Downloads   Galeries   Forums   Audios   Vidéos   Liens   Livre d´or   Partenaires   Contact   
  Accueil
  Actualité
  Régions/Peuples
  Historique
  Sawanité
  Le Ngondo
  Tourisme
  Littérature
  VIP
  F.A.Q
  Agendas
  Evénements
  Annonces
  Projets
  Communauté



      


05.12.2010

Race as Biology is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem is Real 

 

Race as Biology.

When I first started teaching “race and ethnicity” at a large state university in the early 1990s, many of the textbooks in sociology defined “ethnicity” as cultural (e.g., language, religion, clothing, food, rituals) and “race” as, at least partially, “biological” (e.g., skin color, hair texture, “phenotype” – roughly face shape). Most scholars and textbooks within sociology have moved away from this crude definitional distinction, but the notion that race is a biological one has deep historical roots.

The idea that race is a biological, discrete and meaningful scientific category emerged beginning in the 17th century (1600s) and solidified in the 19th century (1800s), often based on armchair-speculation about different cultures encountered through colonialism. These baseless claims were used as ideological justification for enslaving people to steal their labor so that white colonists could extract (illegal) profit from that labor. This is the part that people miss when they argue “there’s always been racism, and there always will be.” Racist ideology has a specific history, it started a a moment in time (for a discussion of what the world was like before that, see this book). This is important because if racist ideology was created it can also be dismantled.

The rise in the idea that race is a biological category very closely tied to the development of science, but that’s different than saying race is biological. The vast majority of those doing research in this area that race is a social construction. Certainly, biology matters. And, there are physical differences between people. But what’s significant about these when it comes to race is not the biology of those differences, but the social weight we attach to them. The fact is that race still matters because racism is a real social problem.

Racism as Social Problem.

So, if race isn’t a meaningful biological category, shouldn’t we just stop talking about it? No, because the fact is that race as a social category remains a significant predictor of which groups get access to goods and resource and which groups face barriers. While the Civil Rights Act outlawed de jure forms of discrimination in public accommodations, housing, employment and education, the fact is that de facto discrimination persists. While overt individual discrimination is often easier to identify, it’s also part of that de jure discrimination that was outlawed. More pervasive today in many ways is institutional discrimination—the uneven access by group membership to resources, status, and power that stems from seemingly neutral policies and practices of organizations and institutions.

There are lots of examples of this form of racism today. The educational system is failing, and its failing black and brown kids more than any other. This failure is what one scholar has called “the educational debt.” Unemployment among blacks in the U.S. is expected to reach a 25-year high this year, hovering between 17.2% and 20%, double the unemployment rate for whites, which is around 9.8% nationally. The criminal justice system is perhaps the leading example of institutional racism. With 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States now has more than 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, and many of these are African American. One in every fifteen African American men lives in a prison or jail cell, while powerful corporations like CCA profit from this system.

These systems work together, as well. There’s an excellent – if chilling – example of this in the recent documentary, “The Lottery,” (a better film about educational inequality than the Gates-promoted “Waiting for Superman”). In the film, Susan Taylor former editor of Essence magazine and now a philanthropist, tells of a story of having a rich, white woman (unnamed) in her living room for a fund-raiser for her charity. The woman tells Taylor, “I want you to put my husband’s corporation out of business. They build prisons. To estimate the number of cells they’ll need they find the number of black boys failing fourth grade and project from the number of prison cells they’ll need based on that number.” Taylor says she’d heard that before but didn’t believe it until then. There’s also powerful research that explores the way the school-to-prison pipeline words for young, black boys. Ann Arnett Ferguson’s Bad Boys (University of Michigan Press, 1991) and Pedro Noguero’s The Trouble with Black Boys (John Wiley & Sons, 2008) are just two examples of this growing research field.

One final aspect of this racism as a social problem is that within each of these areas – education, employment, and criminal justice – is that race as biology is often used as a justification by haters to explain the inequality caused by systemic discrimination.

I ♥ Haters

Jessie Daniels, Ph.D.

 

Source:  | Hits: 30435 | Envoyer à des amis  ! | Imprimer ! | Réagir(0)

PLUS DE NOUVELLES


  EXCEL NGOH NI NSONGO 2006: AVANT PROPOS
( | 14.07.2006 | 33351 hits  | 0 R)

  EXCEL NGOH NI NSONGO 2006: PROGRAMME DES ACTIVITES
( | 14.07.2006 | 30793 hits  | 0 R)

  Le mythe de Ngok-Lituba
( | 13.07.2006 | 42192 hits  | 1 R)

  Nécrologie : L`inhumation d`Essaka politisée
( | 12.07.2006 | 35383 hits  | 0 R)

  Musique : Longuè Longuè en liberté
( | 12.07.2006 | 37362 hits  | 0 R)

  Le libérateur libéré
( | 11.07.2006 | 37473 hits  | 0 R)

  Obsèques de Gustave Essaka : La contribution de la Cud toujours attendue
( | 10.07.2006 | 36141 hits  | 0 R)

