(MSW 516) Module 6 Case Study – Podcast Assignment 1

Critical Race Theories

 The critical race theory (CRT) is an academic discipline focused upon the application of critical

theory- a critical examination of society and culture- to the study of race, racism, and power.

 Early proponents in the 1970’s: Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman

 What makes critical race theory “critical” is that its major aim is to uncover and critique racially

oppressive social structures, meanings, and ideas for the purposes of combating racism.

Key Claims

 Racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society.

 Individual or personal racism need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the

dominate culture. We need to look at the material foundations.

- Derived from Marx’s material determinism: all culture and social movements and ideas are

brought about by changes in economic and other material conditions.

 Power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the

marginalization of people of color.

 White privilege refers to the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come

with being a member of the dominate race.

- Such as a clerk not following you around in a store or not having people cross the street at

night to avoid you.

 Those with privilege and power paint a false picture of meritocracy; i.e. everyone who works

hard can attain wealth, power, and privilege while ignoring the systemic inequalities that

institutional racism provides. (this is a false ideology)

 Commitment to social justice and active role scholars take in working toward “eliminating racial

oppression as a broad goal of ending all forms of oppression”.

 Intersectionality within CRT points to the multidimensionality of oppressions and recognizes that

race alone cannot account for disempowerment.

- “Intersectionality means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual

orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings.” (Kimberle Crenshaw)

 The matrix of domination or matrix of oppression (Patricia Hill Collins) is a sociological paradigm

that explains issues of oppression that deal with race, class, and gender, which, thought

recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected.

 “interest convergence” theory (Derrick Bell): white people (the privileged) will support racial

justice only to the extent that there is something in it for them. That is, only to the extent that

there is “convergence” between the interests of white people and racial justice

W.E.B. DuBois

 DuBois’s scientific and scholarly work were organically intertwined with his life and revolutionary

activity.

 His scientific achievements laid the materialist foundation for the study of race and racial

oppression.

- He established that racism and colonialism were central organizing mechanisms of the

modern world.

- Racism and colonialism stood along side and were in dialectical relationship to the system of

capitalist exploitation.

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- The world could not be understood or changed without grasping this central dynamic.

Materialist conception of race

“What I needed was to add to my terribly conscientious search into the facts of the slave-trade the clear

concept of Marx on the class struggle for income and power, beneath which all considerations of right or

morals were twisted or utterly crushed”

 Morality and ethics, rather than being issues of pure reflection, were matters decided in life and

through practice.

 Racial oppression must be understood as part and parcel of the world system of economic

relations and thus its elimination would have world historic meaning.

 In this regard he sought to do for the issues of race, racial oppression, and racial exploitation

what Marx had achieved for class exploitation.

 He would apply the principles of the social sciences “to the social and economic rise of the

Negro people”

 For two years DuBois him and wife Nina Gomer DuBois lived in the 7th Ward in the heart of the

Black ghetto at the corner of 7th and Lombard where he worked on what became the

Philadelphia Negro.

 DuBois wrote a book that initiated the field of urban sociology and advanced empirical sociology

itself

 What the Philadelphia Negro (1899) achieved, in spite of an overdose of stern Victorian

moralizing and preaching to poor African Americans to conduct themselves in acceptable ways

(what today is called “respectability politics”), was to empirically verify the social and class

origins of poverty and inequality.

 He substantially demonstrated that the Black ghetto was a creation of poverty and racism, rather

than the so-called innate inferiority and supposed criminal tendencies of African Americans.

The Color Line

Souls of Black Folk (1903)

 The color line is established when Europeans problematizes the existence, meaning, color,

worth, and status of the peoples of color.

 “color” and “color-line” are synonyms for race. With the construction of the concept of race

“color” became synonymous with inferiority”

 The problem of the color line or the race question

- “the question of the relation of the advanced races” of men who happened to be white to

the great majority of the undeveloped or half-developed nations of mankind who happen to

be yellow, brown or black…”

 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision (March 6, 1857) which justified slavery on the grounds that

people of African descent “had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an

inferior order” who are “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound

to respect”

 DuBois argued that this relationship is essentially one of domination, exploitation, and “narrow

opportunity” for development for people of color.

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 “the secret of social progress is wide and thorough understanding of the social forces which

move and modify your age.”

 He seems race as a bio-social category and construction and the racist thought and practice

which it produces are among those social forces which will “move and modify (our) age”

 DuBois viewed the goal of African Americans not as one of integration or absorption into white

America, but one of advancing “Pan-Negroism.”

 Critical of the excessive materialism of white America, he believed that black culture could

temper the self-interested pursuit of profit.

 He called on blacks to organize and unite around their race.

The Veil

 The veil is a visual and symbolic wall of separation that emphasize racial boundaries (social and

psychological) and black “invisibility”

 The veil has three components:

- The literal darker skin of Blacks is a physical demarcation of difference from whiteness.

- It is a barrier that prevents white people from seeing Blacks as “true” Americans.

