The Social Construction of Race in the US
Race is created by a society based on the society’s social, political and cultural history. As Omi and Winant explain, because race is not scientific or biological and instead created by social, political and cultural forces, each racial group must be understood differently in light of how it was socially constructed. In the U.S., racial classification began with encounters of people from First Nations. These people, mistakenly called “Indians,” were defined more by what they were NOT than who they were. Definition by omission is a theme throughout America’s racial construction and outgroup identity by European explorers became the master status for centuries: to the early colonists the First Nations people were not Christian, not civilized, not white. This applied to the first African slaves as well, with one other distinction - they were also not free.
Institutional Influence
The construction of race is influenced and reinforced by social institutions. Three federal institutions that had profound effects on the construction of race are: immigration laws, the censuses, and Supreme Court rulings.
Voter and Citizenship Laws - Early Foundations for Racial Thinking
This master status of what First Nation people and African people were not is reflected in the foundation of the United States. Although voter laws varied from state to state, most of the states only allowed free, white, property-owning males the right to vote. And this same stipulation was applied to citizenship based on the 1790 Naturalization Act which said that immigrants who were free white people could become U.S. citizens. Conversely, this implied that anyone who was not white could not be an American citizen. Note that this very early act did not define other races - it simply addressed people as either white or not. This becomes an important launch point for racial dynamics for the U.S. - determining who is white and the privileges that come with that determination.
The changing nature of whiteness in the U.S.
From Harper’s Illustration, (paraphrased)
They are distinctly marked – the small and somewhat upturned nose, the black tint of skin…They are uneducated, and as a consequence, they are jobless,, poor, and they don't save what little money they have. They drink alcohol, and act like barbarians…Of course they will violate our laws, they are like wild bisons leaping over the fences which easily restrain the civilized domestic cattle, and they will commit great crimes of violence, even murder, which certainly have increased lately.
Who do you think the magazine is talking about? Why?
This caption and illustration show the subjectivity of race in the United States. The writer was referring to the Irish who were emigrating in large numbers in the 1840s and 50s. The Irish were not considered white. Not only does this not make sense physically/biologically, but the caption reveals how subjective and social race was. They were looked down on because of the jobs they did (dock labor), because of their religion (Catholic), because of their culture (alcohol use) and their social class (poor). This subjectivity is just one example throughout the history of the United States. Over the years, Jews, Italians, Greeks and other Southern Europeans faced discrimination because they were considered less desirable than Northern Europeans, but all of these people are considered "white" by today's standards. Nell Irvin Painter’s book, The History of White People, details the the concept of whiteness — and explains how many ethnic groups now regarded as white, from Irish, Jews, Italians were once excluded from mainstream American society, explained and excerpted on NPR here.
Here are some sociology readings about how different groups have changed over time:
My post on How Jews became White, which draws on Karen Brodkin's research.
Arab Americans and racial identity by Kristine J. Ajrouch and Amaney Jamal
How Italians became white; Vicious Bigotry and Reluctant Acceptance (NY Times) and this article details the largest single lynching in US history which was perpetrated against Italian Americans.
When the Irish weren't white.
Hispanic identity and race in Chicago by Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas (2001) and the 2020 article from The Dubois Review published by Cambridge Press, "Whiteness" in Context, Racial Identification among Mexican-Origin Adults in California and Texas
Are Asian Americans Becoming White? by Min Zhou
All of these are examples of how race has changed over the years in America. Who is considered white changes because there is no empirical or objective way to define race. Race doesn't exist in any biological or empirical sense, it only exists as a social construction.
The Census
Look at the different choices for the U.S. census over the years. Racebox has every census survey on its website or see the selections below. Note how you would be categorized if you were living during each census.
How different races would you have been categorized as depending on when you were living in the US?
1. How many different races would you have been in the censuses above?
From The Society Pages, here is how the US census has changed in how it determines race over the years. Also worth reading the comments section.
The timeline below is from the PEW research center and it explains how the U.S. census has changed over the years. Click here for a more detailed look at the timeline of racial census categories.
2. Based on the changes in the census can you hypothesize why one change came about? What were the social, political or cultural dynamics were that resulted in a changing census? (You can try to examine the graphic or use the Society Pages link above for a guided explanation)
When the first census was issued in 1790, the United States note that the categories were "free whites", "other free persons" or "slaves" but by 1820 those categories changed to "free whites" "free coloreds" and "slaves."
Why does that matter? What does the difference change about identity in the US?
Why does “Chinese” show up in 1870?
Why does “Mexican” show up in 1930 and then disappear?
