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 systemAnd•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 non-

whites.• 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 inner-city 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 property-

capitalism 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.