Race Policy, Race
Dynamics and Change
Complete 4 Myths from Feagin
The Army-Navy Game
Myrdal Dynamics and Change
War and Change.
(3/17)
(Review) Feagin, Racist
America
Feagin’sBasic idea is that racism is not a
psychological characteristic of individuals, but a
social structural dynamic of the social system
his thought experiment, “Starship Earth” argued that
disproportions of income, power, housing, etc. are
always wasteful and divisive if they are too large,
But he further argues that this set of problems is
much more serious if the disproportions are tied to an
ascriptive trait, such as race.
Those kinds of inequalities are particularly divisive.
A sketch of the number of deaths
in mass race violence in the US
10,00
0
1,000
100
10
1
1850
Why?
‘60
‘70
‘80
‘90
1900
‘10
‘20
‘30
40
50
‘60
‘70
‘80
‘90
The 4 Myths
1.
2.
3.
4.
Racist America (2001) criticizes 4 myths:
American is a non-racist society
There is a vanishing residue of prejudice .
Affirmative action goes too far and privileges
minorities.
Nothing can be done. Change must be slow.
The pattern of change in
attitudes in the US
Interpretation
Attitudes sometimes change quite quickly.
There has been a sharp decline of views such as
“There should be laws against intermarriage,”
(though 10% to 20% of the white pop. still agrees
with such items.)
But most of the change was completed by 1968, and
there has also been a decline in support for reducing
existing inequalities.
They seem to have responded to policy rather than
driven policy.
For example the Civil Rights movement and the
urban rebellions of the 1960’s seems to have driven a
good deal of change, which stopped when that did.
The dynamic of race
today
Table 21.4 (*p.406) details “four centuries of
legal progress and setbacks.”
different people conceive of that dynamic in
different ways.
The above pattern of urban race violence
suggests that every period of war in US
history has been a period of race violence,
And every period of mass race violence has
been a period of war.
Why
Possible explanations
1.
2.
3.
4.
Impossibility of maintaining coercion (like
removing the top of pressure cooker)
Relative deprivation
Legitimation of violence
American values become an issue if people
are being asked to die for them.
But for some purposes it does not matter
what the explanation is. Race relations is a
powder keg which is often ignited.
What is the dynamic of
race relations in Myrdal
Myrdal’s argument was that racism and
racial inequality reinforce each other.
+
Racism
Racial
Inequality
+
+
Violation of the
American Creed
-
• This is sometimes wrongly interpreted to mean
that “racism” is the individual sentiment that
produces discriminatory behavior.
The relation between
prejudice and racial
inequality
The text correctly stresses that it is
complex
Feagin criticizes Myrdal as proposing a
model :
Prejudice
Discrimination
Racism
Feagin, as the theorist of institutionalized
discrimination, argues that the relations
go: Racism Discrimination Prejudice
Where do race inequality
and racism come from?
Feagin believes that a model that suggests
that bad ideas drop out of the sky is defective.
It is the social structure and dynamics of
inequality and segregation that are important.
And a model that says that the value system
is anti-racist is problematical.
It takes struggle to make it anti-racist
#3 Myth that affirmative
action goes too far.
Feagin argues that the playing field still
privileges white males.
It was partly leveled by affirmative action.
But in housing, employment, schooling and
other areas, the reality is still one of a nonlevel playing field that privileges white males.
He suggests that white males usually
overlook immense structures of privilege
(such as feeder schools and legacy
admissions in education) to attack any
counterbalancing policies.
Institutional
discrimination and
systemic racism
Feagin suggests that over American history,
racism, as a pervasive institutional system
maintains itself as a structure of inequality and
privilege.
Racism is not a matter of prejudice.
It is often maintained by relatively little
individually prejudiced action .
The role of prejudice and stereotypes is often
to resist policies to reduce race inequality or
inequality of opportunity.
Individual, Institutional and
Cultural racism in SMMM
Individual racism is individual prejudice or
discrimination
Institutional racism are institutionalized
structures that disadvantage a group, and
which are often maintained for reasons
having little to do with prejudice.
Cultural racism is an institutionalized belief
in the superiority of European culture.
Institutional racism
An individual may practice and support
discriminatory policies for non-prejudiced
motives.
E.g. a Southern landowner wants to pay his
tenants as little as possible.
Or a feeder school or a legacies admission
may be discriminatory in effect, but supported
for non-racial reasons.
Feagin argues that what makes policies
“racist” or “anti-racist” is their consequences,
not their motivation.
How much racial
inequality is there?
Feagin Racism directly or indirectly costs the
average black American about 10% of their
life span; 40% of their income; and 90% of
their wealth.
Sociology, Micro, Macro and Mega: 1990
White
Black
Hispanic
% 4 yrs col. 22%
11%
9%
% in poverty 11%
32%
28%
Median inc. $36,915 $21,423
$23,431
Is there race inequality
of opportunity
Is the playing field level.
Some people believe it is more than level.
The text (e.g. p. 440 “Top dog or Underdog”)
suggests this is mistaken.
Feagin argues that discriminatory treatment
and stereotyping is pervasive in the US today,
As measured by thousands of matched pair
applications for housing, employment, etc.
#4 The Myth that
nothing can be done
There are not only huge shifts in attitudes,
But also large differences and relatively rapid
changes in different institutions.
The army went from largely vertically
segregated to the most integrated large
institution in the US in decades.
The process was similar to that pictured in
Remember the Titans
The problem in the army
and other armed forces:
The problem was that vertical segregation
was divisive, dysfunctional and unjust.
Incoming candidates differed in test scores,
so that if those scores to determined
placement vertical segregation was assured.
Are the test score differences innate or due to
differences in schools, etc.?
The army argued that there was evidence of
the latter, and if so it is unjust as well as
inefficient to accommodate to it.
Nature of army programs
A set of four main compensatory programs.
None insures one a position, only a chance.
They are not aimed to replace the
educational system, but to remedy the
cumulative racial inequality.
The army and the navy,
again.
Feagin does not believe that the army is any
more “utopian” than the navy.
Nor were the average sentiments of either
most people or most officers different.
The main difference was a commitment by
the leadership to a sufficient set of policies
directed at both inequality and prejudice.
Are race relations and
race inequality stable or
unstable?
Call a structure “stable” if it changes a little if a small
force is placed on it, and it changes a lot of a large
force is applied.

Structures without feedbacks are often stable.
Call a structure “unstable” if it changes a lot even
when only a small force is applied.

Positive feedback structures are often unstable
Call a structure “hyper-stable” if, even after it has
been changed, it tends to change back.

Negative feedback structures are often hyper-stable.
The three
marbles, again
stable
unstable
Hyper-stable
Myrdal believed that race
relations were unstable.
They have lots of positive feedbacks.



A decrease in prejudice should create an avalanche of
further changes unraveling the racist structure.
Just as an increase in racial inequality should create an
avalanche of further changes increasing racism.
(Note that both happened in the 1970’s)
Changes in the South were undermining some
aspects of Jim Crow.
Changes in the country were making Southern
regionalism less viable.
Changes in the world were making US failure to live
up to its ideals less viable.
Implications of his analysis
of racial inequality as
positive feedbacks
The structure looks inert because and
only because it is so pervasive.
But policy interventions can be very
powerful because change is amplified.
However they must be broad spectrum
(I.e. health, education, political power,
income, wealth, social participation, etc.