Assignment 1 Sociology

“Ethnic Options”: Symbolic and Situational Ethnicity

How do we display our racial and ethnic group membership? We may do so in a number of ways: through dress, language, food, and religious practices; through preferences in music, art, or literature; even through the projects we find interesting and the topics we pursue at school. Sometimes these practices make our group membership obvious to others; sometimes they don’t. White ethnics like Irish Americans and Italian Americans, for example, can actually choose when and how they display their ethnic group membership to others.

One way group membership is displayed is through symbolic ethnicity, enactments of ethnic identity that occur only on special occasions. For example, most Irish Americans have been so fully assimilated for multiple generations that their Irish ancestry may not matter much to them on a daily basis. But on St. Patrick’s Day (especially in cities like Boston and New York), displays of Irish identity can be pretty overwhelming! Parades, hats, “Kiss me, I’m Irish” buttons, green clothing, green beer (and in Chicago, a green river!), corned beef and cabbage—all are elements of symbolic ethnicity. Similar ethnic displays occur on such holidays as Passover, Cinco de Mayo, and Nouruz.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Racism can express itself through both prejudice and discrimination, and though the terms are often used interchangeably, there are important distinctions between them. Prejudice, literally a “prejudgment,” is an inflexible attitude (usually negative, although it can work in the reverse) about a particular group of people that is rooted in generalizations or stereotypes. Examples of prejudice include opinions like “All Asians are good at math” or “All Mexicans are lazy.” Prejudiced ideas don’t always flow from the dominant group toward minorities. For instance, it’s possible for members of a nondominant or minority group to hold negative stereotypes about the dominant group. It is also possible for minority group members to be prejudiced against themselves or their own group—what is sometimes referred to as “internalized racism” (Pyke 2010). Prejudiced ideas circulate through culture, making them hard to avoid, even for those who would wish not to have them. As we are socialized into the values and norms of society, we may unknowingly pick up some prejudice as well.

Prejudice often, but not always, leads to discrimination: an action or behavior that results in the unequal treatment of individuals because of their membership in a certain racial or ethnic group. A person might be said to suffer discrimination if they are turned down for a job promotion or a home loan because they’re black or Hispanic. It is possible, though unlikely, that a person can be prejudiced and still not discriminate against others—sociologist Robert Merton called people in this category “timid bigots” (Merton 1949). For example, a teacher can believe that Asian American students are better at math yet know they should not let this belief influence their behavior as they grade Asian American students’ work. Conversely, a person may not be prejudiced at all (or may not think they are prejudiced) but still unknowingly participate in discrimination by carrying out institutional policies, in schools or workplaces, that have discriminatory outcomes. An example would be promoting workers based on seniority, which almost always privileges dominant group members since minorities will usually be newer employees due to the history of discrimination in hiring.

Members of the dominant group, which is still whites in America, may thus enjoy certain benefits and advantages denied to minority group members without knowing that discrimination is the reason. Whites may believe in equality but still not act in such a way as to challenge the injustices perpetuated by our systems of stratification. This may be attributable to a phenomenon called implicit bias, meaning unrecognized or unconscious prejudices and stereotypes that shape our interactions with others. Studies have found, for example, that implicit bias affects how pediatricians treat pain management in children: White patients get more pain management help while black patients get less (Sabin and Greenwald 2012). School discipline is another example: Students of color are disciplined more often and more harshly than white students (Lhamon and Samuels 2014).

Racial discrimination can take different forms. Individual discrimination (sometimes referred to as individual or interpersonal racism) occurs when one person treats others unfairly because of their race or ethnicity. A racist teacher might discriminate against a Hispanic student by assigning them a lower grade than they deserve. Institutional discrimination (sometimes referred to as systemic discrimination or systemic or institutional racism), in contrast, is more systematic and widespread and occurs when institutions (such as government agencies, schools, or banks) practice discriminatory policies that affect whole groups.

A powerful example of institutional discrimination involves the city of Ferguson, Missouri. Protests broke out in 2014 after a police officer shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. Unrest over the issue escalated when a grand jury failed to charge the officer with murder. This led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (2015), which found that the Ferguson Police Department had been routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents. The DOJ issued a scathing report that documented widespread racial bias that pervaded practically every aspect of the local criminal justice process. In a city where blacks comprised 67 percent of the population, they accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 88 percent of cases involving use of force, and 93 percent of arrests.

But institutional racism is not limited to the criminal justice system. Other major social institutions in our society also have policies with discriminatory outcomes. Richard Rothstein (2017) studied a century of housing policy in the United States and found that the Federal Housing Authority systematically and explicitly enacted policies that excluded African Americans while benefiting whites. In his book The Color of Law, Rothstein shows how, in the 1930s, the federal agency refused to insure mortgages for black borrowers—in both black and white neighborhoods—severely restricting the ability of blacks to own homes at all, much less in desirable, middle-class (read “white”) subdivisions. Though it is now illegal, this policy, known as “redlining” (referring to the way African American neighborhoods were designated on federal maps), continues to this day and so does the segregation it produced. This is what systemic, institutional racism and discrimination looks like.

White Nationalism

Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Aryan Brotherhood, and Neo-Nazis espouse overtly racist and anti-Semitic ideas about white supremacy and racial separation. They believe that whites are innately superior to all other races and should thus hold power and control over all social institutions and resources. They want an all-white nation. Images of men in white robes and hoods burning crosses, lynch mobs, and skinheads with swastika tattoos are meant to strike terror and intimidate. While the KKK may be an extreme example, some of the ideas embraced by white supremacist groups are also part of the more populist alt-right movement. They share a common commitment to white nationalism, or the belief that the nation should be built around a white identity that is reflected in religion, politics, economics, and culture.