- It is a barrier preventing Blacks’ from seeing themselves outside of what white America

describes for them.

 The veil prevents black people from beings seen as they are by whites and white dominated

society since they cannot be seen clearly through the lens of race prejudice.

 DuBois hoped his work would allow whites to glimpse behind the Veil, so they could begin to

understand the black experiences in America.

Double Consciousness

 Double consciousness describes the sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into

parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity.

 The self divided in two by an awareness of being black and looking at oneself as a thing or object

of white scrutiny.

 It forces blacks to not only view themselves from their own unique perspective, but to also

always be aware of how they might be perceived by the outside (read: white) world

 According to DuBois, the tension of being both black and American can manifest itself in

pathologies within the black community and discrimination in white America.

 By recovering your pride and hence the alienated self-consciousness of blacks from being

defined by the Other (the oppressive white man with his system of racial apartheid), a true

emancipation would be the result

 From “The Soul’s of White Folk”

- A system of racial or ethnic inequality cannot be understood without analyzing the ideology

and behavior of the oppressing group.

- We must study the formation of the white race (today see whiteness studies)

- And study the ideology of white supremacy

- This approach links social construction of identity with the analyses of power and structural

inequality.

- This formed the foundation of Critical Race Theory

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Racial Formation

Omi and Winant

 “Today, to assert that variations in human physiognomy are racially based is to enter a constant

and intense debate”

 “The process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and

importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings.”

 Race is the product of a process; it is socially constructed.

 Race must be regarded as the “central axis” of social relations: the most important category of

identity in the U.S.

 Race is fluid, where “the racial order is organized and enforced by the continuity and reciprocity

between micro-level and macro-level of social relations”

 Micro-level social relations refer

- The ways in which we understand ourselves and interact with others

- The structuring of our practical activity in work and family; as citizens and as thinkers

 Macro-level social relations refer to the social structures and common ideologies of a society.

- Relevant social structures include collective organizations like businesses, the media and the

government

- Common ideologies include cultural and stereotypical beliefs on race, class, sexuality and

gender.

A History of Racial Formation

 1600s: “Christian” vs. “savage.”

 The important distinction was religious belief.

Racialization:

 “the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship”

 At mid-century, the distinctions shifted to “English” and “free” or not

 After about 1680, a new term appeared: “white”

 By 1700, African slaves formerly identified by tribe (Bantu, Wolof, Fulani, Igbo, Dan etc.) came to

be known generally as “black”

“slave and black become synonyms”

 After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the presumption was that people with black skins were

slaves unless they could prove they were free

 Work performed, social status, economic potential came to be defined in terms of color.

 By the nineteenth century, white workers tried to distance themselves from black slaves.

 They rejected the terms “master” (once referring to a master craftsman) and “servant”

(household help)

 In 1807, a New England maid protested, “none by negers are sarvents”

White ethnics not racialized

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 By stopping short of racializing immigrants from Europe after the Civil War, and by subsequently

allowing their assimilation, the American racial order was reconsolidated in the wake of the

tremendous challenge placed before it by the abolition of slavery”

Postcolonialism

Colonialism

 The historical process whereby the “West” attempts systematically to cancel or negate the

cultural difference and value of the “non-West”

 Colonial critique  deals with imperialistic views

 Post-colonial criticism  examines the effects of imperialistic views in postcolonial societies

 Postcolonial criticism  set of theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture,

literature, politics, history, of former colonies

- It embraces no single method or school

- Questions the effects of empire

- Raises issues such as racism and exploitation

- Assesses the position of the colonial or post-colonial subject

- Offers a counter-narrative to the long tradition of European imperial

Frantz Fanon

 Frantz Fanon (20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961) was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique,

which was then a French colony and is now a French department.

The construction of blackness

 The racists and colonizing project of white European culture requires a totalizing, hierarchical

worldview that needs to set up the black human being as “negro” so it has an “other” against

which to define itself.

 Fanon analyzes language as that which carries and reveals racism in culture.

 The symbolism of whiteness and blackness in the French language – the English – forms

linguistic habits

 One cannot learn and speak this language without subconsciously accepting the cultural

meanings embedded in equations of purity with whiteness and malevolence with blackness: to

be white is to be good, and to be black is to be bad.

“Negrification”

 “Act of making black”

 Negrification promotes negative attitudes toward other blacks and Africa

 It normalizes attitudes of desire and debasement toward Europe, white people, and white

cultural in general

 It presents itself as such an all-encompassing way of being in the world that no other alternative

appears to be possible

The Fact of Blackness

 “Blackness” is not self-created identity, but one that is thrust upon individuals who are

categorized as black people.

