HELP WITH REPLIES DUE IN 18 HOURS

The minimum length for each of your replies to classmates in order to earn any credit is 150 words. 

JAMIE:

A.  

W.E.B. Du Bois’s racial stratification theory is a central pillar of his sociological account of race and inequality in America. Du Bois identifies how racial stratification is institutionally embedded in economic, political, and social institutions, resulting in systemic oppression of Black Americans. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 189) Du Bois rejects the common assumption that racial differences result from intrinsic inferiority, instead claiming they are the outcome of historical and structural forces, in particular, the history of slavery and segregation. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 191) Du Bois contends that racial stratification is not simply a question of individual prejudice but is underpinned by economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p.192) This privilege extends beyond material wealth to psychological and social benefits, which reinforce white supremacy. Du Bois also examines racial stratification in structuring African American consciousness and identity, most forcefully in his theory of “double consciousness.” (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 190-191) African Americans live in a society that commands them to look at themselves with the prejudiced vision of the white world, creating an internal struggle. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p.190-191) From these symptomatic injustices, Du Bois builds the basis for understanding race as an organizing factor of social stratification and involving collective resistance and structural transformation. 

Frantz Fanon’s decolonization theory is a violent and revolutionary one for terminating colonial institutions and liberating the oppressed. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 460) For Fanon, colonialism is violent in that it maintains power by using physical violence, economic exploitation, and psychological domination. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 459) Accordingly, he contends that decolonization shall be a violent rupture, and not an organized change because it must upend the existing social order and redistribute power. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 460) One of the key elements of Fanon’s criticism is the binarism of the colonizer-colonized relation. He describes colonial societies as dualist by nature, where the settlers occupy privileged space while the natives are dehumanized and relegated to the margins. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 460) This psychological and geographical alienation creates resentment and revolutionary consciousness among the oppressed and ultimately leads them to demand self-determination. Fanon emphatically identifies that decolonization is not a political transformation but a general revolution in society, including economic orders, cultural selves, and liberation of the mind. Moreover, Fanon speaks of the psychological impact of colonialism and states that the colonized believe themselves to be inferior, an inferiority that they must delearn if they are to emancipate themselves. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 458-459) Genuine decolonization, he insists, involves the native reclaiming native culture and creating new, free identities not colonially dictated. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p.459-460) By portraying decolonization as a necessary and unstoppable process one must fight against, Fanon is in effect a recipe for revolutionary struggle and establishing a fair post-colonial society. 

In "The Intersectionality Wars," Jane Coaston reviews the scandals plaguing intersectionality, a term that legal academic Kimberlé Crenshaw invented in 1989 to describe how all those various dimensions of one's identity—race, class, gender, say—are intersecting and intersecting to create personal experiences of oppression and privilege. (Coaston, 2019) Coaston notes that intersectionality has evolved from an obscure legal construct to a common phrase in social justice activism and the academy. (Coaston, 2019) However, the evolution has been contentious on the left as well as on the right. Some conservatives believe that intersectionality is divisive because it emphasizes group identity over shared human experiences, while some liberals fear that it has the potential to establish a hierarchy of victimhood, in which some voices are pushed to the side. (Coaston, 2019) Despite such criticisms, intersectionality proponents argue that it gives a critical analysis to decipher the intricacies of systemic oppression. By embracing the multi-dimensionality of identity, intersectionality tries to answer the interlocking and interdependent systems of discrimination, which variably impact people. (Coaston, 2019) Coaston observes that intersectionality, in its most basic sense, tries to show how various oppressions are interrelated, which simplifies social injustice analysis too much. (Coaston, 2019) The intersectionality controversies serve to underscore the challenge of addressing complex social issues in plural societies. Coaston's discussion illustrates that while intersectionality has become a central paradigm for power relations research, its construction and application remain controversial and contentious, reflecting broader tensions in contemporary discourse around equality and identity.

B.  

W.E.B. Du Bois believed that economic, political, and social institutions preserve racial distinctions for inequality to continue. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 189) In the US, the racial wealth gap continues to be a direct result of historic oppression, such as redlining and biased lending. A 2021 Federal Reserve report showed that the median wealth of white families ($188,200) was about seven times higher than that of Black families ($24,100). (Bhutta et al., 2021) This shows that economic systems are utilized to ensure white supremacy as noted by Du Bois. The pandemic exacerbated these inequalities. Black and Latino workers were more affected by job loss and they lacked generational wealth to cushion them against economic adversity. The racial disparity in wealth suggests that being shut out of the economy perpetuates racial stratification, confirming Du Bois's hypothesis.

