Module 2: Racial Ideologies and Sociological Theories of Racism

2.1

Individual Racism

  • racism

    • prejudice (belief there is inate hiearachial differences)

    • discrimination (act of treating those differently)

  • individual racism

    • individual acts of racism/discrimination

    • overt v microagression

Institutional

  • policies, laws and institutions that reproduce racial inequalties

    • example: high rates of black infant mortality in alabama

  • racism is normative, societal ideology operates within and among organizations, institutions, and processes of larger society

  • racial discrimination happening at every level of system

    • laws written in ways that discriminate against black people

Systemic Racism and Structural Racism

  • stokely charmicheal & charles hamilton

    • theorized forms of institutional racism

  • structural racism

    • pattern of action in which one or more of the institutions of society has power to throw on more burdens and give less benefits to members of one race to another on an on going basis

    • points to insterinstitutional interactions across time and space

      • ex: racial inequality in houding leads to racial inequality in schooling which leads to inequality in labor markt

      • difference with institutional is that institutional only focuses on one institution at a time rather than their link

  • systemic racism

    • diverse assortment of racist practices; unjustly gained economic and political power of whites (through slavery), continuing of resource inequalities and white racist ideologies attitudes and institutions created to preserve white advantage and power

      • patterns of unjust impoverishment of non whites

      • vested group interests of whites to maintain racism

    • racialized social systems

      • societies in which economic, political, social, and ideological levels structured by the placement of actors in racial categories

Racial ideologies

  • hegemonic/widely accepted and have become common sense

  • racial ideology: set of principles that divides people into different racial groups and serves the interests of one group (usually the dominant group)

  • individual prejuidices are related to our acceptance of racial ideologies

  • new racism and lawmaking: policymakers cant make overt racial laws so they have to make laws that make the current racial order seem natural and normal

Different Racial Ideologies

  • biological racism (whites are genetically superior)

  • cultural racism (lack of prosperity due to behavior and culture> structural factors)

  • color bind racism (structural inequalities outcome of non racial dynamics and naturally occuring)

    • abstract liberalism, opportunity and freedom of choice explain racial inequality, not structures (ex: black people live in bad neighborhoods because they choose to)

racial formation

  • the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created inhabited transformed and destroyed

  • the state is primary site where race is constructed and contested

  • racial dynamics changed from domination to hegenomy

  • racial projects by the state identify racial dynamics and give categories to them ex immigrant synonomous with hispanic

  • creates structure of dominatiin

white supremacy and settler colonialism

  • three layers of white supremacy 1. anti blackness (people as property) 2. genocide (native american racism/rooted in colonialism) 3. oreintalism (other nations threat to western civilization)

intersectional theories of race and racism

  • how do race class and gender oppression work together to create oppression

  • patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism

white priviledge

  • advantages inherent in being categorized as white

Papers

Blumer, Race Prujudice as a sense of group position

  • argument: racial prejuidice exists in a sense of group position rather then set of feeling which members of one racial group have toward the members of another racial group

    • collective process by which racial group comes to define another

  • racial prejuidice is

    • a matter of racial identification made of oneself and of others

    • the way in which the identified groups are conceived in relation to each other

  • people identify themselves as belomging to a racial group, not spontaneous but result of experience

  • collective process: racial groups form images of themselves and of others

  • racial prejuidice in dominant group feelings

    • of superiority

    • of subordinate race as different

    • of propriety claim to areas of privilege and advantage

    • of fear that subordinate race will threaten position of dominant/attack on natural superiority

  • all place subordinate people below them

  • transcends individual feelings/personal beliefs connected by virtue of sharing the sense of the group position

    • if sense of position is strong by racial group, acting contrary is to risk feeling of self alienation and face ostricism

    • race prejuidice is defensive reaction to challenging of sense of group position

  • how group position is formed

    • recognition it is historical product

    • dominant racial group is led to define and redifine subordinate racial group and relations between them

      • definition through omplex interaction between members of dominate group present to one another characterizations of subordinate group (leaders, prestige bearers, officials, dominant individuals, ordinary laymen, interest groups )

      • definition through abstract image of subordinate racial group not built through idnividual experiences

A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism

  • argument: comprehensive and ciritical sociological theory of race and racism exists

  • sociological theories

    • individual, institutional, and structural racism

    • racial ideologies

    • controlling images/hegenomic images/intersectionality

    • racialized identities