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 Because – at its basic level – “blackness” is determined by the outer appearance of the

individual, it is a social “uniform” which functions as a means to set apart and ultimately alienate

the black man

 The black person is reduced to his appearance, as his skin color and racial features become

fetishized (to fetishize is to reduce social relations to things)

- “I am overdetermined from the outside, I am a slave” to “my appearance”

- He is “fixed,” or objectified as “a new type of man, a new species”

 He characterized this phenomenon as the fact of blackness

 That is, the black man is not given the chance to self-construct an image or idea of himself, but is

subject to images and ideas of him that are predestined as a result of his social uniform or his

blackness

 There is a contradiction between the capacity to create and determine oneself, and the

conditions in which one exists, which determine us

Overcoming alienation of the self

 To overcome this alienation the black human being must learn to see themselves not just as

envisioned and valued (that is, devalued) by the white dominate culture by simultaneously

through a perspective constructed both in opposition to and independently from the

racist/racialized mainstream

 A parallel perspective in which a black man or woman’s value judgements – of oneself and of

others of one’s race – do not have to be filtered through whine norms and values

 It is only through development of this latter perspective that the black man or woman can shake

off the psychological colonization

William Julius Wilson

The “Underclass” and Structural Racism

 The urban poor are an “underclass”

 They not only suffer from lower socioeconomic status, minimal education, and lack

opportunities, but they are further victimized by a lack of community safeguard and resources –

the absence of social supports

 Wilson argues that the problem of the underclass in America is not one of culture but one of

isolation from community and necessary resources:

- “they key theoretical concept, therefore, is not culture of poverty but social isolation”

Racial Social Systems

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Limitations of mainstream idealist views

 Racism is excluded from the foundation or structure of the social system

 Racism is treated as a static phenomenon

 Analysts defining racism in an idealist manner view racism as “incorrect” or “irrational thinking”;

thus they label “racists” as irrational and rigid

 Racism is understood as overt behavior

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 Contemporary racism is viewed as an expression of “original sin” as a remnant of past historical

racial situations

Limitations of Mainstream Idealist Views

 Racism is excluded from the foundation or structure of the social system

 Racism is treated as a static phenomenon

 Analysts defining racism is an idealist manner view racism as “incorrect” or “irrational thinking”;

thus they label “racists” as irrational and rigid

 Racism is understood as overt behavior

 Contemporary racism is viewed as an expression of “original sin” as a remnant of past historical

racial situations.

 Racism is analyzed in a circular manner (racist beliefs produce racist behavior which in turn help

socialize on into racist beliefs)

Racialized social systems an alternate framework

 This term refers to societies in which economic, political, social, and ideological levels are

partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races.

- Racialization forms a real structure

- Racialized groups are hierarchically ordered

- “social relations” and “practices” emerge that fir the position of their groups in racial regime

 The race placed in the superior position tends to receive:

- Greater economic remuneration and access to better occupations and/or prospects in the

labor market

- Occupies a primary position in the political system

- Is granted higher social estimation (viewed as smarter or better looking)

- Often has the license to draw physical (segregation) as well as social (racial etiquette)

boundaries between itself and other races

- And receives what DuBios (1939) calls a “psychological wage” for white laborers/working

people; a special status that divided the labor movement by leading low-wage white workers

to feel superior to low-wage black workers

Whites form a social collectivity

 A social collectivity is a group of people who think of themselves as belonging to an identifiable

social unite (such as a political party).

- The difference between a group and a collectivity is that a collectivity does not have a

regular pattern of interaction among members

 Whites form a social collectivity bonded by the fact that they receive benefits from the way the

racial regime is organized

Racial Ideology

 Racial ideology is also material and consequential

 Ideology, racial or otherwise, is intrinsically connected to domination

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 Europeans could have not conquered, enslaved, and exploited people based on the claim that

some people are different (better) than others

 They needed an ideology to convince them that the people they were subordinating were

inferior, lesser beings and that Europeans were the “chosen people”

 Racialized societies could not survive without ideology as it fulfills five vital social functions

- Accounting for the existence of racial inequality

- Providing basic rules on engagement in interracial interactions

- Furnishing the basis for actors’ racial subjectivity

- Shaping and influencing the views of dominated actors by claiming universality; hiding the

fact of racial domination

Racial grammar

 Ideologies of racism domination generate a grammar that helps reproduce the “racial order” as

just the way things are

 This racial grammar provides the “deep structure” or the “logic” and “rules” for proper

composition of racial statements (what we can say about race)

 It shapes in significant ways how we see or do not see, how we frame, and even what we feel

about race-relations

 It is learned through interaction and is possible to change

 Example movies and tv

- Most are white yet they read as universal, nonracial cultural artifacts

- In contrast, when television shows or motives have a most minority cast, they are framed

black or Latino oriented products

Structural Racism

 Institutional racism is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political

institutions.

 Institutions can behave in ways that are overtly racist (i.e., specifically excluding Blacks from

services) or inherently racist (i.e., adopting policies that result in the exclusion of Blacks).

 So that is built into a racialized social system

 All complex societies establish institutional arrangements that help to create and distribute the

society’s benefits, burdens and interests.

 Structural racism shifts attention from the single, intra-institutional setting to inter-institutional

arrangements and interactions

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