Sociology Compass 9/8 (2015): 694–703, 10.1111/soc4.12287 Racial Salience and the Consequences of Making White People Uncomfortable: Intra-Racial Discrimination, Racial Screening, and the Maintenance of White Supremacy Ted Thornhill * Sociology Program, Department of Social Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University Abstract Most sociological research on racial discrimination has had an “inter-racial” focus. That is, researchers have been principally concerned with the disparate treatment that people of color receive relative to Whites in different social contexts. However, recent theoretical work emerging from legal studies sug- gests that an alternative conception of “intra-racial” discrimination exists that extends beyond colorism. This theory of intra-racial discrimination stipulates that many organizations in the “post-racial” era desire some measure of racial diversity. Yet, in their efforts to achieve this racial diversity they screen people of color based on their degree of racial salience. Whether a given person of color is hired, promoted, or in the case of college admissions, accepted, is a function of whether or not Whites within the organization consider them racially palatable, or not overly concerned with race. This creates an incentive for people of color to work their identity to allay any concerns among Whites that they may be too racially salient. In this paper I critically review this work and attempt to further buttress its claims by highlighting how this process has clear historical precedent. I conclude by showing how the audit method can be used to empirically examine this practice contemporarily. Introduction Discrimination toward people of color by Whites has been a constitutive feature of social relations throughout US history, and this continues to be the case today. Despite claims of a “post-racial” society where racism and racial discrimination are no longer major social issues, the scholarship documenting the falsity of such notions is clear and convincing (Bonilla-Silva 2014; Brown et al. 2003; Feagin 2014). Though meaningful racial progress has been realized over the past several decades, the incidence of racial discrimination remains high. Recent studies demonstrate the still broad reach of racial discrimination, as it continues to be observed in, for example, the areas of housing (Austin Turner et al. 2012), employment (Stainback and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012), education (Orfield et al. 2012), voting (The National Commission on the Voting Rights Act 2006), consumer markets (Brewster and Nell 2012; Shreer et al. 2009), healthcare (Smedley et al. 2003), and the criminal “justice” system (Tonry 2011; Warren et al. 2006). While the negative consequences of inter-racial discrimination have been well-documented, recent theoretical work from legal scholars Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati (2013) suggests that the “post-racial” era is witnessing the increased prevalence of a form of intra-racial discrimina- tion separate from the extensively studied variety referred to as colorism (Espino and Franz 2002; Goldsmith, Hamilton, and Darity 2007; Hunter 2007; Monk 2014). 1 “There is a consid- erable historical legacy that the skin shade of African-Americans has exerted powerful and per- sistent inf luences on attitudes toward and treatment of black persons within both White and © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.