White nationalism has gained traction in recent years, becoming much more visible during the presidential campaign and election of Donald Trump. Trump’s anti-immigrant ideas (for example, his desire to limit the number of immigrants from Latin America) dovetail with white nationalist sentiment, and his administration has sought to bring those ideas into the political mainstream. Many of us watched in horror in August 2017 as white nationalists descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, for a Unite the Right rally that erupted in violence. However, writing in the aftermath of the violence, sociologist Joe Feagin urges us to remember that white supremacy and white nationalism are nothing new, but rather have been with us since our country’s founding. This history, he writes, is key to understanding why “racism today remains extensive, foundational, and systemic” (Feagin 2017, 2000). And while it may be tempting to write off white nationalism as deviant from American values and as the views of a fringe minority, research shows these same racist views are in fact held by many whites across the United States (Picca and Feagin 2007).

For much of American history, white dominance has been a reality. But with changing demographics, advances in civil rights, and greater emphasis on multiculturalism, some whites feel that the country no longer represents their identity or interests. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild spent years conducting interviews and focus groups and doing participant observation research for her study of Tea Party supporters in rural Louisiana. In her book Strangers in Their Own Land (2018), Hochschild explains how these blue-collar whites see themselves as “waiting in line” for the benefits of American life, and hence view immigrants and other nonwhite groups as “line-cutters”—people who don’t deserve those benefits and who are snatching them out from under those who do deserve them. Those who feel this kind of anxiety about the direction of social change may be attracted to white nationalist ideas.

Of course, many whites and nonwhites alike welcome the nation’s growing diversity and inclusivity. As the United States becomes an increasingly nonwhite nation, however, we are likely to see more pushback from the more extreme factions of the far right. The Southern Poverty Law Center (2019) charted a disturbing trend that worsened in 2018, fueled in part by the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant rhetoric and proposals to ban Muslims from entering the country. The number of hate groups in the United States rose to 1,020, up from 892 in 2015. The most dramatic growth was the near tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups from 35 in 2015 to 100 in 2018.

White Privilege and Color-Blind Racism

The concept of privilege is gaining greater currency while still garnering much debate. There are various mechanisms of privilege. In a stratified society, one may have privilege based on class, race, gender, sexuality, or other factors. The idea of the privileges of race dates back to early sociology and the work of W. E. B. DuBois (1903). More recently, Peggy McIntosh (1988) reintroduced the idea in a well-known article about “unpacking the invisible knapsack” of white privilege. In the past few decades, the idea has made its way into the various branches of academia and more widely into the national conversation.

“White privilege” is the idea that one group (whites) in a society enjoys certain unearned advantages not available to others (nonwhites) and that group members (whites) are largely unaware of the unequal benefits they possess. Privilege can include a wide range of advantages experienced in our large social institutions as well as in our small everyday interactions (Wise 2011, 2012). For example, whites can more easily assume that their interactions with authority figures (including but not limited to police officers, judges, bosses, and the like) will be with other whites, and this significantly reduces fear of unjust treatment or undeserved outcomes. On a much more microsociological level, whites are able to assume that they can find makeup, underclothes, and other products that match their skin color, whereas people with darker skin often struggle to find products that are truly “nude” when compared to their skin color. For example, for centuries, nonwhite ballerinas had to buy “white” pointe shoes (which were really a very, very light pink) and dye them themselves in order to match the color of their legs. Only in 2018 did brown pointe shoes become commercially available for dancers of color (Marshall 2018).

Because privilege is often invisible to the privileged, it can blind them to the challenges faced by members of nonprivileged groups. Whites may claim, for example, that race no longer matters and that we live in a “color-blind” society. After all, we elected a black president, so racism must be a thing of the past, right? The notion of color blindness sounds good (judging people by the “content of their character” rather than by the color of their skin), but it is also problematic because it implies that race should be both invisible and inconsequential. And that just isn’t true.

We don’t live in a “postracial” world, at least not yet. Race does matter, and racism does still exist. Racism today is neither as blatant as it once was—blacks and whites don’t use separate bathrooms or drinking fountains—nor is it only a black-and-white issue. But it has taken other more subtle forms, such as the high concentration of corner liquor stores in predominantly black urban areas (where bigger supermarkets will not go) or the high concentration of Latino immigrants in low-wage jobs (that native-born Americans will presumably not take). When we claim to not see race, we are actually just engaging in a new, more “civilized” form of racism that sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls “color-blind racism” (2003/2017). Color-blind racism is a set of beliefs, usually held by but not limited to whites, that we live in a society where racial prejudice and discrimination no longer exists, even though in reality it still does.

Color-blind racism is hard to combat, especially when so many people think it is a good thing to try to overlook race, to say that they don’t see it. But there is an alternative: race consciousness, or an awareness of the importance of race in our everyday lives and in our dealings with social institutions. A race-conscious approach recognizes that despite the civil rights gains of the last hundred years, race is still a powerful factor in shaping our everyday lives and the world we live in. If we are to have a truly egalitarian society, we must recognize the historical record of racism and the social conditions that perpetuate contemporary inequalities. Whites and others might find that their own racial privilege plays a part in the social structure of racial inequality.

Microaggressions

Racism is not always as obvious as a swastika or the “N-word.” Sometimes it’s much more subtle. Racial microaggressions are the small-scale racial slights, insults, and misperceptions that play out in everyday interactions between people (Sue 2010; Sue et al. 2007). These exchanges typically occur between a person from the dominant (white) group and a member of a racial or ethnic minority. While microaggressions are typically subtle, casual, and often unintentional, they still deliver a powerful message that serves to denigrate or marginalize others because of their group membership. Sometimes these take the form of questions like “What are you?” or “Where are you really from?” that are demands to know a person’s racial, ethnic, or national identity and reveal the underlying assumptions of the questioner as well as the persistence of racial stereotypes in shaping how we see and perceive each other.

Microaggressions can also be seen in body language, such as when a white woman clutches her handbag more closely when she passes by a group of Latino men, or when a white person asks to touch a black person’s hair to see what it feels like. Microaggressions can include instances when persons of color are treated as second-class citizens, such as when they are mistaken for a service worker in a retail store or when they are passed over by a taxi cab driver who picks up a white person instead. Sometimes a microaggression might look like a compliment on the surface, such as when Asians are praised for how smart they are or mixed-race persons are told that they look exotic, but these statements further affirm stereotypes and may be taken as demeaning as well.

Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation is another, often subtle form of racism. Cultural appropriation occurs when members of the dominant group adopt, co-opt, or otherwise take cultural elements from a marginalized group and use them for their own advantage. Cultural elements can include art, music, dance, dress, language, religious rituals, and other forms of expression that originate in a particular group. We see this borrowing (or some would say stealing) of cultural elements in a range of contexts, including costumes for Halloween or for college theme parties. Sometimes cultural appropriation is just insensitive. It can hurt the members of an aggrieved group, who may feel wronged, insulted, and offended. At the same time, it can have broader effects and serve to perpetuate negative stereotypes, exacerbate interracial relations, and further entrench social inequalities.

Let’s look at some of the many instances of using the cultural symbols of various Native American peoples. Recent fashion runway trends have included suede and fringe, moccasins, and turquoise jewelry. Add to that some championship sports teams like MLB’s Cleveland Indians or the NFL’s Washington Redskins, both of which continue to use their derogatory names (and mascots) despite widespread objections. Critics contend that it is a problem when specific items or practices with sacred value (such as a headdress or a sweat lodge) are used without awareness of their significance or in a disrespectful way. Furthermore, cultural appropriation most often benefits the dominant group, which takes an oppressed group’s cultural symbols and turns them into a commodity for profit. This kind of pillaging is postmodern cultural imperialism.

Hollywood has a long track record of cultural appropriation and commodification intended to enrich its owners and shareholders. In the early decades of the film industry, white actors often played minority characters, and there is a long list of disgraceful portrayals to name. Yet such practices have continued, despite considerable backlash both past and present. Recently we have seen A-list white actors cast in roles that are distinctly nonwhite, including Matt Damon, who played a Chinese warlord in The Great Wall; Scarlett Johansson, who played a Japanese anime character in Ghost in the Shell; and Emma Stone, who played a mixed-race Asian character in Aloha. These portrayals sparked controversy and were widely criticized as “white-washing” (Burr 2017; Martinelli 2015; Wong 2016). Perhaps this backlash will persuade studios and filmmakers to rethink their casting in the future and instead draw from the pool of talented and culturally appropriate actors waiting to fill such roles. These changes may happen more often as more minorities move into positions of power in the film industry.

Reverse Racism

Reverse racism is the claim that whites can also suffer discrimination based on their race and thus can experience the same kinds of disadvantages that minority groups have regularly encountered. This belief is persistent in the face of much data to refute it. A recent survey found that 49 percent of all Americans agree that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities, while another 49 percent disagree (Jones et al. 2016). These responses diverge when broken down by race: Only 29 percent of blacks and 38 percent of Hispanics agreed, compared with 57 percent of whites. Some of this difference of opinion among groups may derive from a fundamental misperception about what racism is and how it works.

Let’s break it down. While whites may confront some forms of temporary, occasional, or situational discrimination, they don’t suffer from the widespread cumulative disadvantages in almost every sphere of social life that are perpetuated within a historically and pervasively racist society. Even if all people of color espoused a hatred of whites, they would not be in the position to affect white people’s ability to get an education or well-paying job or find a home, or increase the odds that whites would be racially profiled and disproportionately imprisoned. Racism against whites is not supported by the social structure or its major social institutions. According to sociologist Robin DiAngelo (2012), racism requires the ongoing use of institutional power and authority to perpetuate prejudiced and discriminatory actions in systemic ways with far-reaching effects. People of color may hold prejudices and discriminate against some whites, but they don’t have the collective power to transform our society into one that is systematically biased against whites. Whites have the position and the power to influence the laws, practices, customs, and norms that define American society in ways not widely available to people of color.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Affirmative action is a particularly contentious area, and one about which claims of reverse racism have been made. Affirmative action policies, programs, and practices were established to help create opportunities for underrepresented minorities in housing, education, and employment. Some of the goals of affirmative action are to promote diversity and inclusion, provide equal access, and reduce the effects of historical discrimination. In the past few decades, critics have become more vocal in their opposition to affirmative action in the college admissions process. Several high-profile cases of white students suing universities on the grounds of reverse racism (because minority students were admitted when they were denied) have reached the Supreme Court and been struck down. Nevertheless, several states have passed laws banning the practice of affirmative action in higher education. California, which has the largest system of higher education in the nation, has sought to use other means to ensure a more equitable representation of students in its campus populations. While some opponents see affirmative action as giving one group of people unfair preferential treatment over others, proponents of social justice argue that these kinds of programs are necessary for creating a more level playing field in the United States.

Antiracist Allies

In the struggle for racial justice, people of color have necessarily led the way. Whites also have a role to play, and they can work in solidarity toward the same goals by becoming antiracist allies. One of the most effective ways that whites can challenge racism is by working with other whites to help them gain a greater awareness of how racism works and what they can do about it. This means more than just lending sympathy or support to organizations such as the Black Lives Matter movement or the Anti-Defamation League. It also means confronting racism in their own everyday lives, when and where they see it. Many whites have begun to think critically about white supremacy and white privilege, and they are in a unique position to recruit other whites to do likewise.

For many, it starts with getting educated about matters of race and racism and by listening to, rather than speaking for, people of color. It may also entail following the work of white antiracist authors and activists. In a growing number of social settings, such as schools, churches, and workplaces, whites are initiating peer group meetings to help support each other in their efforts to become better allies. New and existing organizations, such as the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) or Stepping Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), are now organizing around the goal of eradicating racism and can offer a framework for whites who want to be part of the solution. More whites are realizing that if they want a more inclusive, fair, and just society, they can no longer afford to stand on the sidelines.

Structural Functionalism

For example, functionalist theory has provided a useful lens for analyzing how certain ethnic groups, mainly European immigrants (such as the Irish and Italians) arriving in the early 1900s, eventually became assimilated into the larger society. Functionalism, however, has proved less successful in explaining the persistence of racial divisions and why other races and ethnicities, such as African Americans and Hispanics, have continued to maintain their distinct identities alongside the white majority culture today. This is because functionalism sees any kind of persistent social phenomenon through the lens of its contributions to social stability: If it exists/persists, it must be necessary and functional for social order, and that goes for racial inequality as well.

