Race and Society (Chapter 9, "You May Ask Yourself")

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Chapter 9

Race

The Myth of Race

Race - a group of people who share a set of characteristics usually physical ones and are said to share a common bloodline.

Usually thought of in US as black or white.

Social construct that changes over time and across different contexts.

Racism - the belief that members of separate races possess different and unequal human traits.

Sometimes people argue that racism is no longer an issue in the United States. It is true that our race relations have changed, but many sociologists argue that racism has not been eliminated. In the past, it was socially acceptable in many places to display racist attitudes and to use racial slurs. Thats not politically correct or acceptable anymore, so people tend to reserve their attitudes until they know they are in like-minded company. However, this in no way means that racism has been eliminated; its just more difficult sometimes to identify (which, many argue, is actually worse).

Humans, regardless of their race, are 99.9% genetically identical. However, race is still used to classify people, and sometimes race is a basis for differential treatment of individuals or groups of people. Sociologists, then, have come to understand race as a social category, based on real or perceived biological differences between groups of people. Race is more meaningful to us on a social level than it is on a biological level.

To be white in America, for example, went from being a somewhat inclusive category in the late eighteenth century to being much more narrowly defined in the mid- to late nineteenth century and then shifted back to a broader definition in the mid-twentieth century. All these changes were in response to social realities.

In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the idea of race did not exist as we know it today. People recognized broad physical differences between groups of people, but they did not discriminate based on those differences.As Europeans came into contact with different peoples and cultures during the Age of Exploration, racism was used to justify the conquest and colonization of foreign lands.

The Concept of Race

The Early Modern World

Developed parallel to:

Protestant Reformation

Age of Exploration (and colonization)

Rise of capitalism

The Curse of Ham (Genesis 9)

The Concept of Race


Scientific racism nineteenth century theories of race that characterize a period of feverish investigation into the origins, explanations, and classifications of race.

Phrenology (Blumenbach)

Physiognomy (Lavater)

Universal freckle (Smith)

In the nineteenth century a number of scientists and thinkers researched and attempted to explain racial differences. However, what they were really doing was explaining white superiority.

The Concept of Race


Social Darwinism - the notion that some groups or races evolved more than others and were better fit to survive and even rule other races.

Monogenists humans are all one species

Polygenists different races are actually different species

The Concept of Race


Eugenics literally, well born, the theory of controlling the fertility of populations to influence inheritable traits passed on from one generation to the next.

Positive traits could be bred into populations or negative traits could be bred out of them.

Nativism movement to protect and preserve indigenous land or culture from the so-called dangerous and polluting effects of new immigrants.

This thinking influenced immigration policy in the early twentieth century as undesirable populations were kept out of the country so as not to pollute the native (i.e., white) population.

The Concept of Race

Twentieth-Century Concepts of Race

Nazi Germany

Unable to devise a test

Forced Jews to wear yellow Star of David

One Drop Rule the belief that one drop of black blood makes a person black.

Miscegenation the technical term for multiracial marriage; literally meaning a mixing of the kinds

Preferred term is exogamy or outmarriage.

This rule was critical in the Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson, which upheld the Jim Crow laws.

Miscegenation was illegal throughout some states in the United States until 1967, when the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled, in Loving vs. Virginia, that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were invalidated in the remaining 16 states that still had them at that time.

The Concept of Race

Later Twentieth Century

Boas dismissed biological bases of discrete races

Park Culture and human behavior

WWII exposed the dangers of eugenics and racism; became socially inappropriate to discuss race in biological terms.

The Concept of Race

Today DNA testing is used to determine peoples racial makeup, and while this process may be more accurate on some level than nineteenth-century racial measures, it still supports the notion of fixed, biological racial differences.