One census example worth examining is "Mexican" which was only used in 1930 and then discontinued. In 1970 Hispanic was re-added as an ethnic group. Code Switch from NPR has a terrific history of the terms in Gene Demby's 2014 episode here.
Both introductions were the result of social forces at the time, especially related to economy, and not the result of democratic demand by the people being labeled.
Sociology professor Julie Dowling from the University of Illinois Chicago explains the history in her 2015 book, Mexican Americans and the Question of Race,
Dowling's research challenges common assumptions about what informs racial labeling for this population. Her interviews demonstrate that for Mexican Americans, racial ideology is key to how they assert their identities as either in or outside the bounds of whiteness. Emphasizing the link between racial ideology and racial identification, Dowling offers an insightful narrative that highlights the complex and highly contingent nature of racial identity.
You can read a review of Dowling's work here:
The Supreme Court and the Institutionalization of Race
The Census Bureau is not the only U.S. institution that subjectively affected racial categorization over the years. Because of the subjective nature of race in general and the census in particular, a number of Supreme Court Cases were forced to determine racial classification and policy.
here are some other ways that the legal system (legislation subsequently reinforced by Supreme Court) constructed race in the U.S.:
Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 (Black Americans could never be citizens of the United States.)
Chae Chan Ping v. United States 1889 (Limited rights for Americans who had Chinese ancestry.)
Pace v. Alabama 1883 (miscegenation law allowed criminalizing interracial marriage - not overturned until 1967!)
Ozawa v. U.S. 1922 (Japanese are not white.)
United States V. Thind (1923)
Bhagat Singh Thind (1892-1967) was born in Punjab and came to America in 1913. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and paid for it by working in an Oregon lumber mill during summer vacations. When America entered World War I, he joined the U.S. Army. He was honorably discharged on the 16th of December, 1918 and in 1920 applied for U.S. citizenship from the state of Oregon. Several applicants from India had thus far been granted U.S. citizenship.
He was applying based on the naturalization law at the time which was the 1790 United States Naturalization Law. It stated the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. The law limited citizenship to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good character". The census forms allowed Singh to choose from these categories: White, Black, Mulatto, Chinese, American Indian. His application for citizenship was challenged by the immigration office. Singh argued that he was white from a state very close to the Caucasus Mountains, the region where anthropologists believed that Caucasians emerged from.
3. Decide how you would rule:
____ Singh is a white man who deserves citizenship.
____ Singh is not white and therefore does not deserve citizenship.
The Court determined that Thind was not white or Caucasoid, even though he did not fit into the other categories of race at the time (Mongoloid/Asian, Negroid/Black, American Indian). Instead, the court ruled that because most people would say that he is not white, then he is not white. The court also ruled that this ruling applied to all Hindus - even though Thind was not even Hindu! He was Sikh. This was just one way of many that the legal system that shaped race throughout U.S. history. For more information about Thind, checkout the Scene on Radio podcast. It has a whole season on race and a whole episode about Thind (embedded below) as told through his son, who, surprisingly, had no idea about the case and everything that his dad went through! I really want to emphasize the significance of the Thind case - It represents another example of the nagging racial idea that complicates race relations in the U.S. in so many ways: For many Americans, being "American" means being White. In Thind's case it is quite literally being considered not a citizen; After the Thind ruling one-third of all Americans with Indian descent leave the country!
Lum v. Rice 1927 (Citizens who are Chinese don't have the right to attend white schools.)
Korematsu v. U.S. 1944 (Americans can be held in prison or concentration camps because of their ethnicity and without due process.)
Citizenship Law Part 2 - The 1965 Immigration Act
The 1965 immigration law was another institution that played a pivotal role in shaping the U.S. and making it the multicultural nation that it has become. This 2019 episode of NPR's Fresh Air highlights Tom Gjelten's 2016 book, A Nation Of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story.
The 1965 law opened the U.S. to countries all over the world, and it also created a demand for cheap labor that lead to the illegal immigration crisis from Central America. This was the beginning of marked change in the U.S. that resulted in the immigration challenges and criticisms that the U.S. has had for the last 50 years. Here are three important dynamics that emerged from this law:
The U.S. became more diverse. The law prioritized what immigrants could offer to the U.S. over what ethnicity they were. This led to a much more diverse population coming to the U.S.
The ethnic diversity did not bring labor and educational diversity. Instead, many of the diverse people were emigrating with advanced degrees and skills that allowed them to climb the U.S. social class ladder. This had the unintended result of white middle and working class citizens resenting the new diversity that seemed to be climbing the social class ladder faster than them.