Fanon's decolonization theory says that the deconstruction of colonial systems should involve challenging the mechanisms that sustain racial oppression. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 459-460) In the United States, ongoing police brutality against Black Americans reinforces Fanon's thesis that colonial-type domination is endemic in state institutions. The police homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 prompted national protests demanding radical change. Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, which swept following the death of George Floyd, validate Fanon's concept of revolutionary resistance because BLM demands change in the overall structure, rather than makeup changes. Fanon believed that actual freedom had to be accompanied by the abolition of oppressive institutions, not their reform. Activists have answered by calling for the defunding of police departments and the redirection of funds to community programs, showing how Fanon's decolonization framework applies to contemporary resistance to state violence.

Coaston's account of the "intersectionality wars" shows how all conversations about race, gender, and oppression are necessarily argumentative, especially in politics. (Coaston, 2019) The current fight for reproductive justice in the United States demonstrates this conflict quite accurately. The Supreme Court decision in 2022 in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case to overturn Roe v. Wade has a disparate effect on low-income women and women of color. Black women are three times more likely than white women to die due to pregnancy-related illnesses as a result of healthcare inequalities. (CDC, 2022) Conservatives object that intersectionality splits individuals into identity categories instead of unifying them. (Coaston, 2019) But reproductive justice activists reply that to ignore the racial and economic aspects of abortion barriers is not to confront the entire extent of the problem. The controversy over abortion rights echoes the wider tensions Coaston describes within the intersectionality conversation.

Du Bois's examination of racial stratification intersects with Michael Omi and Howard Winant's racial formation theory, which posits that race is socially constructed and institutionalized by policy. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 469) In the US, there are clear disparities in education. Black and Latino students receive less support and poorer education compared to white students. In 2020, a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that schools with mostly students of color get $23 billion less in funding each year than schools that are mostly white. (GAO, 2020) This is because redlining and segregationist policy directly lead to this racial stratification and racial formation, indicating that they work as complementary processes. The demand for affirmative action policies indicates a trend toward dismantling such systemic imbalances, though efforts are faced by fierce opposition, as shown by the Supreme Court's decision in 2023 to ban race-conscious college admissions.

Fanon highlighted the psychological impact of colonialism by explaining that the dominating groups must reclaim their narratives so that they can potentially achieve complete decolonization. (Garner & Hancock, 2014, p. 459-460) Coaston's intersectionality analysis also speaks to how identity talks frame political discourse. (Coaston, 2019) The recent backlash against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools is a perfect demonstration of both. Conservative legislatures in several states have enacted bills against classroom discussion on systemic racism because it is polarizing. Researchers and activists claim, however, that such moves are intended to erase the narrative of racial oppression, maintaining white-dominated narratives. Fanon's theory suggests that decolonization has to be about recovering historical truths, while Coaston's deconstruction of intersectionality contests explains why race and identity are so contested. The CRT controversy is an expression of the larger struggle over whose histories and voices must be validated in U.S. society.

The theory of Du Bois, Fanon, and Coaston is highly relevant to the comprehension of existing racial and social issues in the U.S. Du Bois's theory of racial stratification explains why economic and educational disparities persist, and Fanon's decolonization theory applies to the anti-police brutality and institutionalized oppression movement. Coaston's intersectionality discussion points toward the contentious nature of identity politics in debates over reproductive rights and CRT. All these theories together provide us with the key to unlocking how race, colonial pasts, and intersectional identities continue to structure American society. As these examples illustrate, fighting racial and social injustice requires confronting deeply embedded systems and challenging dominant narratives.

 

References

Bhutta, N., Chang, A. C., Dettling, L. J., & Hsu, J. W. (2021). Disparities in wealth by race and ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.  Federal Reserve Bulletin, 107(4).

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2022). Racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality.  CDC Maternal Mortality Review Committees.

Coaston, J. (2019). The intersectionality wars. Retrieved from  https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discriminationLinks to an external site..

Garner, R. & Hancock, B.H. (2014) Social Theory: A Reader Continuity and Confrontation. University of Toronto Press, 3rd ed

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). (2020). K-12 education: School finance and racial disparities.  GAO Reports.