Perhaps what functionalism can best offer is an explanation of how prejudice and discrimination develop, by focusing on social solidarity and group cohesion. Groups have a tendency toward ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s own culture and way of life are right and normal. Functionalists contend that positive feelings about one’s group are strong ties that bind people together. At the same time, this cohesiveness can lead members to see others, especially those of other races or ethnicities, in an unfavorable light. According to functionalists, these cultural differences and the lack of integration into the larger society on the part of minorities tend to feed fear and hostility.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory focuses on the struggle for power and control. Classic Marxist analyses of race, developed by sociologists in the 1960s, looked for the source of racism in capitalist hierarchies. Edna Bonacich (1980), for instance, argued that racism is partly driven by economic competition and the struggle over scarce resources. A “split labor market,” in which one group of workers (usually defined by race, ethnicity, or gender) is routinely paid less than those in other groups, keeps wages low for racial and ethnic minorities, compounding the effects of racism with those of poverty. William Julius Wilson (1980) posited that openly racist government policies and individual racist attitudes were the driving forces behind the creation of a black underclass but that the underclass is now perpetuated by economic factors, not racial ones. While this link between race and class is useful and important, it doesn’t provide a satisfactory explanation for all forms of racial and ethnic stratification.

In recent years, conflict theorists have developed new approaches to understanding race. In his book Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (2008), for example, Tomas Almaguer looks at the history of race relations in California during the late nineteenth century. He describes a racial hierarchy that placed whites at the top, followed by Mexicans, blacks, Asians, and Native Americans at the bottom. Rather than focusing exclusively on class, he examines how white supremacist ideology became institutionalized. Racist beliefs became a part of political and economic life during that period. Ideas like “manifest destiny” (the belief that the United States had a mission to expand its territories) helped justify the taking of lands, and the notion that Native Americans were “uncivilized heathens” helped justify killing them. Sociologists also argue that race isn’t just a secondary phenomenon that results from the class system: It permeates both lived experience and larger-scale activity, such as the economy and the government (Omi and Winant 1994, 2015).

Still others have sought to understand the meaning of race from the individual’s point of view and have begun to analyze the ways that race, class, and gender inequalities intersect. For instance, writers like Patricia Hill Collins (2006), bell hooks (1990), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) argue that race must be explained in the terms in which it is experienced, not as overarching general theories. Though some of these writers have been sharply critical of the symbolic interactionist tradition, which they believe does not take into account macro social forces that shape the realities of stratification, they share with interactionism a conviction that race, like all other aspects of social life, is created symbolically in everyday interactions. We will explore that idea further in the next section.

Critical race theory is an important, though still somewhat controversial, outgrowth of conflict theory (Bell 1980; Delgado and Stefancic 2012; Williams 1991). It was developed in the 1980s by legal scholars who drew upon writings in the social sciences to form a school of thought around the issues of race, politics, and power. They believe that racism permeates our social institutions, especially our judicial system, and must be recognized and addressed as such. One feature of critical race theory is a focus on intersectionality, or taking into account how race is also modified by class, gender, sexuality, and other social statuses. To understand the experiences of racism, one must consider the differing experiences of a woman of color, or a middle-class black man, or a gay Latino. Critical race theory encourages the inclusion of narratives from a multitude of intersecting voices and viewpoints. Another feature of critical race theory is its commitment to challenging racist laws and policies and promoting social justice. Some of the most visible figures in critical race theory engage in what is sometimes called public sociology—bridging legal and scholarly works with frontline involvement in solutions to the real-world problems of racial and gender oppression.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionists focus on how we perceive and interpret race in everyday life, looking at the meanings and ideas we hold and how this helps to produce and perpetuate real-world consequences. Meanings can and do change over time, and so has our understanding of race.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF RACE Sociologists understand race as a social rather than a biological category. Many people find this idea confusing, because the everyday understanding of race in the United States is that it is based on skin color, which is an inherited physical trait. Sociologists who study race, however, point out that there is no physical trait that will always accurately identify what race someone belongs to. As Michael Omi and Howard Winant point out in Racial Formation in the United States (1994, 2015), “although the concept of race invokes biologically based human characteristics,” which particular features are chosen to make racial distinctions “is always and necessarily a social and historical process” (1994, p. 55). Even though they are expressed in terms of physical traits, the definitions of different racial groups are “at best imprecise and at worst completely arbitrary” (Omi and Winant 1994, 2015, p. 55). The definition of race is not stable but rather changes over time as racial categories are contested and developed.

This is not to say that race is unimportant. Omi and Winant show how racial groups are created socially and historically by arguing that “race can be understood as a fundamental dimension of social organization and cultural meaning in the U.S.” (1994, p. viii). Real, physical bodies still matter to this process, but it is the meaning attributed to these bodies that determines what racial categories will exist, who will belong in them, and what they will mean.

For example, sociologist Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica but immigrated to England as a young man, where he became one of the founding figures in the development of cultural studies. He explained the social construction of race by recounting a conversation he’d had with his young son, who was the product of a mixed marriage. Hall describes a moment when his “son, who was two and a half, was learning the colors.” Hall explained to him, “‘You’re Black.’ And he said, ‘No. I’m brown’” (2006, p. 222). Hall’s son was thinking in purely physical terms. If race really were biological, he would have been correct, but as Hall explains, it is not skin color that created racial categories. If that were true, his son would belong to a different race than he. Race is not a preexisting biological category; it is a social one that is framed in terms of biological features.

Another aspect of the social construction of race is that we “read” others through myriad cues, and we in turn make ourselves readable to others by our own self-presentations. Our identity is constructed in the negotiation between what we project and what others recognize. Even master statuses such as race, gender, and age are negotiated in this way. So how do we project our racial or ethnic identities and read the racial or ethnic identities of others? We might think immediately of stereotypes like surfer dudes, sorority girls, “welfare moms,” and so on. But in fact there are more subtle ways in which we project and receive our racial and ethnic identities. The interactional accomplishment of race is often easiest to see in the most unusual situations.

