RACE
RACER ANY
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KEY THEMES
• What is race?
• Race and ethnicity
• The Consequences of Racial and Ethnic Classification
• Racist Ideologies
• Discrimination
• Social Identity and
• Stigma
RACE IN SOCIOLOGY
Sociologists describe race as a social construction. This means that race
is not based on some innate and immutable scientific fact, but rather,
that this concept describes the social meanings ascribed to racial
categories.
Who is counted as “Black” or “White” in South Africa is different from in
Australia.
WHAT IS RACE?
• A vast collectivity of people more or less bound together by shared and
selected history, ancestors, and physical features; these people are socialized
to think of themselves as a distinct group, and they are regarded by others as
such (Ferrante,2015).
• It is a classification system of human beings on the basis of culturally-defined
biologically-transmitted group characteristics. Typically, but not invariably,
these are connected to visible attributes (skin color, physical characteristics,
etc.).
•
DEFINING RACE
• A population considered different because of
physical characteristics
• A social construct, an epiphenomenon with little or
no scientific justification
• However, “race” has enduring social significance
•
WHAT IS ‘RACE’
• Race not biological – no more different between black, white,
brown or red than within each group. Skin colour not an accurate
indicator of ethnic origins due to genetic quirks. Possible to be
one skin colour yet belong to a different ethnic group
• Race therefore sociological – subjective method of categorising
and differentiating peoples, how categories formed/applied is
very revealing of society / individual – reason why we study it as
an historical concept, since reveals attitudes, still useful /
important today.
• Largest def – Humanity
• Criteria for categorisation varies widely: skin colour, religion,
civilization, dress, behaviour, complexion, size, gender.
RACE AND ETHNICITY
•
• The concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be understood apart
from systems of racial and ethnic classification. Most biologists
and social scientists have come to agree that race is not a
biological fact. The reason is that parents from different racial
categories can produce offspring. The offspring, by definition,
are mixtures of the two categories and therefore cannot be
placed in just one category.
• Ethnicity refers to people who share, believe they share, or are
believed by others to share a national origin; a common
ancestry; a place of birth; distinctive concrete social traits
(such as religious practices, style of dress, body adornments,
or language); or socially important physical characteristics
(such as skin color, hair texture, or body structure). Unlike race,
which emphasizes physical features and geographic origin,
ethnicity can be based on an almost infinite number of traits.
• Ethnicity refers to shared cultural practices, perspectives, and
distinctions that set apart one group of people from another. That is,
ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. The most common
characteristics distinguishing various ethnic groups are ancestry, a
sense of history, language, religion, and forms of dress. Ethnic
differences are not inherited; they are learned.
RACE AND ETHNICITY
• Sociologists distinguish among racial, ethnic, and minority
groups
• The term racial group is used to describe a group that is set
apart from others because of obvious physical differences.
• There are no “pure races”
• Social Construction of Race
• Social construction is the process by which people come to
define a group as a race based on physical, historical,
cultural and economic factors.
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THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE AND
ETHNICITY
• Race and ethnicity take on great social significance because how people act in
regard to these terms drastically effects other people’s lives, including what
opportunities they have, how they are treated, and even how long they live.
• Historically class rank based on race and ethnicity has strongly affected all
aspects of political, economic, and social life. Think of sports e.g. cricket,
rugby, swimming and tennis in South Africa.
•
UNDERSTANDING RACISM
• Individual attitudes and behavior
• Institutional practices and procedures
• Structural policies and patterns
• Who benefits?
PARADIGMS / CONCEPTIONS OF RACE
• Biological/genetic
• Cultural “ethnicity”
• Structural/materialist
DEFINING RACISM
• A system of racially conferred -- and denied
• Privilege
• Advantage
• Benefits
• Status
• Racism: a defense of racial privilege
RACISM IS
PREJUDICE
+
POWER
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN
PERSONAL PREJUDICE
AND PERSONAL ACTS
VERSUS
SYSTEMIC AND INSTITUTIONAL
PREFERENCES FOR WHITES
13/12/24
INDIVIDUAL RACISM
• Discrimination Model
• Victim/perpetrator
• Prejudice (bad actor / bad apple)
• Intent (purpose and motive)
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
• Recognizes that racism need not be individualist or
intentional
• Institutional and cultural practices can perpetuate
race inequality without relying on racist actors
WHAT IS STRUCTURAL RACISM?