From textbook page 317:

Wayne Joseph, a 53-year-old Louisiana high-school principal with Creole roots, decided to have his DNA tested. Born and raised black, but having light skin, Joseph was mildly curious about the percentages in his veins. He received some unexpected results: His genetic make-up is 57% Indo-European, 39% Native American, 4% Eastern European, and zero percent African. Despite the findings, Joseph continues to embrace his ethnic identity as black. As he put it to reporters, The question ultimately is, are you who you say you are, or are you who you are genetically?

Racial Realities

Racialization - the formation of a new racial identity, in which new ideological boundaries of difference are drawn around a formerly unnoticed group of people.

Burakumin of Japan

Muslims/Arabs in the U.S.

Racial categories change over time. Look at the census: the categories of races change very frequently. In fact, 2000 was the first year in which respondents were allowed to select one or more race in the racial category. Prior to 2000, respondents were forced to select only one race, even if they would describe themselves as bi- or multiracial.

Racial categories never have firm boundaries. For example, there is no set regulation for determining racial identity. A person may have ancestry from mixed descent, but may not identify with that descent. Or a person who was born in the United States, and whose parents and grandparents were also born in the United States, might classify him- or herself as Cuban because a great-grandparent was from Cuba. Racial categories are flexible.

A recent example of racialization is the anti-Muslim backlash in America since 9/11. Being Muslim is linked in the minds of Americans to being Arab, so anyone who looks Arab (for men its often linked to skin color and facial hair and perhaps clothing and for women its often linked to the use of a head scarf) is thought to be Muslim and therefore anti-American.

Interview, Jennan Read

Jennan Read discusses her research on the experience of Muslims in the United States.

Racial RealitiesIn this interview, Read talks about the difference between being Arab, which is an ethnicity, and being Muslim, which is a religion. She notes that in the United States most Muslims are not Arab they are South Asian. Most Arabs in the United States are not Muslim they are Christian. Ask the class whether they previously had assumed that Muslims were ethnically Arab. You can also ask the students to discuss what social factors influence how Muslims are portrayed in the media.

Race versus Ethnicity

Ethnicity one's ethnic quality or affiliation; voluntary, self-defined, non hierarchal, fluid, and multiple, and based on cultural differences, not physical ones.

Symbolic ethnicity a nationality, not in the sense of carrying the rights and duties of citizenship but identifying with a past or future nationality.

For most white people, no risks of stigma, but pleasure of feeling like an individual.

The Amish, for instance, are a distinct ethnic group in American society, linked by a common heritage that includes language, religion, and history; the Amish people, with few exceptions, are also white. The Jewish people, on the other hand (contrary to what the Nazis and other white supremacists may believe) are an ethnic group but not a race. Ethnicity and race are sometimes related, but they are not inextricably linked.

You might have made a friend recently yet had no idea that she was of Irish heritage until St. Patricks Day, when she proudly displayed her ethnicity. This ethnicity may not impact the day-to-day lives of people of Irish descent, but it becomes relevant in this occasion. This is an example of symbolic identity.Whites who explore and express an affinity for their European roots can be said to be adopting a symbolic ethnicity. It makes them feel good about their heritage and its something they can focus on and express when they choose to; it isnt an identity that they must assume all the time.

MinorityMajority
Group Relations

Pluralism, in the context of race and ethnicity, refers to the presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct groups in one society, with no one group being in the majority.

Pluralism not only permits racial and ethnic variation within one society, it actually encourages people to embrace diversity to exchange the traditional melting pot image for a salad bowl. At the core of multiculturalism is tolerance of racial and ethnic differences.

MinorityMajority
Group Relations

Segregation is the legal or social practice of separating people on the basis of their race or ethnicity.

Segregation was official policy in the United States, particularly in the South, until the 1960s.

Despite being illegal for over 40 years, there is still ample evidence of segregation in American society today, particularly in schools, housing, and prisons.

Segregation: For example, in the U.S. South up to the 1960s, not only did blacks live in separate neighborhoods, they were restricted to coloreds-only sections of buses, parks, restaurants, and even drinking fountains.