Lastly, this new immigration that favored skilled labor over unskilled dried up the cheap European labor that bolstered the economic growth through industrialization. In other words, businesses who relied on cheap labor could not find the workers that they once did. This resulted in a demand that pulled easily accessible labor from over the border - especially from Mexico and Central America.
4. Please brainstorm an answer to this question:
Even though the idea of race is a social construction and not a biologically discrete category, race has very real consequences (Thomas Theorum). As we saw in previous lessons, Omi and Winant documented how racial classification in each country is based on that country's social, cultural, and political history. At first this might seem like simply a classification system that is subjective to each country and, though it is unscientific, it is not necessarily harmful. However, race is often used to justify and promote unequal social arrangements. The inequality might simply be promoting the idea that a person or a group of people do not belong because of their race or the inequality might be very tangible benefits like free land or free money.
Ibram Kendi's book, Stamped From the Beginning is an extraordinary work that details the history of racism in the U.S. and Kendi explains,
Not only do people react to each other based on their perceived races, but institutions have been constructed around the idea of race. In our last lesson, we saw the ways that institutions construct the idea of race, and who is white. Today we look at what opportunities are created based on race, or more simply, why would anyone want so bad to be white, if it's just a faulty label? In many instances, the advantages to being white is explicitly written into the law or institution. Here is a list for starters about why being white mattered and still matters explicitly:
- 1705 a statute in Virginia required masters to give white indentured servants fifty acres of land, thirty shillings, ten bushels of corn and a musket.
- 1705 House of Burgesses passed the Virginia Slave Codes. Those laws locked in a brutal system of white supremacy by giving slave owners sweeping rights to control and even torture the African people they owned, and making it illegal for black people to employ white people.
- 1785 Land Ordinance Act provided a clearer system for putting formerly Native land into the hands of white settlers. This was 640 acres at a dollar an acre. And public education system was set aside in this act but it was designed to serve white children, not enslaved African children or Native Americans.
- 1790 Naturalization Act allows whites to become citizens. This isn’t about anything except the color of your skin - not merit, not hard work, not meeting the criteria, just being white, the color of your skin.
- 1862 Homestead Act allowed people to claim land for free in the rapidly expanding United States, but excluded the vast majority of black people in the U.S., because you had to be a citizen to participate and enslaved people were not eligible for citizenship until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
- 1934 FHA created loan opportunities that by 1962, would loan over 120 billion dollars that over 98 percent went to white people.
- 1934 Social Security Administration was created to help aging Americans, but two-thirds of all African American workers were blocked from Social Security until the program was expanded in the 1950s.
- 1944 GI Bill of Rights Millions of mostly-white men got higher education through the GI Bill and became engineers, scientists, doctors, teachers. The GI Bill also sent people to trade schools and helped veterans find jobs. But here again, men of color were at a disadvantage because of the military’s racist practices back then in assigning jobs within the military. So, when people came home and met with a job counselor, a local job counselor, their duties were to line up a civilian job that matched the skills you gained in the military. White men came home and became builders and welders and mechanics, and men of color came home and became dishwashers and cooks. until 1971, the GI Bill spent ninety-five billion dollars on veterans, helping them buy homes, get vocational training, and start businesses.
- Redlining practices that prevented Americans identified as Black from moving to neighborhoods that were mostly white and more affluent. The Smithsonian explains the history here, but a more local example is Deerfield, IL:
- NPR reports about Deerfield reckoning with redlining policies more than 50 years after it happened (2019)
- This clip from PBS explains the redlining practice in Deerfield.
- This exhibit from the Deerfield Library explains the history.
5. In the examples above, what is one of the ways that being white resulted in advantages for that ingroup? How might these advantages affect the Americans considered white in the long term?
What is racism?
The examples above are all ways that people who were seen as white had access to institutional power. The ways that race has played a role in helping certain groups gain or maintain power is what sociologists call "racism." Since these examples above are about institutions creating and maintaining power, it is an example of institutional racism. An important distinction here is that racism is perpetrated against people who do not have power. This is why people sometimes hear the idea that racism can't be perpetrated against the majority race, whites. Racism is about maintaining power in favor of the racial group that holds power. Another important distinction is that racism is an action, so people's actions can be racist, and in a society with as much racism as the United States, all of us are likely to have racist actions (even Ibram Kendi, an African American scholar and racism historian defines his own actions as having been racist), but that does not define us as people. Instead of labeling individuals as racist, we should identify racist actions and language. Otherwise, allowing the status quo to continue allows the racist power dynamic to continue. So, Kendi makes that case in his book, How to Be an Anti-Racist. So it is through this lens of language and actions that allow and promote racial disparities to exist that we will discuss "racism". However, racism should not be confused with these other related terms:
- bigotry - intolerance for a group of people
- prejudice/bias - holding an over-generalized attitude that prevents objective consideration of an individual or group of people
- discrimination - the unequal treatment of an individual or group because of their status in a group
- individual racism - individual ideas or actions that justify and perpetuate a minority individual from gaining or accessing power
6. How is the sociological definition of racism related to power? Is this different than how you have used the term racism in the past?
