Lecture 2: Chapter 1 The matrix of race

 Introduction to race and the social matrix part II

 

I)      Future Race and Ethnic Demographics-we will become more diverse in the next 50 years

a.      What will we look like in the next 50 years.

              i.      50%+ will be minorities Hispanics, blacks, Asian Native Hawaiians, and Other Pacific Islanders

                  ii.      Reduced numbers of whites

1.      They will still be the largest single group in the U.S., constituting 49.4% of the population in 2060

              iii.      We will become a minority-majority nation, which means that the total combined minority groups will make up most of the population

                 iv.      But whites will still be nearly twice that of any other individual minority group

                  v. The fastest group will be those who identify as being two or more races -expected to grow about 200 percent by 2060

                vi.      Next fastest will be Asians who are expected to double

                      vii.      Slightly smaller increases among Hispanics =about 19 million increase

                     viii.      Immigrants will comprise about one in six people within the U.S

II)                  The Operation of Racism

a.      Anyone can be a victim of prejudice

                i.      To judge a person or group based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class or other social identities

1.      Shaped often by stereotypes =generalizations or assumptions applied to the entire group

a.      Can be positive -Asians are a model minority good in math and science

                                                                                                                 i.      Which negatively impacts those who do not do well

                                                                                                                ii.      Tends to blind us to those who live in poverty such as Hmong, Cambodians, and Thais

2.      Prejudice and stereotypes provide the foundations for actions defined as discrimination

a.      The differential allocation of goods, resources, and services and limitation of access to full participation in society based on an individual’s membership in a particular social category

3.      Prejudice and stereotypes are beliefs that guide how we treat others

4.      They produce discrimination

5.      Anyone can be the victim of prejudice, stereotypes, or discrimination, including White people.

6.      Racism is more than prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination

a.      It is a system of oppression

b. Oppression involves not only beliefs and actions but systematically devaluing, undermining, marginalizing, and disadvantaging certain social identity groups in contrast to a privileged norm.

c.      We shall discuss racism systemically

                                                                                                                i.      That means that racist realities, values, and ideologies are manifested in all major institutions within society

1.      To include education

2.      Employment

3.      Government

4.      Health care

5.      Family

6.      Criminal justice

7.      Sports and leisure

b.      The Contours of Racism

                          i.      Racism is a system of oppression that provides relatively more social power to one group at the expense of subordinate group members.

                         ii.      This subordination impacts individual actions, cultural values, and norms embedded both in their stock stories and in institutional structures and practices of society.

1.      Seen in codes of conduct, legal sanctions, and organizational rules and practices that serve to subordinate people of color within various institutional structures while enhancing the position of those who are defined as White

2.      Racial prejudice or racial prejudgments reflect not only our fears but our ignorance of racialized others and those that appear to be racially different from us.

3.      Racial identifications are a set of attitudes, cultural and normative values and presumed shared histories that establish group boundaries

a.      Group boundaries are enforced by both people within and external to the group.

4.      Racial boundary enforcements are structural or institutional mechanisms that serve to preserve those boundaries such as segregation, laws, police, courts, and economics.

5.      Bigotry (= intolerance toward those who are different from us) and discrimination derive from one’s position within specific institutions

a.      They create racial hierarchies that serve to preserve racial distinctions, inequalities, and outcomes.

6.      Racism is systematic

a.      Not isolated to individual actions;

b.      We are all biased, we all may harbor prejudicial attitudes and even discriminate on the basis of race.

c.      They lack the institutional power to impact groups.

d.      Consider the murder of Tyre Nichols, a 29 year old black man in Memphis, at the hands of 5 black police officers.

                                                                                                                i.      These officers were acting as agents of an institution (the Police department)

                                              ii.      They used their powr to selectively target and victimize a person because of his race

                                              iii.      Therefore, it was not an individual biased act, but a act of racism.

e.      Racism in U.S. primarily targets persons of color

                                                                                                                i.      Native Americans, Black, Asians, Hispanics,

                                                                                                                ii.      It also targets religious groups such as Muslims and Jews -thus racializing them

                                                                                                                iii.      Across geography and history, we can see the impact of racism

1.      Islamic Arabs against Black Christians in the Sudan

2.      East Indians against Black in Guyana

3.      Spaniard descents in Brazil and Paraguay that target those of African and Indian Descent

4.      The Jews and Romani in Germany by White Aryans

5.      The Japanese against the Eta or Burakumin in Japan

6.      By whites against Africans, Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in Great Britian.

7.      Formal and Informal Racism

a.      Formal or overt racism occurs when organizations, institutions or society’s official rules, codes or laws sanction discriminatory practices and behaviors

                                                                                                               i.      These are obvious forms of discrimination such as slavery, segregation,

                                                                                                                ii.      Native Americans striped of land rights and forced onto reservations

                                                                                                               iii.      We currently debating on whether practices such as our immigration policy targeting certain groups, display of confederate flag, or the use of American Indian sports mascots are racist in intent or impact

8.      Informal or covert racism -subtle in its application often ignored or misdiagnosed

a.      Student learning outcomes we might talk about poor motivation, inadequate schools, or broken homes

                                                                                                             i.      But we fail to link this to inadequate funding, inadequate teaching and materials, and lack of access to such things as the internet, computers, etc. 