ANGELA:

Part A

Double Consciousness

W.E.B. Du Bois

Double consciousness, Du Bois claims, is seeing yourself through the eyes of others Du Bois (1903, as cited in Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 192). This double-sided view makes people feel "two" and alone, bringing to light the mental and social problems that marginalized populations face Du Bois (1903, as cited in Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 193). People who feel like they are torn between two worlds may be at odds with who they really are and what society expects of them. W.E.B. Du Bois uses the "veil" as an illustration for the wall between African Americans and white society in "The Souls of Black Folk," which shows how African Americans struggle with their identity and feel like they have two different sides to them. In his works, Du Bois gives a clear example of how double consciousness shows up in the lives of African Americans. He reveals how difficult it is for them to find their own identity in a society that sees them as different. “Some groups are identified by the dominant group as the Negro problem in the United States” (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 191). Through the idea of "two-ness," Du Bois indicates African Americans often feel torn between their African heritage and their American identity, which makes them feel alone and makes it hard for them to join. There are many examples of this in the challenges African Americans face as they try to embrace their cultural roots while also fitting in with a society that doesn't always accept or understand them. This prejudice makes people doubt themselves, put down their own standards, and question their own worth, all of which are signs of control and create an environment of hate and disrespect (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p.195).

The Racial Divide

Frantz Fanon

Fanon viewed the world through a Manichean lens, a concept where the world is divided into good and evil. Fanon believed that this view was necessary to understand the power dynamics at play in societies plagued by colonialism and oppression. In this view it is understood that white people are good, and non-white people are animalistic and savages (Garner and Hancock, 2014, pp. 458-459). People that define themselves as white live in beautiful areas while others are regulated to certain spaces, such as slums and ghettos.  "The Wretched of the Earth," by Frantz Fanon, is about how colonial officials and newcomers split up racial groups, leaving native people to live in lower-ranking conditions (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 458). For him, breaking down these oppressive systems meant first recognizing the stark difference between those who are enslaved and those who are oppressors. In order to get people to fight for their freedom and question the norm, Fanon thought that he could frame the struggle as a battle between good and evil. Through his writing, Fanon hoped to start a revolution in awareness that would free the disadvantaged in the long run (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 458). Working as a doctor with the Algerian freedom movement directly influenced Fanon's analysis, as he saw firsthand how discrimination, forced migration, torture, and military action against Algerians seeking independence affected people (Garner and Hancock, 2014, pp. 458-459).According to Fanon, subaltern peoples can only reclaim their humanity that the powerful have tried to take away from them by imposing structures, practices, and discourses of supremacy (Garner and Hancock, 2014, pp. 459-460).

 

Racial Formation

Michael Omi and Howard Winant

Racial formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant offers a new perspective on race, arguing that it is a social and historical process that changes over time and in different situations (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 469). Racism is the division of racial categories into essentialized groups, and racial development starts with political projects that show, order, fight, and make room for social structures, social meanings, identities, and bodies (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 469). Race awareness began in the New World, with European travelers finding people who looked different from them, challenging ideas about human origins (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 470). In this view, race was very important because it explained why some people were "free" and others were slaves and why some people had rights to land and property and others did not (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p.470). Despite debates about the biological meaning of race, recent social sciences have moved away from biological ideas of race and towards seeing it as a social term. The meanings of race have changed over time and between countries, with the US having a strict line between black and white. Society as a whole defines and debates what race means, both in group actions and individual actions (Garner and Hancock, 2014, p. 472).

 

B Example 1

By understanding how race, gender, and class affect each other, we can better understand how they come together to make discrimination and inequality more difficult for some people. For example, the differences in pay and health care that people of color face are not just caused by their race; they are also affected by their gender and their family's income. By tackling these related problems together, we can create a broader and more powerful plan to fight systemic racism and promote equality for everyone. As an example of this intersectionality in action, look at Black women who face both race and gender discrimination at work, which makes the pay gap even bigger than it is for white women. Although inequalities are made worse by the fact that low-income communities of color often can't get good healthcare, prejudice has no leniency as in the case of Dr. Chaniece Wallace. Dr. Wallace died two days after giving birth to her daughter Charlotte (Burke, 2020). A 2017 report by the Healthcare Cost Utilization Project found that Black women develop preeclampsia 60% higher than white women, while the condition is less severe in Black women. Additionally, the National Center for Health Statistics reported higher maternal mortality rates among Black women (AHRQ, 2017). This shows how important it is to address all parts of identity when trying to fix systemic problems.