PASSING Racial passing, or living as if one is a member of a different racial category, has a long history in the United States. Both during and after slavery, some light-skinned African Americans attempted to live as whites in order to avoid the dire consequences of being black in a racist society. And people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds still pass, intentionally or unintentionally, every day in the United States. Passing involves manufacturing or maintaining a new identity that is more beneficial than one’s real identity. W. E. B. DuBois, a pioneer in the study of race, devised the concept of double-consciousness, which seems relevant to a discussion of passing. DuBois asked whether one could be black and at the same time claim one’s rights as an American. Given the history of oppression and enslavement of African Americans, DuBois was not the only person to wonder whether this was possible. There are many social forces that disenfranchise and exclude minorities, and the phenomenon of passing suggests that in some places and times, it has been more advantageous to appear white if at all possible.

One hundred years later, a different kind of passing is gaining attention in the black community. Black masculinity makes demands on black men that include a public persona of heterosexuality. For black men who have sex with other men, this often creates a pressure to “pass,” or live an apparently hetero lifestyle in which sexual relations with men happen only “on the down low” or “DL.” Jeffrey McCune’s (2014) ethnographic study of a Chicago nightclub catering to gay black men reveals the ways in which race shapes the performance of both gender and sexuality for men on the DL. “The Gate” played hip-hop music, infamous for its hypermasculine, heteronormative, and sometimes homophobic lyrics, but that didn’t stop the clientele from turning the Gate into a space where their same-sex desires could be comfortably expressed. In their everyday lives, these men did the interactional work necessary to keep their sexuality private and their conventionally masculine and heterosexual images intact. But on Friday nights at the Gate, McCune observed that they could enjoy the coexistence of their multiple identities. Dancing to hip-hop music with other black men allowed them to both reinforce and accept dominant definitions of race, gender, and sexuality while also resisting and subverting them.

EMBODIED (AND DISEMBODIED) IDENTITIES Are we heading toward a future when race will matter less and less? In a digital age does race disappear when more and more interactions take place exclusively online? When we’re interacting online, we may not always be able to see what others look like. In many online spaces, such as in e-mail, chat functions, or text messaging, we may not have any of the kind of physical cues that can tell us something about the other person. We may have only their written words to decipher and maybe just a small, inscrutable thumbnail photo of them in a corner of the posts, which makes it all the more difficult to ascertain their racial or ethnic background. This has been touted as one of the more democratizing traits of the Internet—that it can transcend, even obliterate, the real-world physical traits associated with categories like race, gender, or age that normally define us. It is such aspects of embodied identity (the way we are perceived in the physical world) that have historically been used as the basis for discrimination. These same ways of knowing about others through embodied characteristics are not necessarily available to those interacting online.

While the Internet has the potential to minimize race and other visible traits, that’s not always what happens. It depends on the context. Adam Love and Matthew Hughey (2015) studied conversations on online men’s college basketball forums, arguing that these conversations were implicitly racialized in conventional ways despite the fact that they took place in a disembodied setting. Love and Hughey found that the online conversations they studied largely involved older, affluent white men talking about younger, less affluent black college students, and doing so in ways that initially appeared to be color-blind—in other words, race was almost never explicitly mentioned. However, racial meanings were still part of these conversations. Specifically, the online interactants were more likely to assign negative characteristics to black players than to white players, assuming, for example, that a player suspended for “breaking team rules” had engaged in criminal behavior if he was black, but attributing more innocent explanations for white players in the same situation. The interactants still engaged in conventional, prejudiced racial talk, as their assumptions were racialized even if their language was not. The Internet is thus not a place where all the problematic distinctions disappear—they just manifest themselves in different ways.

Family

Race, ethnicity, and their correlates (such as SES) shape family life in a variety of ways. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2018e) show that African Americans are more likely than whites and Hispanics to never marry. While 51 percent of white households and 48 percent of Hispanic households include a married couple, the same is true of just 28 percent of black households (U.S. Census Bureau 2018a). This means that black and Hispanic children are significantly more likely to live in single-parent homes. In 2018, for example, 75 percent of white children lived with two parents compared to 67 percent of Hispanic children and just 40 percent of black children; nearly half of all black children live with their mother only (U.S. Census Bureau 2018d).

Kathryn Edin (Edin and Kefalas 2005) has argued that low-income women of all ethnicities see marriage as having few benefits. They feel that the men they are likely to encounter as possible husbands will not offer the advantages (financial stability, respectability, trust) that make the rewards of marriage worth the risks. This doesn’t mean, of course, that most low-income women don’t love their male companions; it only means that they believe a legal bond would not substantially improve their lot in life.

In 2015, the birth rates for American teenage mothers (ages fifteen to nineteen) varied significantly by race. The birth rate for white teenage moms was 16 per 1,000 births, while the birth rate for African Americans was 32 per 1,000; for Hispanics it was 35 per 1,000 (Martin et al. 2017). Social thinkers such as Angela Y. Davis argue that African American teenage girls in particular see fewer opportunities for education and work and choose motherhood instead (2001). Davis believes that social policies aimed at punishing teenage mothers of color will be ineffective; only by our attacking the racism inherent in the educational system and the workforce will these teens be at less risk of becoming mothers.

Health

Health is an area in which we find widespread disparity among racial and ethnic groups. Whites have typically fared better in health matters than minorities, although this is not always the case. Recent findings reveal a complicated picture of the nation’s health when intersections among race, class, and gender are taken into account.

One way of measuring health is to look at life expectancy and mortality rates. White male children born in 2015 can expect to live to be around 76 years old, while white females can expect to live to 81. African American males’ life expectancy is 71 years, and African American females’ is 78. Notably, Hispanics have the highest life expectancy, higher even than whites: 79 years for Hispanic men and 84 for Hispanic women (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2018a). Other important indicators of health are infant and maternal mortality: Black mothers die from pregnancy complications at a rate of over three times that of other mothers (Creanga et al. 2012), and infant mortality for black babies is more than double that of whites (Villarosa 2018).