Below is more evidence about how race matters explicitly. But explicit racism is not only institutional, it can also be individual racism. Individual racism is when individuals use race to gain or maintain power against minorities. As you explore the examples think about how these situations use race to get or maintain power. Also, think about whether these are individual acts of racism or institutional.
Open this post about tweets from the 2013 Miss America pageant.
Is this racism?
Is this prejudice?
Is this discrimination?
For more about racism (esp. with women from Indian descent) and beauty pageants, see this post based on Asha Rangappa.
7. How do the tweets in the link above try to prevent Nina Davluri from gaining power?
8. Do you see how racism is related to power?
Racism in College
Fraternities and sororities hold racial-themed parties that display very directly the racialized stereotypes that persist in the United States. (Here is an older version of the post) Does this surprise you? How would you feel/react to a party like this when you go to college?
Here is a post about why dressing up in this way is not okay.
Here is a post about a 2013 racist incident at a liberal college in a liberal state.
9. What is one example from any of the three links above that shows how racism is used to make minorities feel uncomfortable at college?
Racism in Sports
In 2018, Racism at Wrigley in the bleachers.
The stakes of the moment are made clear by a Latino female fan who security rescues from physical and verbal harm. She stands on the bleachers and points at each member of the white security team.In 2017, Fans at Fenway made news numerous times over their racist taunts of opposing teams' players.
“You and you and you will never know what it’s like,” she says.
A few seconds later, a Latino fan involved in the altercation accuses security of “taking the white people’s side.” The fight appears to be ending when the non-Latino fan bellows the same slurs, putting his hands on either side of his mouth to amplify his voice and ensure he’s heard. It’s only then that he realizes he’s being recorded. (If you feel the need to fully absorb these words, you can watch the video here.)
It’s a telling moment. He feels safe enough to shout those words next to security personnel. But when he realizes his actions might be seen outside of the stadium, he accosts the person recording the fight. Security also instructs the videographer to “put your phone away” and says “you’re on private property, you don’t have permission to videotape anyone.” But, security never turns to the man yelling racist epithets and tells him to be quiet. Then there is an extremely passionate revelation from one of the spectators who points to the security and says, "You and you and you will never understand what it feels like!"
In 2017, Yu Darvish was taunted and mocked for looking Asian.
In 2012, Joel Ward, a black NHL player scored the winning goal in the NHL playoffs and he became the target of racial slurs.
Racism in the Marketplace
This article from the NY Post details how, "a college student from Queens got more than he bargained for when he splurged on a $350 designer belt at Barneys — when a clerk had him cuffed apparently thinking the black teen couldn’t afford the pricey purchase, even though he had paid for it, a new lawsuit alleges.
“His only crime was being a young black man,” his attorney, Michael Palillo, told The Post."
This Guardian story explains what it is like to be black and shopping while being racially profiled.
...lays out the results of nearly two decades of research on racial profiling in retail settings.
Gabbidon and Higgins address the generally neglected racial profiling that occurs in retail settings. Although there is no existing national database on shoplifting or consumer racial profiling (CRP) from which to study the problem, they survey relevant legal cases and available data sources. This problem clearly affects a large number of racial/ethnic minorities, and causes real harm to the victims, such as the emotional trauma attached to being excessively monitored in stores and, in the worst-case scenarios, falsely accused of shoplifting. Their analysis is informed by their own experience: one co-author is a former security executive for a large retailer, and both are Black men who understand firsthand the sting of being profiled because of their color. After providing an overview of the history of CRP and the official and unofficial data sources and criminological literature on this topic, they address public opinion polls, as well as the extent and impact of victimization. They also provide a review of CRP litigation, provide recommendations for retailers to reduce racial profiling, and also chart some directions for future research.
Racism in Politics
During the Healthcare debate in 2009, Representative David Scott of Georgia had a 4foot swastika painted over his office sign.
The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies hate groups in America. This link will show you a map of all the hate groups in the United States. Is this surprising? Is this concerning?