9.      Implicit Bias -unconscious attitudes and stereotypes affecting how we perceive others and their actions. Pg. 32

10.  Bias, prejudice and discrimination are not innate but learned

a.      Implicit bias or association tests help reveal how implicit bias is a function of both individual and certain situations that encourage discrimination more than others

b.      Understanding the situation context of actions -we often rely upon our stereotypes, the paths of least resistance, patterns and processes established within various institutions.

c.      Therefore rather than changing attitudes we must change the rules of the game

d.      This will effect changes in access and success in school, work, or any other organization.

III)                The Debate regarding white privilege (pg. 32)

a.      But when we use binary structures -oppressed and oppressor, privileged and marginalized we conflate, obscure and distort systems, groups and realities

b.      White privilege assumes that all whites -equally and collectively benefit not only as individuals but as groups

                       i.      All whites fall into one category

c.      We also assume that all whites are elites and enjoy privileges for much of U.S. history

d.      Assume that poor whites or poor white women have equally enjoyed such privileges is absurd

e.      To assume that so called white privilege is a constant across the entire group across time and U.s experiences conflates and obscures the historical reality.

f.        To do so ignores that Irish -the first group of forced labor equivalent to being enslaved people

                        i.      Certainly, did not enjoy privilege at this time

                        ii.      Similarly, a whole range of white ethnicities to include European Catholics, Jews, Hispanics and Muslims have been racialized, targeted, and victimized

                        iii.      White privilege ignores the reality that all groups might in specific situations enjoy privileges under the presumptions associated with other statuses such as gender and sex, class and geography, ethnicity and religion.

                        iv.      Consequently when looking at the racial achievement gap -it is associated with blacks concentrated and segregated in poor areas..and that high income students, regardless of race, are more privileged than poor students regardless of race.

g.       Color blindness asserts that some people no longer see race, and that if others were to do the same then the issues of race would become relics of the past.

    i.      Suggesting that racial equality can be achieved if we just stop using, identifying and looking at race.

  ii.      Pretending that race does not exist is not the same thing as creating equality

  iii.      Microaggressions a subtle, often covert form of discrimination that is often hidden or subtle and serves to marginalize racialized individuals or groups.

 iv.      Micro aggressions are verbal and nonverbal behaviors that inult persons or groups that can both intentional or unintentional

h.      4 components of color-blindness

   i.      Abstract liberalism -abstract concepts of equal opportunity, rationality, free choice, and individualism used to argue that discrimination is no longer a problem..any individual that works hard can succeed.

  ii.      Naturalization -ongoing inequality a result of natural processes, rather than social relations

1.      People choose to live near those of their race, they choose to segregate...

   iii.      Cultural racism -inherent cultural differences that serve to separate racialized groups

      iv.      Minimization of racism -we now have a fairly level playing field, everyone has equal opportunities to succeed,.. therefore racism is no loner a real problem.

i.        Consequently -color blindness actually reinforces and reproduces the subtle and often institutional racial inequalities that shapes our lives.

     

IV)                 The Social Matrix of race

a.      Diversity is a process, inclusion is an action

b.      It is not about naming and shaming

c.      It is about understanding the structures that preserve racial hierarchies that differentially reward based on race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.

d.      The matrix captures the basic sociological understanding that social, cultural, economic, historical situations, contexts intersect with various identities within specific social institutions .   (see matrix diagram in announcements)

V)                  Race is inherently social

a.      Has no biological basis, it varies both cross culturally and historically.

b.      You are not born African, European or Asian -these identities you learn, we create racies

                      i.      Understanding the specifics of this, when and where and under what circumstances we invented race we can understand why it is a social construction.

c.      Race is a Narrative

                  i.      Diversity is multileveled, multidimensional, and multidirectional

                    ii.      Stock stories -the stories told by the dominant group

1.      Inform and organize the practices of social institutions encoded in law, public policy, public space, history and culture

2.      It frames this history from the vantage point of Whites

                iii.      Concealed stories -consist of data and voices that are often ignored in stock stories

1.      Conveys a different understanding of identity and inequality

2.      It tells the history from the vantage point of those often marginalized or ignored in stock stories

                          iv.      Resistance stories -narratives that directly challenge stock stories

1.      Speak of defying domination and actively struggling for racial justice and social change

                     v.      Transforming stories -that guide our actions as we work toward a more just society

1.      Tries to examine what kinds of changes can be made, have been made to change our societies

VI)                Racial Identity is Relational and Intersectional -race, gender, sexuality, class, and ability are connected, intersect and shape each other..they are relational and intersectional

a.      Relational aspects of race demonstrate the fact that categories of race are often defined in opposition to each other -white means one is not Black, Asian, or Native American) and they define where we fall on the continuum of the racial hierarchy

                         i.      Our first knowledge of race comes from our relationships within our immediate families

                         ii.      We develop a sense of our racialized self ..we discover how we relate to others, and we ascribe racial identity to as we self-identify.