Group Responses
to Domination

Four ways that groups respond to oppression are withdrawal, passing, acceptance, and resistance.

Acceptance and resistance can actually be closely linked, as members of an oppressed group might appear to accept their subordinate position while internally they feel enormous resentment.

Overt collective resistance can take the form of revolution, nonviolent protest, or riots.

Prejudice, Discrimination,
and the New Racism

Prejudice refers to negative thoughts and feelings about an ethnic or racial group.

Discrimination refers to harmful or negative acts against people deemed inferior on the basis of their racial category.

It is important to distinguish between prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is an internal evaluation and discrimination is an action. While it makes sense to see these things as happening chronologically or in order, it is important to know that thats not always the case. Some people may be prejudiced yet not discriminate against individuals. Others may discriminate yet not be prejudiced (for instance, a manager doesnt hire Chinese people because other people in the office dont like Chinese people, although the manager doesnt actually dislike Chinese people at all).

Prejudice, Discrimination, and the New Racism

Prejudice, Discrimination,
and the New Racism

While overt racism is, for the most part, considered unacceptable in America today, there is a new kind of racism on the rise in America and elsewhere that focuses on cultural and national differences, rather than racial ones.

Many people argue that the new racism is even more dangerous. Although overt racism is definitely problematic, at least it can easily be seen and pointed out!

How Race Matters:
The Case of Wealth

A wealth gap exists between whites and minority groups in America that has historical roots and that cannot be overcome simply through income equality. Public policies formulated to address white-nonwhite disparities have not paid close enough attention to this particular legacy of racism.

You may remind students of Max Webers idea of life chances, that our opportunities in life are different depending on the class into which we are born. We talked earlier about how race and gender intersect with class; how could a persons race affect their life chances?

Health care is an area in which we find widespread disparity between racial and ethnic groups. Disparities in access to health care may help explain the life expectancy rates for men and women of different races.

The Future of Race

The 2000 Census created separate categories for race and ethnicity and for the first time allowed people to check off more than one box for racial identity. These changes have given us a better idea of the diversity of the American population.

It is predicted that by 2050 whites will no longer be a majority in the United States. This change could bring about a narrowing of the definition of white, as happened in the nineteenth century, as whites try to demarcate boundaries around their group in relation to the growing minorities.

Interview, Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee explains how sociologists think about race and describes the differences between race and ethnicity.

Studying RaceIn this interview, Jennifer Lee explains how sociologists think about race and describes the differences between race and ethnicity. Ask the class to summarize these differences and discuss some examples of expressions of ethnicity rather than race.

Interview, Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee describes her research on the shifting color line in the United States.

Studying RaceLee talks about her research on race. She notes that race in America was once divided in two black and white. Now, with more Asian and Latino immigration, the racial dynamics are changing in the United States. Some people argue that the divide the "color line" is between whites and others. Lee views the color line as being between blacks and others, including, but not only, whites. She argues that for Latinos and Asians, immigration status is more important than race.

Ask the class to think of examples of media depictions of blacks, whites, Asians, and Latinos support that Lee's view about the "color line. Use this video as an introduction to how contemporary sociologists talk about and study race. It may raise some interesting discussion points about race as a contemporary sociological issue.

Figure 9.4 Mertons Chart of Prejudice and DiscriminationYou May Ask Yourself, 2nd EditionCopyright 2011 W.W. Norton & Company

Figure 9.4 Mertons Chart of Prejudice and Discrimination

Chapter 9: Race

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2011 W. W. Norton Co., Inc.


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W. W. Norton & Company
Independent and Employee-OwnedThis concludes the Lecture
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SECOND EDITIONYou MayAsk YourselfDalton Conley

An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist


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An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist




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Race and Society (Chapter 9, "You May Ask Yourself")

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Transcript of Race and Society (Chapter 9, "You May Ask Yourself")