This article from the Daily Mail, a British online newspaper, details the rise in threats during Obama's presidency,
And with Mr Obama reportedly receiving more death threats than any other American president - 400 per cent more than those against his predecessor George Bush, according to a new book...A black U.S. Congressman had a swastika painted over his office sign after he yelled at allegedly racist protesters at a Southern town hall meeting, it emerged today.
Michael Tesler's 2016 book Post Racial or Most Racial documents the tremendous amount of racism that President Obama faced during his presidency, including ongoing claims that he was not American. Is this any different than the flurry of racism that Ms. Nina Davluri faced after becoming Miss America?
"Tesler shows how, in the years that followed the 2008 election—a presidential election more polarized by racial attitudes than any other in modern times—racial considerations have come increasingly to influence many aspects of political decision making."
Jeremy Lin is an example of the racial stereotypes in sports and how stereotypes can be more or less permissible for different groups within a society. Here is a post explaining that dynamic from the society pages. Here is a clip of the skit from the daily beast. Have you seen or heard any explicit racism in your own life?
And this post from Soc Images shows how different media make their consumers more or less aware of systemic inequality. In other words, some media helps it's viewers understand the structural problems that create inequality while other media ignore these factors. By ignoring the factors it promotes the current structure which has created an unequal distribution of power.
10. Choose one area from the above examples (sports, the marketplace, politics or the media) and explain how that area exemplifies or sustains the balance of power against racial minorities.
Explicit Racism Backstage
Sociologists Leslie Picca and Joe Feagin explain in their book Two-faced Racism that racism can be explicit even if it is not always shared publicly. Read an excerpt here. Watch a video of Leslie Picca here:
SOCHE Talks: Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage from SOCHE on Vimeo.
Besides race being used explicitly it can also be something that is less noticeable or subconscious. This type of racism also called implicit racism.
Implicit racism
Prejudices and stereotypes exist in our subconscious. These hidden biases are called implicit bias. Although implicit bias can be about myriad topics (gender, occupation, age), it can also promote racism. Here is an explanation from Teaching Tolerance:
While the brain isn’t wired to be racist, it uses biases as unconscious defensive shortcuts. As human beings, we are not naturally racist. But because of the way our brains are wired, we are naturally "groupist." The brain has a strong need for relatedness. This wiring for “groupism” usually leads the dominant culture (the in-group) in a race-based society to create “out-groups” based on race, gender, language and sexual orientation. A system of inequity is maintained by negative social messages that dehumanize people of color, women and LGBT people as “the other.” For folks in the in-group, the brain takes in these messages and downloads them like software into the brain’s fear system. This leads to implicit bias: the unconscious attitudes and beliefs that shape our behavior toward someone perceived as inferior or as a threatening outsider.The passage above is connecting race to ingroups and outgroups that we learned about in unit 2. If the ingroup has power, then this can result in viewing groups without power with mistrust, fear, and stereotypes. When that ingroup perceives itself as a "race" (such as "white") then it becomes implicit racism.
11. Explain what implicit racism is.
W.E.B. Du Bois's Wages of Whiteness and Implicit Racism
From the NAACP history website, William Edgar Burghardt Du Bois became the first African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard University (1895). Du Bois became an assistant instructor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. There he conducted the pioneering sociological study of an urban community, published as The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). These first two works assured Du Bois’s place among America’s leading scholars.
From 1934 to 1944 Du Bois was chairman of the department of sociology at Atlanta University. Du Bois published numerous works of academic research on African Americans. His body of work was considered the greatest study of African Americans at that time and it still remains respected.
From the Social Science Research Council (SSRC),
Du Bois famously argues that whiteness serves as a “public and psychological wage,” delivering to poor whites in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a valuable social status derived from their classification as “not-black.” The claims embedded in this thesis—that whiteness provides meaningful “compensation” (Du Bois’s term) for citizens otherwise exploited by the organization of capitalism; that the value of whiteness depends on the devaluation of black existence; and that the benefits enjoyed by whites are not strictly monetary—shaped subsequent efforts to theorize white identity and to grasp the (non)formation of political coalitions in the United States.
An excerpt from DuBois is here:
Most persons do not realize how far [the view that common oppression would create interracial solidarity] failed to work in the South, and it failed to work because the theory of race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers that there probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.