These variables are part of a robust case that can be made for the negative effects of racism on the health of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Researchers use the term “weathering” (Geronimus et al. 2006) to describe the ways that exposure to racism erodes one’s health: High levels of racially differentiated stressors affect black individuals more intensely than whites and lead to higher levels of chronic disease and lower life expectancies. Racial and ethnic minorities are also often disproportionately exposed to other factors that affect life span, such as dangers in the workplace, toxins in the environment, and violence.

Another ongoing issue for Americans is access to health-care insurance and medical services. Many health-care consumers rely on insurance benefits provided through their employer if they have a job with such benefits; if not, they must buy individual insurance policies in order to meet their medical needs, and many Americans cannot afford even basic health-care coverage. While the passage of the Affordable Care Act reduced uninsured rates, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities, disparities remain: In 2017, 16 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks lacked health insurance, compared to just 6 percent of whites and 7 percent of Asians (Berchick, Hood, and Barnett 2018).

Education

One of America’s cultural myths is that everyone has equal access to education, the key to a secure, well-paying job. However, by looking at those who actually receive degrees, we can see that the playing field is not that level. The high school graduation rate in 2017 was 91 percent for Asians, 89 percent for whites, 80 percent for Hispanics, and just 78 percent for blacks (National Center for Education Statistics 2019b). The reasons for dropping out of high school are complex, but the highest rates are associated with those from economically disadvantaged and non-English-speaking backgrounds. In 2015, Hispanics had the highest high school dropout rate of all racial groups, at 9 percent.

Victor Rios (2017) spent five years in schools and community centers documenting what happens to Latino youth in what has been called the school-to-prison pipeline. Rios traces a pattern in which some Latino youth encounter negative experiences with teachers and other school authorities who misunderstand the students’ cultural cues and background. This can result in those students being labeled as “bad,” “deviant,” or “at risk,” further stigmatizing them within the school system. There may be greater scrutiny and punishment of Latino youth, sometimes leading to suspension or expulsion from school. This process serves to criminalize Latino youth, sending them on a path away from education and mainstream society. At the same time, these youths are also surveilled by police in their communities, where they may experience similarly negative interactions and consequences.

In higher education, there are similar disparities of achievement. In 2018, 57 percent of Asian Americans over age twenty-five, 39 percent of whites, 25 percent of blacks, and 18 percent of Hispanics had a bachelor’s degree or higher (Figure 8.2). Thus, Asian Americans and whites enjoy more success overall in the U.S. educational system than African Americans and Hispanics do. The reasons for the disparity are again complex, involving both economic and cultural factors. As noted in Chapter 7, students from lower-income families are less likely to go on to college, and ethnic minority families tend to have lower household incomes than white households.

Claude Steele (2010) has identified something called “stereotype threat,” a social-psychological mechanism at play among minority college students that hinders their academic performance. Steele discovered that negative racial stereotypes may adversely affect African American students when they are in highly demanding situations in which they might risk confirming those stereotypes. In competitive, high-stakes academic conditions (such as test-taking), stereotype threat can cause sufficient anxiety in those students to effectively harm their abilities. In less stressful situations, when no negative stereotypes are invoked, these students perform as well as peers of other races. Steele suggests that stereotype threat may help explain some of the achievement gap between racial groups. Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (2015) have identified an inverse phenomenon that they call “stereotype promise.” Because there are positive stereotypes associated with the academic performance of Asian Americans, those students may reap benefits in similarly stressful situations when they might confirm such stereotypes.

Earning an education is extremely important in American society. Not only does it translate to greater success in the workforce, but it also confers social status and cultural capital that can prove valuable in other arenas.

Work and Income

Persons of color carry the burden of some of society’s most difficult jobs. In 2018, 36 percent of all nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides and 41 percent of all postal clerks were black, while Hispanics were more likely to be employed in farming (46 percent of all farmworkers) and as maids and housecleaners (49 percent of total) (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2019c). Except for nursing, these jobs are more likely to be semiskilled or unskilled. Thus, people of color, who are less likely to achieve high levels of education, are more likely to swell the bottom rungs of the job market. Interestingly, some lower-level jobs have shifted from African Americans to Hispanics over time. For instance, in 1983, African Americans accounted for 42 percent and Hispanics for 12 percent of all private household cleaners; by 2018, blacks accounted for only 16 percent. A similar shift may be seen with other low-wage jobs. This means that persons of color increasingly compete with each other for such jobs.

In part due to the segregation of people of color in low-wage occupations, we see enduring income gaps between white workers and black and Hispanic workers. In 2017, the median household income was $68,145 for whites, $50,486 for Hispanics, and $40,258 for African Americans. Asian Americans had the highest median income, at $81,331 (Fontenot, Semega, and Kollar 2018). In other words, in 2017, the median incomes of black and Hispanic households were just 59 percent and 74 percent, respectively, of that of white households. The median incomes of whites and Asian Americans thus place them firmly in the middle and upper-middle class, respectively, while those of blacks and Hispanics place them in the lower-middle class. Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely to live in poverty: In 2017, 9 percent of whites lived below the poverty line, compared with 21 percent of African Americans and 18 percent of Hispanics (Fontenot, Semega, and Kollar 2018). These numbers make it easy to see how race and class intersect to influence life outcomes.

Racial discrimination contributes to the problems minorities face in the U.S. labor market. One study looked at the impact of racially identifiable names on one’s chances of receiving job callbacks from employers (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004). Researchers submitted résumés in response to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago. To manipulate the perception of race, each résumé was assigned either a stereotypically white name such as Emily or Greg or a black-sounding name such as Lakisha or Jamal. The study results showed marked discrimination. Résumés with white-sounding names garnered a 50 percent higher callback rate than identical résumés with black-sounding names. When the researchers listed additional qualifications, the higher-quality résumé elicited 30 percent more callbacks for the white applicants but a far smaller increase for blacks. Discrimination occurred regardless of the job occupation or industry.

