Transcript Understanding Racial Inequality Today: Sociological Theories of

Chapter Seven:
Understanding
Racial Inequality
Today: Sociological
Theories of Racism
By Tanya Maria Golash-Boza
Microaggressions
• Racism entails not just big moments or
actions, but also
• Brief verbal barbs that could occur in a split
second
• A pattern of everyday treatment that the
victim is sure is due to race but the violator
can attempt to hide within other issues
Different Groups Faced
Different Struggles
For example:
• Native Americans faced the taking of their lands
and the struggle to retain cultures and identities
based in particular landscapes.
• Blacks faced a history of being treated as
property and also cultural and identity loss with
capitalism as one motive behind this oppression.
Persistence
• “One way that individual racism persists,
even in a society that decries racism, is
through racial microaggressions—daily,
commonplace insults and racial slights
that cumulatively affect the psychological
well-being of people of color.” (p. 181)
• These can build up one after another
during the course of a day’s experience.
Responses
• It is difficult to know how to respond to
these microaggressions as some are
committed by even well-intentioned
people.
• Responding would be accompanied with
various emotions: anger, hurt, resentment,
frustration
• Responding might require constantly
educating other people on why something
was inappropriate and offensive
From the Voices section: If you were a
bystander when this happened, how would
you handle it?
Substitute Teacher: Quiet down! You’re
acting like a bunch of wild Indians! (p. 183)
From the Voices section: If you were a
bystander when this happened, how would
you handle it?
“I am a registered nurse and always get told
that I speak English so well. I was born in
Australia and I am of Filipino background. I
don’t think about my appearance until a
patient or their family member points it out
and they are quite amazed/baffled that
someone who appears Asian ‘speaks so
well’ and could be considered a ‘real
Australian.’” (p. 183)
From the Voices section: If you were a
bystander when this happened, how would
you handle it?
“Oh, but you’re Latin, so you must love the
heat! While discussing the summer
weather. I’m from Bogotá—the average
temperature is 60°F. I feel like nobody in the
States bothers to understand that Latinos
are not just one monolithic entity.” (p. 183)
From the Voices section: If you were a
bystander when this happened, how would
you handle it?
“‘Sorry, that must be my black coming out.”
[Said by] my biracial friend (African
American and Mexican). Whenever she
does or says something negative she blames
it on the ‘Black’ side of her. Makes me feel
angry, belittled, resentful.” (p. 183)
From the Voices section: If you were a
bystander when this happened, how would
you handle it?
“I express that my brother attends a private
university. Immediately a girl in the car
responds in a sure voice ‘Oh, he plays
football?’ This is the second time this has
happened. As if a young black male can only
attend a prestigious private college on a
football scholarship.” (p. 183)
Forms of Racism
Acts of racism committed by individuals are
not the only form of racist actions—
institutions, society, and historical legacies
are part of perpetuating racism as well.
Sociologists can draw from explanations of
racism that include
• Institutional
• Systemic
• Structural
Institutional Racism
• This occurs when racist actions permeate the everyday
processes of a large bureaucracy or components of a larger
entity:
An example would be the criminal justice system:
“…it makes sense to argue that racial discrimination has become
institutionalized in the criminal justice system. This is because
racial discrimination happens at every single level of this
system. The laws are written in ways that discriminate against
blacks—the disparities in sentences for possession of crack
and possession of cocaine are one example. Police officers are
consistently more likely to pull over and arrest black men than
they are white men. Blacks are more likely to get harsher
sentences or even the death penalty.” (p. 186 )
Institutional Racism
To sociologically determine if institutional
racism is at work one needs to establish two
elements:
• That a non-white group is more likely to be
negatively affected by that system
And
•That the negative effect occurs on a regular
basis and throughout each level of a system
Systemic Racism
• Systemic Racism, an explanation of racism
that emerges from the sociological work of
Joe Feagin, refers to “daily
microaggressions, deep-seated
inequalities; and anti-black ideologies” as
well as how “racism and racial inequality
were created by whites and continue to be
perpetuated by white individuals and
white-owned institutions.” (p. 187)
Ways Systemic Racism is
Enacted
• Patterns of unjust impoverishment of nonwhites.
• Vested group interests of whites to maintain
racism.
• Omnipresent and routinized discrimination
against non-whites.
• The rationalization of racial oppression
• An imbalance of power where whites are able
to reproduce inequality through control of
major political and economic resources
Structural Racism
• This form of racism “focuses on
accumulated acts of racism across history
and throughout one’s lifetime.” (p. 189)
Structural Racism
This type of racism develops out of historical legacies and
the experience of discrimination in more than one setting.
“For example, racial inequality in housing leads to racial
inequality in schooling, which in turn leads to racial
inequality in the labor market. Across generations, this
chain of events becomes a cycle, because parents who are
less well-positioned in the labor market cannot afford
housing in the better neighborhoods, which means that
their children will be less likely to attend better schools.”
(p.189)
Wealth Inequalities as
Explained by Oliver and
Shapiro
• Historical legacies one after another in time contribute to
wealth inequality for blacks, who hold one twentieth of the
wealth compared to whites:
•
Emancipation of black persons who were enslaved
without providing them an economic starting point
•
The housing separation when suburbs were created as
white spaces while blacks were forced to live in innercity with low infrastructure
•
Current institutional racism in mortgages and the real
estate market
• Certain non-racial specific policies that have racial effects
because of already existing inequality
Racial Formation
This theory focuses on how cultural and
social elements make and remake race both
to perpetuate racism and in some cases to
prevent racism. The actual definition from
the scholarship of Omi and Winant is the
following: “the sociohistorical process by
which racial categories are created,
inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.”
(p. 191)
Racial Formation
Racial formations work through racial
projects:
Officially defined as “simultaneously an
interpretation, representation, or
explanation of racial dynamics, and an
effort to reorganize and redistribute
resources along particular racial lines.”
(p. 191 )
White Supremacy and Settler
Colonialism
• For Native Americans additional
explanations of racism work well to
explain their experiences with racism.
Those explanations include White
Supremacy and Settler Colonialism.
White Supremacy—affecting
different groups of people
• Anti-black Racism—People as propertycapitalism used as a justification
• Genocide—The idea that Native people
should disappear- one justification used
for colonialism
• Orientalism—Certain cultures and groups
of people present a threat to white
“civilizations” and this justifies violence
and war
Settler Colonialism Theory
• This investigates how the actions of
settlers against Native Peoples contributed
to a long pattern that continues through
present day inequalities such as in Canada,
with the disproportionate amount of
children in the foster care system.
Conclusion: Theories Help Us
Understand Racism and Race
All these theories can be utilized for
different situations and time periods to
better explain the dynamics of specific
racial inequalities.