It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule. (Black Reconstruction [1935], 700-701)Dubois wrote this in 1935, but I still think it applies today. For example, when reading about the racist tweets towards Nina Davuluri, it sends the message that she might be pretty and successful and born in the United States, but she is not and will never be a real American. For the millions of poor Whites who feel powerless, that small act of racism might make them feel good about being White, being a "true American." This is another reason why all of the immigrant groups have tried to become White over the years. It was not just for explicit benefits, it was also for these implicit benefits, or psychological wages of whiteness. It constructs a reality where whites feel and experience life differently because they are White. White is the majority group in the United States so it comes with a feeling of power and belonging. This is true even for Whites who might not have a lot of real power in society - low-income Whites with less education. So, for them, even though they are at the lowest end of the social class ladder, at least they are White. And, many sociologists hypothesize that this benefits the ruling class of power elites because it keeps the middle/working classes from being a united front that could band together to demand more political control, more power, and better wages. As we saw in our social class unit, if this was a purpose, it certainly has worked.
12. Can you explain what DuBois' Wages of Whiteness are?
Peggy McIntosh's Interpretation of Implicit Racism
About 50 years after Dubois, Peggy McIntosh wrote about Dubois's psychological wages which she called the Invisible Knapsack that explained these "hidden wages" show up in a number of different ways in everyday life. McIntosh called these "privileges". This is how the term "white privilege" came about as part of our public discourse. The essence of McIntosh's claim is that whites can live their daily life in the United States without having being judged for their race. This includes meeting new neighbors, shopping, getting a promotion, etc... All of these are more likely to be viewed with individualism for whites and race-related for everyone else. Essentially, it is saying that minority race becomes a master status for everyone who is not white.
McIntosh is not saying that whites have been handed everything on a silver spoon or that they have not worked hard for what they have. She is simply saying that race is not a factor that white people have to overcome to be successful. Many policies, institutions and individuals have used both explicit and implicit racism to get and maintain power. Whites were privileged to be on the benefitting end of that power whether psychologically or materially. However, many whites emigrated to the U.S. and worked hard to get by and make a better life for their future generations. My grandpa was one of them. He came from Italy in 1916 when he was just 15 years old. He had no money and no immediate family in the U.S. He worked whatever job he could find and eventually enlisted in the US Army. He struggled, but eventually was able to buy a small house and retire. He was just fortunate to not have to overcome racism as part of his uphill struggle. He had white privilege. As do I. And as do many of my students. This does not mean that whites are supposed to feel guilty about this privilege. They are not supposed to apologize for it. This is a lesson that simply acknowledges that it exists. Remember, sociology is about how individuals are shaped by their society and their social position in it. Being a certain race shapes how society treats you – what advantages or disadvantages you have.
13. Can you explain what Peggy McIntosh means by "white privilege"?
14. Are whites supposed to feel guilty about white privilege?
15. Are whites supposed to apologize about white privilege?
Tangible Privilege
Michael Harriot who has an MBA degree in international business from Auburn thinks that not only is privilege psychological, but it is also measurable. The institutional advantages that we learned about yesterday lasted for hundreds of years. This meant that generations of whites could pass on down their wealth and benefits to future generations. Over time, this allowed an accumulation of wealth and privilege that continues to this day.
Read the essay Yes, You Can Measure White Privilege below by Harriot and answer the questions embedded within the reading.
Whenever anyone slips the words “white privilege” into a conversation, it immediately builds an impenetrable wall. For some white people, the words elicit an uneasy feeling because, for them, the term is accusatory without being specific. It is a nebulous concept that seemingly reduces the complex mishmash of history, racism and social phenomena to a nonspecific groupthink phrase.
16. Does talking about white privilege give you a defensive/uneasy reaction? Be honest about your feelings.
But white privilege is real.
Instead of using it as a touchy-feely phrase that gives white people the heebie-jeebies because it conjures up images of Caucasians sitting on plantation porches drinking mint juleps while they watch the Negroes toil in the Southern sun, we should use it as a proper noun, with a clear definition. White privilege does not mean that any white person who achieved anything didn’t work hard for it. It is an irrefutable, concrete phenomenon that manifests itself in real, measurable values, and we should use it as such.
17. Does white privilege mean that white people did not work for whatever they have achieved?
Imagine the entire history of the United States as a 500-year-old relay race, where whites began running as soon as the gun sounded, but blacks had to stay in the starting blocks until they were allowed to run. If the finish line is the same for everyone, then the time and distance advantage between the two runners is white privilege. Not only can we see it, but we can actually measure it. If we begin viewing it as an economic term—the same way we use “trickle-down economics”—then it might be debatable, but it becomes a real, definable thing that we can acknowledge, explain and work toward eliminating. Race might be a social construct, but white privilege is an economic theory that we should define as such:
White privilege: n. The quantitative advantage of whiteness
Here are four examples that explain white privilege in economic terms.
