1. How is race socially constructed, and what effect does this have?
Biologically racial divisions are illogical, often with more differences within racial categories rather than between them. However, socially, one’s technical race is less important than what others perceive them to be. Race is derived in perception of others, not biological formation. Omi and Winant explained that our individual, often disparate, conceptions of race are based on individual experiences, yet those foundations create a way in which we interpret, categorize, and form expectations about people based on their race or ethnicity.
Race is socially constructed by the agents of socialization: family, media, peers, etc. Although the manifest function of media is entertainment, the latent function is learning carefully crafted representations of race, and therefore developing prejudices. The media illustrates racial stereotypes and uses minority identities for punchlines, or often lacks any representation of racial and ethnic minorities. Jane Elliot demonstrated how one with authority in a group can construct race, by which I mean create a social value in physical characteristics. She utilized her power to verbally harass and degrade the lesser-eyed students by explicitly labeling mistakes as a result of their eye color. This is the key to racial construction: convincing a group that certain characteristics present in a racial group are a result of their race.
The symbolic value of a physical characteristic is a prejudice, which most often leads to bias. While declaring explicit bias and expressing it in overt discrimination has become a faux pas, implicit biases are still prevalent in this generation. Being that predominantly those in power (in government and upper levels of most American industries) are white, and have been taught to have a bias favoring other white people, these biases perpetuate the same racialized power structures that have existed for centuries. Even members of non-white racial or ethnic categories can acquiesce and believe in white superiority. The Doll Test showed how whiteness is taught as superior, even to children of color. Through the lens of the social conflict theory, race is tool to oppress groups.
The existence of bias, often based off characteristics present in the minority of a racial category, leads to discrimination. As a group is perceived socially as inferior or innately worse, however that stereotypes takes its form, and is treated worse, then the looking-glass self is more negatively warped. For example, a Black student in one of the prison-style high schools grows up being treated like a criminal, especially because school’s zero-tolerance policies unfairly target Black and Latino students (Braz & Williams 132). That rejectment from mainstream society makes criminal behavior more enticing, especially if other job offers are hard to find. This perpetuates the cycle of prejudice and discrimination that is institutionally pervasive. We see how race is integrated in the structure, and innate inequality, of the government and the criminal justice system.
2. How has learning about race and the criminal justice system affected the development of your sociological imagination?
We are in the ever-continuing process of writing the racial narrative of mankind. The racial system, as it now stands, is a result of the legacy before us. Being that America’s wealth and prosperity was stolen from the labor of slaves, we are still recovering from that inequality and the mindset it represents. Furthermore the inequality created in wealth would forever perpetuate itself in our economy, because as explained by Thomas Pickety, the rate of return on investment will always be higher than inflation, so inequality perpetuates and worsens itself. Logically Black Americans would hold less wealth than white Americans, with inflation against their side on the journey of social mobility. Moreover that economic status was perpetuated through institutional oppression.
Current racial systems are a shadow of what came before as those in power have learned how to be racist more covertly. The illusion of the drug war is that it opposes drugs as the enemy. (Personally I believe that the war on drugs was conceived for multiple purposes; one of which was eliminating the competition of other drug vendors. There is evidence that the CIA sold crack-cocaine, so the entire war could have been motivated by a potential drug monopoly. However, some might label this as a conspiracy theory that is unrelated to race and consequently grade me poorly, so I will not elaborate further.) The real enemy of the war on drugs is Americans, predominantly people of color. Alexander explains that the war on drugs provided the opportunity to combine military weaponry and fighting tactics with racial biases. Although nothing in the guidelines or legislature behind the war on drugs says to target Black people, they also lack definite limits on police discretion, which creates the opportunity for officers to rely on their biases. As demonstrated by Illinois 2010 prison census, Black people face higher rates of incarceration and over-representation in total prison population. This shows how the cycle of prejudice and discrimination perpetuates itself, because those ex-convicts are less likely to gain legal employment.
A sociological imagination requires the understanding that the drug war is not isolated. It is one of many measures to maintain the same power hierarchies. The collective narrative around race are a collection of these patterns. I can see how individuals, not through their own fault, fall into the roles defined by history through the cycle of prejudice and discrimination. Because of my whiteness, I have been given the option to choose how much I want to be aware of race. But a sociological imagination requires that I understand how my individual role, with my allocated privilege, can play a role in the greater social narrative.
3. How, if at all, can problems dealing with race and racial inequality be solved?
I would advocate for racial-nihilism, but I understand that others can find their race and ethnicity as a valuable, cultural identity. Ideally we could learn how to acknowledge differences without assigning value to them. Nonetheless there would have to be a massive shift in collective consciousness around race. Black Lives Matter promotes that even if they lack a clear direction. Because the problem has become institutional, it has to begin being solved there. Money funding the War on Drugs and over-bloated prisons must be re-allocated to schools in lower-income, non-white neighborhoods. This will help break the cycle of prejudice and discrimination because education can provide the foundation for social mobility.
The solution also requires massive social changes, which can begin in media. More TV series and movies need to represent people of color as full, complex characters who represent more than a joke or a stereotype. By showing people -- and allowing them to connect with and relate to -- different races and ethnicities equally, the next generation will be socialized to see that way and form less division along racialized lines. Smaller social movements are just as relevant as larger ones. Activities like Jane Elliot’s can be employed through various industries, so that teachers, officers of the law, and others in positions of authority can understand race as a social construct and therefore they take a role in perpetuating it or not.
Unfortunately, all efforts to end racial inequality are by victims of that oppression. Like in the Zimbardo prison experiment, a group in power will seek to continue that power. We saw this with a form of race in Elliot’s experiments with the favored-eyes groups. Racism has become more covert as a result of people of color speaking out, but it lingers because of the desire to maintain the existing power structure and its privileges.
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