 

Example 2

Students in predominantly black schools are often provided with fewer resources and experienced educators, leading to lower academic achievement and perpetuating the cycle of poverty in these neighborhoods. Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, highlights the systemic issues faced by low-income districts, which have been underserved for decades. The pandemic has highlighted these inequalities, as teachers have been buying supplies and covering gaps for generations. A 2018 study found that 94% of public school teachers spend an average of $478 on supplies during one school year. However, in high-poverty communities, teachers cannot solve all existing problems (Grabenstein, 2022). Additionally, racial profiling can lead to increased rates of police harassment and unjust treatment of individuals based on their race, contributing to feelings of fear and distrust within minority communities. Discrimination in everyday life, such as being denied housing or job opportunities based on race, can also perpetuate systemic inequalities and limit the social and economic mobility of people of color.

 

Example 3

One example of systemic racism in the school to prison pipeline applies to Fanon's racial oppression is the disproportionate disciplinary actions taken against minority students compared to their white counterparts. This disparity often leads to minority students being pushed out of the educational system and into the criminal justice system, perpetuating the cycle of racial oppression as described by Fanon. An example of this is the higher rates of suspension and expulsion for Black and Latinx students compared to white students, leading to increased involvement in the criminal justice system. Additionally, the lack of resources and support for minority students in schools contributes to their disengagement and ultimate entry into the prison system. Research has shown that limiting the use of exclusionary responses to student behavior problems could be a key to lowering the number of arrests and later jail terms. So, schools should limit the use of bans and expulsions that happen outside of school and instead try to find other ways to punish students to help them behave and keep the school running smoothly (Welch et al., 2022).

Example 4

Example 4

One example of white privilege perpetuating systemic racism is seen in the criminal justice system, where studies have shown that white individuals are more likely to receive lighter sentences compared to people of color for the same crime. This disparity highlights how white privilege can lead to unjust outcomes and reinforce existing racial inequalities. Another example of white privilege perpetuating systemic racism can be seen in the hiring practices of many companies, where studies have shown that resumes with white-sounding names are more likely to receive callbacks for interviews compared to those with names associated with people of color. This discrimination in hiring practices further entrenches racial disparities in employment opportunities and economic outcomes.

 

Example 5

One example of double consciousness can be seen in the workplace, where African Americans may feel pressure to conform to white cultural norms in order to succeed, while also being expected to maintain their own cultural identity. This internal conflict can lead to feelings of alienation and identity crisis for African American employees. For instance, an African American employee may feel torn between speaking in a way that is more aligned with their cultural background versus using more formal language to fit in with their white colleagues. This constant balancing act can create stress and anxiety in the workplace, impacting their overall job performance and mental well-being. At the time, Republican nominee Donald Trump has reworked his "Black jobs" remark after being criticized for it during the June presidential debate. The choice to rework his remarks may be due to former First Lady Michelle Obama chastising the ex-president during the Democratic National Convention. Trump claimed that millions of immigrants are taking Black jobs, but many took the opportunity to take the phrase back. Trump claimed that Biden and Harris are allowing millions of people to come into the country, taking Black jobs and many Hispanic jobs ( MSN, 2024).

References

AHRQ. (2017, April).  Delivery Hospitalizations Involving Preeclampsia and Eclampsia, 2005-2014 #222. Hcup-Us.ahrq.gov. https://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb222-Preeclampsia-Eclampsia-Delivery-Trends.jsp?utm_source=ahrq&utm_medium=en-1&utm_term=&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=ahrq_en4_25_2017

Burke, M. (2020, November 6).  Death of Black mother after birth of child highlights racial disparities in maternal mortality. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/death-black-mother-after-birth-first-child-highlights-racial-disparities-n1246841

Garner, R., & Black Hawk Hancock. (2014).  Social Theory: Continuity and Confrontation : a Reader. University Of Toronto Press ; Toronto.

Grabenstein, H. (2022, November 21).  “When districts can’t find teachers, students suffer.” Here’s why teacher shortages are disproportionately hurting low-income schools. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/when-districts-cant-find-teachers-students-suffer-heres-why-teacher-shortages-are-disproportionately-hurting-low-income-schools

Welch, K., Lehmann, P. S., Chouhy, C., & Chiricos, T. (2022). Cumulative racial and ethnic disparities along the school-to-prison pipeline.  Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,  59(5), 002242782110705. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224278211070501