Criminal Justice

Although the majority of the U.S. population is white—about 60 percent, as opposed to about 13 percent black and 18 percent Hispanic—we don’t find these same proportions in the prison population. Of all state and federal prisoners in 2016, 33 percent were African American, while 30 percent were white and 23 percent Hispanic (Carson 2018). Why are larger proportions of African Americans and Hispanics in prison?

One explanation is the practice of racial profiling in policing, which we discussed in the chapter opener. Data on pedestrian and motor vehicle stops demonstrate that blacks and Hispanics are 127 percent more likely than whites to be stopped and 43 percent more likely to be frisked. Despite this unequal policing, blacks and Hispanics are 42 percent and 32 percent less likely to be in possession of a weapon or drugs than are whites (American Civil Liberties Union 2008). While not justified statistically, these higher stop and search rates increase the likelihood that black and Hispanic drivers and pedestrians will be placed into contact with the criminal justice system and experience unequal treatment in the application of laws. Other factors to consider are higher unemployment rates among minority groups, as well as higher dropout rates; in other words, a lack of both education and job opportunities may contribute to higher incarceration rates.

Some laws that don’t seem race based still create racially differentiated outcomes. For example, federal law until 2010 handed out far tougher sentences to crack cocaine users (who were more likely to be black) than to users of powdered cocaine (who were more likely to be white or Hispanic). If you possessed a small amount of crack cocaine, say 5 grams (for personal use), you’d get the same mandatory ten-year sentence that you would receive if you possessed a huge amount of powder cocaine, like 500 grams (enough for hundreds of uses). This disparity was rooted in the misperception of crack as a far more dangerous or damaging substance, when in fact it is actually quite similar to powder cocaine.

During the 1980s and 1990s crack cocaine use soared, in part because of its lower price point. Black communities suffered disproportionately from what was called the “crack epidemic.” In 2010, 79 percent of the federally sentenced crack offenders were black, despite research indicating that two-thirds of crack users were white or Hispanic. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced the sentencing disparity from a ratio of 100:1 to 18:1. While this judicial reform was a step toward greater fairness, it still means that sentencing for crack cocaine is eighteen times harsher than for powder cocaine. Many social justice advocates call for the complete elimination of the disparity (a 1:1 ratio). Another issue is that the law does not apply retroactively to those offenders who were already sentenced before its passage. Furthermore, the Fair Sentencing Act applies only to federal offenders, leaving a much larger number of nonviolent drug offenders to face far stiffer penalties at the state and local levels.

African Americans are also more likely to be victims of homicide: In 2017, blacks accounted for approximately 52 percent of murder victims nationwide despite representing only 13 percent of the population; whites represented 61 percent of the U.S. population but 43 percent of murder victims (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2018a). Finally, over half of the reported hate crimes in 2017 were attributed to race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias, with 49 percent targeting blacks, 18 percent targeting whites, and 11 percent targeting Hispanics (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2018b).

Intersectionality

As you might have already concluded, race and ethnicity do not shape our life chances in isolation from other social statuses and aspects of identity. Instead, race and ethnicity are frequently enmeshed with social class, gender, sexuality, and more. Sociologist France Winddance Twine (2011b) demonstrates this in her ethnographic study of white women who have families with black men. As the intimate partners of black men, these women effectively lose some of their whiteness—especially in the eyes of their white working-class friends and family—and become “honorary blacks.” This loss of whiteness is a form of punishment exacted by their ethnicity- and class-based communities, but it is not meted out equally to white men who marry black women. Twine’s work identifies the intersection of class, race, and gender by showing the ways in which “interracial intimacy and the racism that accompanies it is a gendered experience” (p. 30).

An additional social status, motherhood, is also part of the intersectionality in Twine’s study. White mothers of interracial children may not possess the racial literacy to raise those children in a world that will almost certainly see and treat them as black. From cooking and hair care to preparation for experiencing racism, these mothers—because they are women and because they are white—must calibrate their parenting practices in order to address race and racism in ways that their own mothers did not. In Twine’s work, race, class, gender, and parenthood combine to shape the lived experiences of individuals and families.

“Queering the Binary”

For most of the twentieth century, “queer” was a pejorative term applied mainly to gay men (before that, it was used to mean “odd” or “peculiar” in a nonsexual way). But in the 1990s, with the emergence of “queer theory,” the term underwent a remarkable transformation as both activists and academics began using it in a very different way. In academia, queer theory rejects the idea of a single gay, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, or transgender identity, emphasizing instead the importance of difference (Butler 1993). It asserts that being queer is about “possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances” (Sedgwick 1993, p. 8) and suggests that any kind of categorization is outmoded and limiting.

Queer is now used to describe anything that challenges prevailing binary notions of sex, gender, and sexuality (and is sometimes used to describe nonconformity in other areas as well). “Queer” encompasses a wider range of gender and sexual diversity than terms like “gay” and “trans” and implies a questioning of society’s traditional gender and sexual arrangements. It has come to be represented by a “Q” appended to the acronym “LGBT” to make it more inclusive, as in LGBTQ. That acronym, and what it stands for, is also contested. Many activists and organizations believe it should be even more inclusive, proposing a longer version—LGBTQIA—that encompasses “intersex” and “asexual” people under the community umbrella. “A” is not for “allies,” as some assume, because allies are not oppressed in the same way. Sometimes “+” is added to the end to represent allies as well as people with other sexual identities.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Sexism is closely associated with prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is an entrenched set of ideas or attitudes (literally pre-judgments) about the presumed characteristics of a group (for instance women, gays, or trans persons) that is applied to all members and that is unlikely to change even in the face of evidence to challenge those ideas. Prejudice is often rooted in stereotypes and generalizations. Take, for example, the stereotype of the dumb blonde or the promiscuous gay man. Prejudiced ideas permeate our shared culture and social institutions, making them hard to avoid.

Prejudice often leads to discrimination: a behavior or action that results in the unequal treatment of individual members or an entire group because they belong to a certain social category. We might say that a woman suffers discrimination if she is charged more than her male counterpart when buying a new car or applying for a home loan. Sometimes discrimination happens on an individual level, as when a corporate recruiter consistently favors the men candidates he interviews over women who are equally or even better qualified. When such individual actions are cumulative or reproduced across many workplaces and industries, we can say that the impact is felt on an institutional level. Despite many laws in place banning workplace gender discrimination and protecting individual and group rights, corporate culture is still fraught with prejudice and discriminatory practices.

