Race Relations Final

module 4 - module 8

Racial Microaggressions

• brief verbal, behavioral and environmental slights that communicate racial slurs or insults to people of color

• usually unconscious and unintentional

Microinsults

convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity

• ex: backhanded racial compliments (exotic)

Microinvalidations

• communications that exclude, negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings, or real life experience of POCs

• ex; the concept of color blindness invalidates the experiences of pocs by allowing whites to see themselves as non prejudiced

Stigma Management Tools

• Ways blacks cope or react to stigma from whites

• Buffering, bonding, code switching

Buffering

a psychological buffer zone to reduce the impact of racist assaults

Bonding

• refers to the fact that the core of black identity is based on attachment and bonding with black people, culture, and the black experience.

• extent to which black can derive meaning and support in life from affiliation with other blacks

Reactive bonding

• when blacks bond with other blacks only to cope with a stigma threat from whites

• can lead to intrinsic bonding or further reactive bonding

• ex; black student unions, hbcus, naacp

Code Switching

• when blacks deliberately and temporarily suspend behaviors, verbal styles, and other forms of presentation labeled as “black behaviors”

• necessary when something requires blacks present in a certain way, when blacks are motivated to do so for fair treatment, or in daily life (9-5s)

1986 Fair Housing Act

outlawed racial discrimination in sale or rental of housing

Hypersegregation

• when lots of black people live in adjoining or very close neighborhoods that are densely inhabited and are mostly black

• indication of hypersegregation - residents are unlikely to come in contact with whites in their neighborhoods or in surrounding neighborhoods

5 Measuring Components of Hypersegregation

• unevenness

• isolation

• clustering

• concentration

• centralization

Unevenness

degree that blacks and whites are spread out evenly across the city

Isolation

• extent that blacks live in neighborhoods that are predominantly black

• low scores of isolation indicate blacks and whites share neighborhoods

Clustering

the degree that blacks are clustered together in a set of contiguous neighborhoods

Centralization

distance of black neighborhoods from the center of the city

Concentration

the number of neighborhoods that blacks or whites occupy

Issues with Hypersegregation

• removes blacks from full participation in urban society and limits access to benefits

• allows policies to be sorted by zipcode (ex; stop and frisk)

• allowed financial institutions to target black neighborhoods for predatory lending (subprime loans)

Subprime Loan Problem

• loans had terrible conditions including high interest rates and fees

• because more blacks were offered these loans, there were more black foreclosures during the housing crisis due to not being able to afford to pay

• lots of black lost homes which also contributed to the difficulty in developing generation wealth and the race wealth gap

Deindustrialization of cities

• the fact that most cities lost manufacturing jobs as these jobs were moved to the suburbs

• problem - segregation in housing prevented black men from following these jobs to the white suburbs

Segregation tax

• when blacks own a home in a predominantly black neighborhood, they are not as high in value due to the fact that whites do not want to live there

Income

flow of resources earned in a particular period

Wealth

• net value of one’s assets minus debts

Systemic Racism

• the creation, development and maintenance of white privilege, economic wealth, and sociopolitical power

• unjust enrichment of whites and unjust impoverishment of black

Racialized Social System (In relation to the wealth gap)

• where there is a racial hierarchy where the race deemed superior gets: better access to jobs and pay, higher social estimation, and power to draw physical and social boundaries

Rise in the race wealth gap can be explained by:

• household income

• unemployment

• college education

• inheritance

• financial support

• generational wealth

• years of homeownership (most impactful)

Problem with FHA programs

• enabled millions of whites to buy their first homes and later accumulate wealth

• money mainly channeled to whites and away from blacks by local administrators

• provided more loans to whites moving to white suburbs than black city neighborhoods

Tracking

•  Despite a diverse student body, classrooms are internally segregated

• High level classes (e.g., honors, AP) are dominated by W students while “regular” & remedial classes are filled w/B & L students

• high track students may perform better on standardized tests b/c they get more access to resources

Achievement Gap

• the differing mobility and success rates of black students and white students

• when B,L, & W students take similar courses, the achievement gap is greatly reduced suggesting importance of access to high quality curriculum

Crown Act

• Bans hair discrimination in workplace, public accommodations & federally funded programs

Symbolic Power of Whites

• the power to classify 1 group of ppl as normal and other groups of ppl as abnormal

• demonstrated by their dominance of Hollywood, sports, the music industry, art museums

• EX: In sports, POCs are many of the players & performers, but White team owners hold the power

Symbolic Whore

• roles are defeminizing as they assume the sexuality of a man (i.e., pride themselves on their sexual prowess, sexual aggressors)

• Roles are defeminizing as they only see men as potential sex partners or as sources of financial support

• B/c Symbolic Whores treat men as sex objects, it gives males the license to treat them as sex objects in return while retaining audience sympathy when they abandon the Symbolic Whore

Symbolic Whore History

•  the reoccurring depiction of black women as hypersexual and lacking restraint or care

• BFs were first stereotyped as Jezebels or whores during slavery in antebellum literature & custom

• B/c BFs cast in the Whore role exhibit a masculine sexuality not a feminine sexuality; Whores pursue sex & not romance, Whores pride themselves on their sexual prowess, Whores initiate sex rather than waiting around to be wooed, Whores are sexual aggressors

Bodily Autonomy

• rights and control of their body

• Black females did not have this due to constantly being raped, berated, beaten, and sold

• Their children that were product of rape endured the same things, giving them no control, they had no right to defend themselves because they were property

Intersectionality

• examines how discrimination operates at the intersection of multiple structures of oppression.

• It is meant to address the problem w/ traditional forms of analysis that focus on a single axis of discrimination

• For e.g., how racism affects B communities as a whole or how sexism affects all women

Gender

•  The social & psychological attributes by which human beings get characterized as masculine or feminine

Gender Oppression

• feminized persons are ranked below masculinized persons & feminized persons also receive fewer societal rewards

Mainstream Feminist Movement critiqued:

• constructions of womanhood that discouraged females from pursuing higher ed and high paying careers

• Defining housework and child care as womens work

• Equating female passivity and dependence with femininity

• Called for equal pay for equal work, free contraception, abortion, etc

Problems with Mainstream Feminism

• Assumption that all females were oppressed by patriarchal husbands and fathers focused on white female experience

• Black females were always forced to work and that work was not liberating or empowering

• Black males were allies to black women, not oppressors

• Ignored the role white women played in oppression

• Black men were not allowed to fit into “masculine” traits like being aggressive toward white women, emmett till example

• Blacks could not meet the criteria for femininity and masculinity

Black Matriarch Role

• depicted as single mom in charge of a female headed household

• defeminizes BF in her relationship w/BM b/c she emasculates BM by replacing him as a breadwinner & head of the household; her takeover reminds BM how weak he is

• Matriarch role is defeminizing b/c she can’t be passive or weak b/c she is head of a household; hence once again at bottom of the Female Racial Hierarchy

• depicted as incompetent parents, they violate the standards of the ultimate feminine role of a good wife & mother

Moderate Segregation

• Metro areas with a dissimilarity index from 30-60

• While Hispanics are poor, most live in moderate segregation. Hence, it is not poverty that explains why so few B’s live in moderate segregation & so many live in hypersegregation

• it is not poverty, it is being Black

• because 53% of black metro dwellers live in hypersegregated or metro areas in 2010, they are the most spatially isolated & geographically secluded population in America