The Colorless History of That Dull Country TownColor-Blind Racism in Pudd’nhead Wilson

This article draws parallels between Twain's critique of racial ideology in Pudd’nhead Wilson and the modern concept of color-blind racism to argue that Twain’s seeming avoidance of racial issues actually highlights a new, burgeoning racial ideology. Using Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s four classifications of color-blind racism, the article explores how Twain’s characters, narrator, and setting exhibit the frames of naturalization, minimization, cultural racism, and abstract liberalism that enable this ideological bias. Twain diagnoses a social evil that takes shape in the Jim Crow era but continues today, outlining how our institutions not only create and reinforce systemic racism but also our blindness to it.