Hegemonic and Toxic Masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity promotes a particular kind of masculine ideal that is held out as superior to any other kind of masculinity, as well as to any form of femininity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). It extols the expression of stereotypically masculine characteristics such as independence, aggression, competitiveness, and toughness, and rejects any characteristics that are associated with the feminine, along with homosexuality and any alternate gender expression. Hegemonic masculinity defines a specific standard of manhood to which men must then measure up and prove themselves. But not all men are equally served by its narrow definition. The intersections of a man’s class background, race, or sexuality will also figure into a hierarchy where upper-middle-class white, cisgender, heterosexual men are at the top.

The term toxic masculinity has recently gained currency, as critics have highlighted the dysfunctional aspects of hegemonic masculinity and the risks associated with trying to achieve its masculine ideal. We usually think of sexism and gender norms as oppressive to women, but men also suffer as a result of the dominant gender ideology. The masculine ideal imposes requirements on men to compete with each other, to be breadwinners and leaders, to suppress any emotions except for anger, and to reject any “feminine” qualities they may feel, such as empathy or nurturance, lest they show weakness and lose status. The narrow definitions of the masculine ideal limit men’s options for careers or hobbies and constrict their relationships with friends, colleagues, and family. Toxic masculinity takes a toll on men in a number of ways; it has been cited as a negative factor in men’s mental and physical health (Iwamoto et al. 2018).

One of the most extreme and troubling expressions of toxic masculinity appears in the incel movement. Incel is short for “involuntary celibate,” a man who feels aggrieved because he has not been able to find a willing sex partner. These men—who are largely young, white, and heterosexual—feel a sense of entitlement to have sex and believe they are suffering an injustice by being deprived. When they are denied opportunities for sex, their frustration and humiliation turn into rage against women and other sexually active men.

The incel movement has grown over the last several years in online forums where men gather to discuss their resentment, self-pity, and hatred toward women. They revel in a kind of misogyny that objectifies and denigrates women and that in some cases has led to violent outcomes. In 2014, Elliot Rodger wrote a 140-page manifesto linking himself to the incel movement, before killing six people and injuring fourteen more in Isla Vista, California (near the University of California, Santa Barbara), and then killing himself. Tragically, other mass murders by incel-affiliated men have occurred with some regularity. While not all incels become radicalized to this extent, online forums such as a now-banned subreddit with more than 40,000 subscribers espouse hateful and violence-filled rhetoric. The incel movement has migrated to other online platforms, where it continues to attract new members.

The incel movement has been called a terrorist organization and labeled a hate group; it is included in a listing of other radical men’s groups promoting a male supremacist worldview. Male supremacy is a misogynist ideology that proclaims the fundamental inferiority of women, while reducing them to their basic functions as subservient sex partners and caregivers. Inherent in these ideas is the assertion that men are oppressed by changes brought about by modern feminism; proponents blame women for the current crisis to masculinity and so seek to dominate them as before.

Gendered Language and Microaggressions

Some sociologists argue that language shapes culture, while others say the opposite. In any case, by looking at our language, we can see how certain words reflect cultural values and norms, particularly sexism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism. For instance, the English language has long assumed that the default category for all human experience is male. We have traditionally used the generic “he,” referred to humanity as “mankind,” and noted that “all men are created equal.” If something is man-made, it is made by humans, not just male humans. But clearly, not everyone experiences the world from a male perspective, and using this kind of language can make some women feel excluded and demeaned.

Not everyone experiences the world from a heterosexual perspective either, but in most societies heterosexuality is assumed and is part of the structure of society in ways that we may not even notice. For example, some people use the terms “gay” or “queer” to describe things they don’t like, implying that being gay or queer is a bad thing. Even less obvious: assumptions of heterosexuality on the part of others, such as the new acquaintance who asks a woman what her husband does, or the well-meaning auntie who buys her cute nephew a T-shirt that says “Ladies’ Man.” Small acts such as these reinforce heterosexist assumptions and can make gays, lesbians, and bisexuals feel invisible and invalidated.

These small acts are examples of microaggressions—subtle verbal and nonverbal communications that convey denigrating or dismissive messages to members of a certain social group (Sue 2010). Whether intentional or not, microaggressions are experienced as insulting and demeaning. For instance, it is not uncommon for women to be told to smile, especially in public. The roots of this unsolicited directive are in the expectation that a woman should conform to a narrow stereotype or ideal of femininity; the implication is that it’s not okay for a woman to express herself in a serious way. This happened recently to tennis star Serena Williams, when a male journalist asked her why she was not smiling after winning a hard-fought evening match against her sister. She did not take kindly to his comment, firing back, “It’s 11:30. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want to be here.”

Other examples of microaggressions against women include being interrupted in conversations, being labeled as shrill or bossy, or being the target of catcalls and other suggestive remarks by strangers. Trans persons also experience microaggressions when, intentionally or unintentionally, they are “misgendered” by others. While it can be accidental (calling a trans woman “sir” on the phone, or a trans man “ma’am,” for example), it is sometimes deliberate, as when an unsupportive family member refuses to use the trans person’s preferred name or gender pronoun.

The vocabulary associated with sex, gender, and sexuality may seem to be a confusing minefield for those who are unfamiliar with it. Preferred terms may change faster within LGBTQ communities than outside of them, leaving open the possibility for individuals to give and take offense. Various LGBTQ organizations post glossaries online to help guide speakers, writers, and others. Check out the websites of GLAAD (a media advocacy organization) or HRC (Human Rights Campaign) for examples of such glossaries. It is important to respect LGBTQ people’s preferred language, which may vary by person. As tempting as it might be to slap a label on people when we first encounter them, the right thing to do is to allow others to self-identify and to then affirm that self-identification by using a person’s chosen name and preferred pronoun—he or she, or a neutral pronoun like they.