BUT IF FEWER PEOPLE OF COLOR
CAN AFFORD TO ATTEND PRIVATE
SCHOOLS, COLLEGE AND GRADUATE
SCHOOLS IS THAT RACISM?
STRUCTURAL RACISM
• Attention to inter-institutional arrangements and
interactions
• Structure: “the arrangement or interrelation of all
the parts of a whole” (Webster’s Dictionary)
STRUCTURAL RACISM
§ A system in which public policies, institutional practices,
cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often
reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.
§ It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have
allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages
associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time.
§ Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions
choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social,
economic and political systems in which we all exist.
FLIP SIDE OF STARK RACIAL DISPARITIES
• White privilege:
• The reality of unearned advantage, conferred
dominance, and invisible privilege enjoyed by white
South Africans, to the detriment, burden and
disadvantage of people of color.
• the reality that in South African. society “there are
opportunities which are afforded whites that people of
color simply do not share.”
•
WE HAVE LONG SINCE GROWN
ACCUSTOMED TO THINKING OF
BLACKS AS BEING “RACIALLY
DISADVANTAGED.”
HARLON DALTON
RARELY, HOWEVER, DO WE REFER
TO WHITES AS “RACIALLY
ADVANTAGED,” EVEN THOUGH
THAT IS AN EQUALLY APT
CHARACTERIZATION OF THE
EXISTING INEQUALITY.
HARLON DALTON
RACE ADVANTAGE
RACISM ENTERS INTO EVERY SPHERE OF SOCIAL
RELATIONS
• Economic exploitation
• Military subjugation
• Political subordination
• Cultural devaluation
• Psychological violation
• Sexual degradation
• Verbal abuse
•
• Racism: a defense of racial
privilege
RACISM IS
“A WHOLE OF INTERACTING AND DEVELOPING
PROCESSES WHICH OPERATE SO NORMALLY
AND NATURALLY AND ARE SO MUCH A PART OF
THE EXISTING INSTITUTIONS OF SOCIETY THAT
THE INDIVIDUALS INVOLVED ARE BARELY
CONSCIOUS OF THEIR OPERATION”
JAMES BOGGS, RACISM AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE 147-148.
13/12/24
NOT JUST WHITE AND BLACK
RACIAL JUSTICE
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
GENDER JUSTICE
ARE INTERTWINED
ISN’T RACISM OVER?
13/12/24
THE CONTINUING EXISTENCE OF
RACISM BECOMES APPARENT
WHEN WE LOOK BENEATH THE
SURFACE OF OUR NATIONAL LIFE.
LOOK BENEATH THE SURFACE
PREJUDICE, STEREOTYPE, DISCRIMINATION
AND RACISM
• Prejudice is a negative attitude based on faulty generalizations
about members of specific racial, ethnic, or other groups.
• Stereotypes are over generalizations about appearance, behavior,
or other characteristics of members of particular categories.
(stereotypes can be either positive or negative)
• Racism is a set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that is used to
justify the superior treatment of one racial or ethnic group and
the inferior treatment of another racial or ethnic group.
• Discrimination involves actions or practices of dominant-group
members (or their representatives) that have a harmful effect on
members of a subordinate group.
RACE” WAS CREATED AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT TO
JUSTIFY DOMINATION
• Race as the concept we use today created in the wake of
European colonial conquests as justification for domination. In
US, specifically as justification for African slavery and
displacement of American Indians
• Old contrast was Christian vs. infidel. Debate was whether
baptized “Indians” had the rights of personhood. Old ideologies
accepted hierarchy, you could enslave or dominate others
without needing to justify it.
• “Race” drew on Darwin, used the new biology to create an
ideological justification for hierarchy despite Enlightenment
ideals of equality: some people are “naturally” superior to others
• The idea that race is biological IS the social construct
RACE IS SOCIAL BUT IT IS STILL
“REAL”
• Things that are believed to be real are real in their consequences
• In some societies, religion or language or culture is the barrier. The barriers are still
real.
• What “race” you are in the South Africa has enormous social, economic, and
political consequences that will affect you whether you “believe” in race or not.
Example: religion is entirely social but it is still “real” & in some place/times
determines your life.
• The social construction of race is underpinned by an ideology that favors White and
lighter-skinned people. Ideology is the cultural beliefs that serve the interests of
dominant groups, which are used to maintain social stratification (a system of
ranking categories of people into a hierarchy to justify inequality).
