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Race is a symbolic category based on
phenotype. It is constructed according to
specific social and historical contexts that is
misrecognized as a “natural” category.
 Phenotype refers to a person’s physical
appearances.

Race does not exist on the genetic level, but
rather on the social and political levels.

Race is a symbolic category also based on a
person’s ancestry (lineage, regional, or national
affiliations).
 Ethnicity refers to a shared lifestyle informed by
cultural, historical, religious and/or national
affiliations.
▪ Race and ethnicity tend to be decoupled for white Americans
but tightly bound for nonwhite Americans.
 Nationality is equated with citizenship – membership
in a specific delineated territory controlled by a formal
power.
▪ Citizenship is accompanied by many social privileges.
 All three categories can be neither separated nor
collapsed into one.

Racial social inequality can be functional
for some groups, and create strong social
bonds

Racial and ethnic inequality also
aggravates social problems and is
dysfunctional for society as a whole

Economic competition creates and
maintains racial and ethnic group tensions
(Minorities have far less power and
resources).

Minorities who are disproportionately
underprivileged and unemployed serve
the interests of those in power (usually by
keeping wages low).
Meanings and definitions contribute to the
subordinate status of racial and ethnic
groups.
 Negative terms associated with "black"
(black knight is evil, white knight is good).
 Negative stereotypes of racial and ethnic
groups lead to self fulfilling prophecy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSFqn
UFOns

Stereotypes: Exaggerations or generalizations
about the characteristics and behavior of a
particular group.

Negative stereotyping of minorities leads to a
self-fulfilling prophecy—a process in which a
false definition of a situation leads to behavior
that, in turn, makes the originally falsely defined
situation come true.

Some people argue that race is something that
no longer matters.
 Notion of a “color-blind society”

The consistency (and perhaps rise) of many
forms of racial injustices are undeniable:

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Hate crimes
Employment inequalities
Poverty
Incarceration disparities
Media representation

Stereotypes are often believed to be facts.
 Social differences between people become naturalized;
social inequalities become natural inequalities 
biological determinism and naturalization.
▪ This allows us to leave institutional and cultural processes
unexamined as issues and problems are rooted in the race itself.

Racism: the belief that one category of people is
superior to another in some way

Racism continually shape-shifts.
 Contemporary racism is not always obvious; it is so familiar
than it is often unnoticeable.
 History always structures the present.

Native American / Alaska Native

Asian and Pacific Islander

African Americans

Hispanic / Latino

Caucasian

Why should we have only five main racial
groups – why not 50?

Why not base divisions based on foot size, or
height, or whether we live in the northern or
southern hemisphere?

Genocide- the annihilation of an entire group of people (including, but
not limited to racial groups)

Colonialism- A racial or ethnic group from one society dominates the racial
or ethnic group(s) of another society.

Acculturation- Refers to adopting the culture of a group different from
the one in which a person was originally raised (can include language,
behaviors, and names)

Assimilation- The process by which formerly separate groups
merge and become integrated as one. (primary vs. secondary)

Pluralism-Refers to a state in which racial and ethnic groups
maintain their distinctness but respect each other and have equal
access to social resources.

While nonwhites have certainly achieved greater
equality than in the past, overt racism is still
common.
 Racism cannot and should not be defined only by
those actions and values of extreme groups and their
extreme acts.
▪ “To define racism only through extreme groups and their
extreme acts is akin to defining weather only through
hurricanes.”
 Racism can also be covert, existing in common,
unnoticeable and everyday forms.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqh6Ap9ldTs

Institutional racism is systemic white
domination of people of color that is
embedded and operating with our culture
and its social institutions

People do not often see institutional racism
as racism since it operates outside the scope
of individual intent.

Prejudice
 An attitude or judgment, usually negative, about
an entire category of people.

Discrimination
 Actions or practices that result in differential
treatment of categories of individuals.

Institutional discrimination
 Occurs when normal operations and procedures
of social institutions result in unequal treatment of
minorities.

There is no such thing as reverse (institutional)
racism – or nonwhite institutional racism –
because there is no centuries-old socially
ingrained and normalized system of domination
designed by people of color to deny whites full
participation in the rights, privileges, and access
to power in our society.

While racism can flow from dominated groups to
the dominant group, it does not pack the same
punch.

Symbolic violence refers to the process of
nonwhites unknowingly accepting and
supporting the terms of their own racial
domination (internalized oppression).
 The normalized racial “order of things” seems to
feel natural and legitimate.
 Everything we see, think, and do are done within
the modes of domination and are therefore
products of domination.

Racial domination does not exist inside a vacuum.

Sociologists use the term intersectionality to explain
the overlapping systems of advantages and
disadvantages that affect people differently positioned
in society.
 Different identity characteristics lead to different
experiences
 The matrix of domination

There is no monolithic experience; we must look
people’s lives in their full complexity.
 Moving away from racial essentialism

Whiteness often goes unnamed or unnoticed; white =
raceless
 White people have a hard time coming to terms with their
whiteness and become uncomfortable when having to
analyze it.

Whiteness: the dominant category of race with which
all other categories are compared or contrasted.

White privilege is the collection of unearned cultural,
political, economic, and social advantages and
privileges possessed by people of Anglo-European
descent or by those who pass as such.

Some white people are fully aware of how the current
system of racial domination benefits them and work to
uphold the system.

Some white people do not recognize their privilege
and unknowingly support a system of racial
domination.

Color-blindness refers to (typically well-intentioned)
behaviors and thought processes that aims to ignore
all racial markers: “I don’t see color at all.”
 Requires simultaneous recognition and non-recognition
 Denying race also denies any related privileges or
domination that exists.

We can use our sociological imagination, which is one’s
ability to understand everyday life not through personal
circumstances but through the broader historical forces
that structure and direct it.

Reflexivity: looking within ourselves to uncover taken-forgranted ways of thinking that influence of we understand
the social world.

Relationality: exploring the networks of relationships
within which individuals or groups are embedded to better
understand them

Reconstruction: taking our new-found knowledge and using
it to change the world in which we live

Affirmative Action: A broad range of
policies and practices in the workplace
and educational institutions to promote
equal opportunity as well as diversity.
 Federal Affirmative Action
 Affirmative Action in Higher
Education

Affirmative Action Pros:
 Produces benefits for women, minorities, and
the economy.
 Employers adopting affirmative action
increase number of women and minorities by
10 to 15%.
 Has increased percentage of blacks attending
college by a factor of three and percentage of
blacks in medical school by a factor of four.

Affirmative Action Cons:
 Some minorities argue that it
perpetuates feelings of inferiority.
 Fails to help the most impoverished of
minorities.
 Not needed because laws “should”
prohibit discrimination.