Education
If education is the key to success, then there is no debate that whites have the advantage in America. In 2012, the U. S. Department of Education reported that about 33 percent of all white students attend a low-poverty school, while only 6 percent attend high-poverty schools. In comparison, only 10 percent of black students attend a low-poverty school, while more than 40 percent of black students attend high-poverty schools.
This means that black students are more than six times more likely than white students to attend a high-poverty school, while white students are more than three times more likely than black students to attend a low-poverty school.
18. What percent of blacks and whites attend a high-poverty school?
19. Did you personally choose to live in district 125? Did your parents ask you if you wanted to go to district 125 before they moved into district?
National Equality Atlas
The logical response to this is for whites to explain the disparity away with statistics of black unemployment and the minority wage gap, but that might not be true. In 2015, a research scientist named David Mosenkis examined 500 school districts in Pennsylvania and found that—regardless of the level of income—the more black students, the less money a school received. While this may not be true for every single school, people who study education funding say that they can predict a school’s level of funding by the percentage of minority students it has. Even though this is a complex issue that reveals how redlining and segregation decreased the property tax base in areas where blacks live—therefore decreasing funding—it underscores a simple fact: White children get better educations, and that is a calculable advantage.
Even when black students manage to overcome the hurdles of unequal education, they still don’t get equal treatment when it comes to jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of Friday, April 7, the unemployment rate for African Americans was nearly double that of whites (8.1 percent for blacks, 4.3 percent for whites).
There are some who will say blacks should study harder, but this phenomenon can’t be explained by simple educational disparities. A 2015 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that whites with the exact same résumés as their black counterparts are hired at double the rate. In fact, a white man with a criminal history is more likely to be hired than an African American with no criminal past.
20. Assuming that resumes are exactly the same, who is more likely to get hired, a white with a criminal history or an African American with no criminal history?
EPI.org (Economic Policy Institute)
A similarly named, but different, organization—the Economic Policy Institute—examined 2015 data and discovered that at every level of education, whites were twice as likely to have jobs as blacks.
Income
But let’s say a black man somehow gets a great education and finds a job; surely that means the playing field is level, right?
Not so fast.
Pew Research/PewResearch.org
Researchers at EPI found that black men with 11-20 years of work experience earned 23.5 percent less than their white counterparts, and black women with 11-20 years of experience were paid 12.6 percent less than white women with the same experience. This disparity is not getting smaller. The wage gap between black and white workers was 18.1 percent in 1979, and steadily increased to 26.7 percent in 2015. When Pew Research controlled for education and just looked at income data, white men still surpassed every other group. These income inequalities persist to create the disparities in wealth between races, manifesting in generational disadvantages. A black person with the same education and experience as a similar Caucasian, over the span of their lives, will earn significantly less.
21. Assuming the education and work experience is the same, who is likely to get paid more, a minority or a person in the majority?
It is a little-known fact that the average black person pays more for almost every item he or she purchases. While there is no discount Groupon that comes with white skin, there might as well be. A John Hopkins study (pdf) showed that supermarkets were less prevalent in poor black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods with the same average income, leading to increased food costs. News organization ProPublica recently found that car-insurance companies charge people who live in black neighborhoods higher rates than people in predominantly white areas with the same risk.
When it comes to credit, it is even worse. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, The Atlantic reports, “even after controlling for general risk considerations, such as credit score, loan-to-value ratio, subordinate liens, and debt-to-income ratios, Hispanic Americans are 78 percent more likely to be given a high-cost mortgage, and black Americans are 105 percent more likely.” Even banks as large as Wells Fargo have lost cases for up-charging minorities.
According to the Wall Street Journal, large auto lenders have paid more than $200 million since 2013 to settle lawsuits for charging minorities higher rates, but in November, both Democrats and Republicans voted to reduce regulations on the financial institutions that offer auto loans. The National Consumer Law Center filed a 2007 lawsuit that exposed how “finance companies and banks put in place policies that allowed car dealers to mark up the interest rates on auto loans to minorities based on subjective criteria unrelated to their credit risk.”
Instead of hurling the term “white privilege” around as an imprecise catch-all to describe everything from police brutality to Pepsi commercials, perhaps its use as a definable phrase will make people less resistant. Maybe if they saw the numbers, they could acknowledge its existence. It is neither an insult nor an accusation; it is simply a measurable gap with real-world implications. It is the fiscal and economic disparity of black vs. white.
