his socialist policies, not because he's Black." Such framing allows people with modern prejudices to maintain their self-images as unprejudiced people (and thus in compliance with the current American norm of non-prejudice). Similarly, people with modern prejudices generally avoid acting in a discriminatory manner unless the behavior can be justified on non-racial grounds. For example, when reviewing the credentials of people with mixed qualifications for a job, modern prejudice leads people to focus on the positive characteristics of White applicants and to downplay their shortcomings and to focus on the shortcomings of minority applicants and downplay their positive characteristics.
Like modern prejudice, aversive prejudice is characterized by negative emotional reactions to members of minority groups, but these reactions tend to be milder, consisting of discomfort and anxiety concerning intergroup contact. People with aversive prejudices sincerely believe in intergroup equality and sincerely reject the stereotypes found in old-fashioned prejudices. However people who have aversive prejudices feel uncomfortable dealing with members of minority groups because of residual negative feelings and beliefs about minority groups that they absorbed while growing up. These emotions tend to be experienced as a generalized, hard-to-pin-down feeling of anxiety and discomfort in the presence of minority group members. Because of these negative emotions, aversive prejudice leads individuals to try to avoid intergroup interactions. When contact with a member of a minority group is unavoidable, they prefer that the contact take place in situations in which there are clear rules for how each person should act (such as interacting with a server in a restaurant) and they behave in a polite, if somewhat cold, manner. Because of the conflict between their negative emotions and their non-prejudiced self-images, people with aversive prejudices will often show a pro-minority bias to demonstrate that they are not prejudiced. Nonetheless, aversive prejudice can lead people to show a pro-White bias, such as by treating a minority group member in an objectively fair manner while giving an objectively undeserved benefit to a White person; displaying anti-minority discrimination when the discrimination can be justified on non-racial grounds; and derogating minority group members who have higher social status than themselves.
Finally, ambivalent prejudice characterizes people who hold genuinely positive attitudes toward a minority group that coexist with the negative attitudes they learned while growing up. If these two sets of attitudes are of about equal strength, the person's overall attitude is ambivalent, and so are the person's emotional reactions and behavior: Sometimes they are positive and sometimes they are negative. If negative attitudes outweigh positive attitudes, one of the other forms of prejudice results; if positive attitudes outweigh negative attitudes, the person feels and exhibits little prejudice. Ambivalent prejudices lie dormant until a person interacts with or thinks about a minority group. The set of attitudes that prevails depends on the situation: if it cues positive thoughts, the positive attitudes prevail; if it cues negative thoughts, the negative attitudes prevail. Thus, the same person can appear to be both prejudiced and unprejudiced at different times.
I think you can see some of the processes operating among the "teabaggers" in these forms of prejudice, perhaps especially modern prejudice. I hope that this diary has shed a little light on the psychology underlying their behavior and the behavior of other people that we encounter. I have included a poll to see what, if any, other aspects of prejudice readers may want me to discuss.
Bibliography
Nelson, T. D. (2006). The psychology of prejudice (2nd ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
Whitley, B. E. Jr. & Kite, M. E. (2010). The psychology of prejudice and discrimination (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.