WHITE
RACIS
PRIVILEG
M
E
ASSIGNED ASSIGNED
& &
INTERNAL INTERNAL
IZED IZED
INFERIORI SUPERIOR
Expressions of
Racism
persona
l
na l
tio
t i tu
ins
cultural
policies
procedures
practices
INSTITUTIO
INSTITUTIONS create
policies and procedures
and
practices that INCLU EXCLU
SERVE
DE UNDERSE
DE
FINAN RVE
EXPLO
SUPPO
CE OPPRESS
IT
RT People of
white Color
people
INSTITUTIONAL
BELIEFS
VALUES
NORMS
STANDARDS
NARRATIVES
that reproduce
the
hierarchy of the
race construct
CULTURAL
PREJUDICE
• A negative attitude based on faulty generalizations about
members of selected
racial and ethnic groups
• Prejudice can be positive or negative
• From the Latin “prae-judicium,” meaning “before judgment”
• Stereotypes and racism
• Stereotypes: Overgeneralizations about the appearance,
behaviors, or other characteristics of members of particular
categories
• i.e. the misunderstandings of Native American culture, portrayed
in college and professional mascots
• Racism: A set of attitudes, beliefs, and practices that is used to
justify the superior treatment of one racial or ethnic group, and
the inferior treatment of another racial or ethnic group
• Can be overt or subtle (blatant or inferred); overt would be
derogatory remarks, subtle would be implying a certain race is
“better suited” or “natural” in positions like sports or
leadership
PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION
Prejudice - Prejudice is a negative attitude toward an entire category of
people
Discriminatory Behavior
• Denial of opportunities and equal rights to individuals and groups based on
some type of arbitrary bias.
• Prejudice can result from ethnocentrism
• Minorities harbor prejudices too.
• A common form of prejudice stereotype.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy – when you respond to stereotypes and act on them.
•
•
43
MINORITY GROUPS
• A minority in the sociological sense is a subordinate group whose
members have significantly less control or power over their own
lives.
1. experience unequal treatment
2. have physical or cultural characteristics different from the dominant
group
3. membership is not voluntary (ascribed)
4. strong sense of group solidarity
5. generally marry from within the same group
6.
44
The Privileges of the Dominant
• Are there any advantages of being White?
1. Housing
2. No suspicion when using credit cards or shopping
3. Parenting
4. Role models in books and media
5. No regard to image reflecting on everyone else
45
DISCRIMINATION
• Is the outcome of acting on those prejudices, leading to inequitable
treatment of marginalized groups, fortified by social processes that
already disadvantage racial minorities.
• For example, refusing to consider the job application of a person of
color (an act of discrimination) based on racial markers, like their
name (prejudice), replicating the excessive rejection these candidates
already experience because of widespread racism.
RACISM
• Is described as the system of racial inequality, based on the belief that
some groups are innately superior to other groups.
• Racism rests on the prejudices (attitudes), symbols (including
language), actions and policies (discrimination) that reproduce the
false ideology that other groups are inferior to White people.
• Racism rests on power structures, such as historical and cultural
relations established through colonialism, and social institutions (like
the law, education, media, and science).
PATTERNS OF INTERGROUP
RELATIONS
Amalgamation – when a majority group and a
minority group combine to form a new group
Assimilation
Process by which person forsakes his or her own
cultural tradition to become part of a different
culture
Segregation
• Refers to physical separation of two groups of
people in terms of residence
• Apartheid: Republic of South Africa
severely restricted the movement of
Blacks and non-Whites
48
TAKEAWAY
• Although race is a social construction (what it means to be Black, White
or Asian is determined by culture), race has real consequences
because racial categories were invented for the sole purpose of
reinforcing inequality.
TAKEAWAY KEY TERMS
• Race: a socially constructed concept; an ethnological human stratification that was
used to reinforce the rationale for the enslavement of persons of African descent
• Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or
people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group,
typically one that is a minority or marginalized and the power to exert said
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism
• Structural racism: the ways in which the joint operation of institutions produce
racialized outcomes
• The trauma of racism: the cumulative adverse emotional, psychological, health,
economic and social effects of racism on the lives of people of color
DEFINING OUR TERMS
• Culture: the shared experiences of acts, beliefs, values, language,
attitudes, words, institutions, rules, rituals, images, spiritual
practices, knowledge and relationships which are shaped and
articulated within social systems
• Diversity: are individuals possessing immutable and mutable
characteristics of diversity
•
•
Race is not biologically real.
Race was constructed for
political and cultural (social)
purposes.