In America’s four-and-a-half-centuries-old relay race, the phrase “white privilege” does not mean that Caucasians can’t run fast; it is just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment that they got a head start.
22. Which evidence from the essay did you find most compelling that there is a privilege that whites do not have to think about?
23. If you choose to ignore or not acknowledge these statistics, are they still true?
24. Questions or comments about implicit racism and white privilege?
For HW: Please see this post about Jonathon Metzel's Dying of Whiteness and then choose to either:
a) read the introduction to the book
b) listen to the interview of Dr. Metzel with Mr Hayes
c) read the transcript of the interview
d) (or you can do both b and c)
In our last lesson, we learned about how racism indirectly affects people through institutions by allowing dynamics like accumulating wealth and segregating housing and schools. But implicit racism can also show up in more mundane ways. Dubois' wages of whiteness and McIntosh's privilege show up indirectly in everyday interaction. As Americans became aware of the damaging effects of racism, many Americans sought to become "colorblind" in terms of race. The idea was that not seeing race would get rid of the race-based institutional policies that shaped racism in the US from 1619-1970. Additionally, because racism was so stigmatized, many Americans were afraid to talk about race at all. Many people felt that by not seeing race, they would treat everyone equally. Consciously trying to ignore race became an intentional goal of American culture.
What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?
This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress. Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh? I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored. This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors". If we see society through a color-blind lens, then we implicitly accept that white skin is normal skin in the U.S.
Part of the privilege of being white and implicit bias of not being perceived as white is the idea of belonging. Similar to Nina Davuluri who was perceived as not American, here are a number of examples (A NY Police Lt., Harvard U. President, State Senator Obama) of Americans who are perceived as black being treated as they don't belong. Sometimes, they are seen as not belonging in the U.S. or not being American, but in other instances, it is that they do not belong within a more micro-sociological context such as living in a certain house or neighborhood. Below are examples of this from 2018.
Have you ever had the cops called on you for doing something that was just your normal life (and not illegal)? If so, what was it? If not, are these examples surprising?
Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles (n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim (n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy.
Here is another example of disparate news coverage:
two sociologists recently published a study that looked at a decade's worth of March Madness broadcasts, and they found that sometimes racial bias sounds like this:
"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."
"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white."
Same Action, Different Description
Dr. Ray and his co-author Dr. Steven Foy, of the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, transcribed 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They were looking at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.
An amazing example of implicit racism (and white privilege) was highlighted on the TV show What Would You Do? You will be astonished at the difference in how the two men are treated. Watch this video (embedded below).
Sociology of Education and School Discipline
Edward Morris and Brea Perry's research found that discipline in school for subjective offenses might be shaped by implicit bias. Read the abstract and try to answer the question below. Please don't guess. Either read it and actually try or skip the question. See their research published in the ASA's journal here or here.
6. What did the researchers conclude about who gets punished and why in high school?
The Police Officer's Dilemma from the University of Colorado at Boulder
If minorities themselves can be socialized to see their own race as something less desirable then obviously it can apply to everyone in the U.S. That means teachers, doctors and yes, police officers too. But because police officers are authorized to use deadly force, the impact of implicit bias has much more serious consequences when it come to policing. The University of Chicago's Joshua Corell has research showing that unconscious bias results in split-second differences in all people (not just police) who are confronted by either a white person or a black person. Soc Images explains it here. You can try the study by clicking here for a link to the game and conclusions or try clicking here for the simulation.
In short, the findings are that we live in a society that teaches us all to have implicit bias. This includes police and even includes other minorities.
Whose Lives Matter? (A History of Black Lives Matter Movement)A Knee into the Gut of America (Colin Kaepernick)
Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a study of implicit bias and the labor market in The American Economic Review called Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination?
Labor Market and Felonies
From the NY Times, When a Dissertation Makes a Difference shows not only how unconscious bias can play a role in hiring in a most inequitable way, but also how sociology can make a difference that influences policy.
As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Devah Pager studied the difficulties of former prisoners trying to find work and, in the process, came up with a disturbing finding: it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than for a black person whose record is clean.9. What are some of the evidence that implicit bias makes it harder for Americans who are perceived as black to get a job than Americans who are perceived as white?
Finally, this video called Slip of the Tongue uses slam poetry to explore how one girl stands strong to embrace her identity without giving in to popular pressure to change who she is.
FOR MORE ON IMPLICIT BIAS:
Using the link above, what microaggression stood out as particularly racist? Can you see how that small microaggression might make someone feel like they don't belong or shouldn't have power?
And, here are some privileges related to Christmas.
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