                          iii.      People typically expect even multiracial people to choose one identity -such as Barack Obama or Kamala Harris…

b.      Intersectional theories -race, gender, and other social identities are intertwined and inseparable. They cannot be comprehended independently.

                  i.      Intersectionality theories can be traced to Maria Steward, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells and Anna Julia Cooper who demonstrated how the women’s suffrage movement and the feminist movement were typically divided along race lines

1.      Often the leadership activities of Black, White, Asian, Native American, Hispanic women have been concealed -ignored.

a.      These constitute resistance and concealed stories as they fought to transform the system and resist oppression.

                  ii.      When various forms of oppression intersect and interact within different social locations it forms another form of interaction.

1.      Different situations or contexts interact differently with different intersectional identities.

VII)              Race is Institutional an dStructural

a.      Operates alongside and in tandem with our dominant institutions.

                      i.      How do various institutions produce different racial outcomes

1.      Consider differential dropout and expulsion rates based on race, gender and income

2.      Consider differential arrest and conviction rates based on race, gender and income

VIII)            Racial boundaries -family/non family, us/them, citizen/foreigner are social constructed and often contentious social spaces that identify others

a.      Once established we often forget that these boundaries and identities they define are social constructions

b.      We ignore that they are not fixed or unmoving

c.      Wthe reality is that our identities are constantly in flux hence the constant conflict associated with maintaining the boundaries.

               i.      Racial classifications are a form of boundary.

IX)                Racial Classifications are constructed and assumed to be

a.      Exclusive, discrete classification

b.      Involve visible physical differences that reflect inherent internal designations such as intelligence, disposition, and morals.

c.      They are presumed to be inherited.

d.      They are unchanging, determined by nator and/or god

e.      They are valued differently and ranked hierarchically (in terms of superiority, beauty, degree of civilization, capacity for moral reasoning, and intelligence, etc.).

X)                  Racial Framing

a.      Characterized by racial hierarchies

                          i.      Racial frames constructed to ideologically justify processes, procedures and institutions that define and structure society

                     ii.      Consist of the following

1.      Racial stereotypes

2.      Racial narratives and interpretations (integrating cognitive aspects)

3.      Racial images (a visual aspect) and language accents (an auditory aspect)

4.      Racialized emotions (a feelings aspect)

5.      Inclinations to discriminatory action.

                                iii. When the same racial frames are presented across generations, we assume they must be true and natural.

b.      But to eliminate them, we must do more than attack racial attitudes and behaviors associated with bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination

                        i.      we must attack the structural components with institutions

1.      this requires structural transformations

XI)                We are Active Agents in the matrix

a.      We must recognize our role in reconstructing the racial matrix

b.      This involves us understanding our agency

                           i.      The ability of individuals to effect change, make choices, and act independently

                                ii.      Recognizing that some individuals may have more agency than others depending upon their economic, social, and political status.

                     iii. Formal agency stems from a position that grants individuals increased access to resources and a broader spectrum of choices.

1. The principal purpose and outcome of discrimination, prejudice, and exploitation are to reduce the options of some individuals or groups to maximize their choices ..based on race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, etc.

2.      Individuals and groups can creatively challenge these outcomes through their use of informal agency

a.      Rule norm-breaking, failure to comply, sabotage, or other forms of protests.

                                                                                                                   i.      During slavery -slaves who escaped broke tools or sabotaged

                                      ii.      Immigrants that disregard national borders

                                          iii.      LGBTQ2+ individuals that used outing as a means of highlighting the discrimination and problems faced by their members

                                                                                                                  iv.      Activists locked in prisons that utilized hunger strikes to get attention to their problems.

b. As individuals, we can effect change in multiple places, from places of worship to our schools and homes.

                                    iv. Social Movements a form of collective action, either informal or formal, within organizations.  

1.      Aims to alter specific structures, institutions, practices, behaviors or society as a whole

a.      Uses various tactics -from simply holding a candlelight vigil to more coordinated activities with specific demands and forcing specific responses from authorities

                                                                                                                     i.      Contemporary social movements: #BlackLivesMatter, #Metoo, #timesUp, #DACA, #MuslimBan09 increasingly popular with advent of social media.

1. Fostered activism associated with labor, civil rights, peace, counterculture, and Racial Hierarchies.

2.       

XII)              What is your story -what is the action continuum

a.      It involves knowing how our actions either reinforce or help challenge racial (and other identity) structures.

                              i.      Actively participating -telling derogatory jokes, putting down targeted groups, intentionally avoiding targeted group members, discriminating (verbally or physically) harassing targeted group members

                            ii.      Denying enabling discrimination or injustice by denying that it exists or ignoring it

                             iii.      Recognizing but taking no action. Education self and acting.

                    iv.      Educating others.

                          v.      Supporting and encouraging ..by speaking out against injustice, becoming and forming allyships, joining coalitions to make change a reality.

                          vi.      Initiating and preventing -working to change individual and institutional actions and policies that discriminate against targeted group members, planning educational programs and events, working to pass legislation protecting excluded groups from discrimination, making sure that all have seats the table.