  La dernière déclaration des biens du 1er triumvir
( | 05.07.2006 | 35582 hits  | 0 R)

  GUSTAVE ESSAKA EST MORT
( | 02.07.2006 | 45483 hits  | 1 R)

  SAWA: LE TEMPS DE L´ACTION
( | 02.07.2006 | 36919 hits  | 1 R)

  HISTOIRE DE DJÉKI-LA-NJA MBÉ
( | 30.06.2006 | 34144 hits  | 0 R)

  Association des Etudiants BAKAKA
( | 25.06.2006 | 31694 hits  | 0 R)

  Sawanité : Le vade-mecum du bâtisseur Sawa
( | 21.06.2006 | 35634 hits  | 1 R)

  Journée de l’Enfant Africain: IL Y A 30 ANS, SOWETO
( | 19.06.2006 | 39222 hits  | 0 R)

  SAWANITE: DECLARATION D´HONNEUR DE PAUL MENESSIER
( | 17.06.2006 | 36584 hits  | 2 R)

  BRIEF HISTORY of THE BAKOSSI
( | 17.06.2006 | 34702 hits  | 0 R)

  Coupe du monde de football 2006 : coups de sifflet contre l’Afrique Entre vol et injustice
( | 17.06.2006 | 24917 hits  | 0 R)

  GRAND SAWA ET COMMUNICATION - DEUXIEME FEUILLE DE ROUTE
( | 16.06.2006 | 33053 hits  | 0 R)

  EXCEL NGOH NI NSONGO 2006:
( | 15.06.2006 | 25052 hits  | 0 R)

  Kum’a Ndumbè III: Un prince tout Afric’Avenir
( | 14.06.2006 | 27555 hits  | 0 R)

  Bakassi: L´integralité de l´accord paraphé ce Lundi 12 Juin 2006 à Greentree, New York (USA)...
( | 14.06.2006 | 25925 hits  | 0 R)

  Italia 90: Roger Milla, le "Vieux Lion" rugit à travers les âges
( | 13.06.2006 | 35987 hits  | 0 R)

  Douleur: La peur du succès
( | 13.06.2006 | 33136 hits  | 0 R)

  Jardin secret: Denise Epoté Durand, journaliste
( | 12.06.2006 | 36977 hits  | 0 R)

  DECCA: Une famille au service du MAKOSSA
( | 12.06.2006 | 35119 hits  | 0 R)

  Richard BONA
( | 12.06.2006 | 34252 hits  | 0 R)

  La dernière partition de Ebanda Manfred
( | 12.06.2006 | 34222 hits  | 0 R)

  la Collectivité traditionnelle de Bonapriso au secours des hôpitaux.
( | 12.06.2006 | 29522 hits  | 0 R)

  Interview: Sergeo Polo
( | 11.06.2006 | 32794 hits  | 0 R)

  Ernest Lottin Ebongué
( | 11.06.2006 | 30491 hits  | 0 R)

  Jardin secret: Géo Masso, chanteur
( | 11.06.2006 | 26742 hits  | 0 R)

  Femmes Ecrivains SAWA: Sous la cendre le feu....
( | 10.06.2006 | 46917 hits  | 0 R)

  Marie-Angèle KINGUE
( | 10.06.2006 | 32629 hits  | 0 R)

  Thérèse KUOH MOUKOURY
( | 10.06.2006 | 30193 hits  | 0 R)

  Nathalie ETOKE
( | 10.06.2006 | 27939 hits  | 0 R)

  Frieda EKOTTO
( | 10.06.2006 | 27178 hits  | 0 R)

  Lydie DOOH BUNYA
( | 10.06.2006 | 26752 hits  | 0 R)

  Elizabeth EWOMBE-MOUNDO
( | 10.06.2006 | 26370 hits  | 0 R)

  Geneviève NGOSSO KOUO
( | 10.06.2006 | 25646 hits  | 0 R)

  PAROLE A LA FEMME SAWA
( | 02.06.2006 | 24421 hits  | 0 R)

  Qui est SAWA, Qui ne l´est pas ?
( | 01.06.2006 | 46788 hits  | 0 R)

  Francis BEBEY : Le musicien
( | 28.05.2006 | 38516 hits  | 0 R)

  Francis BEBEY : Artiste, Cinéaste, Ecrivain
( | 28.05.2006 | 32576 hits  | 0 R)

  Hommage à un digne fils SAWA, Hommage à Francis BEBEY
( | 28.05.2006 | 30983 hits  | 0 R)

  Hommage à Francis BEBEY
( | 28.05.2006 | 30775 hits  | 0 R)

  Eko Roosevelt, l´ Echo Toujours Retentissant
( | 27.05.2006 | 44119 hits  | 0 R)

  Sawanité et Pacte des Générations de la lettre à l’esprit
( | 27.05.2006 | 26857 hits  | 0 R)

  LA SAWANITE AU SERVICE DU PACTE DES GENERATIONS "PREMIERE FEUILLE DE ROUTE"
( | 26.05.2006 | 43715 hits  | 1 R)

  SAWANITE: Le printemps de la conscience Sawa ou l’appel au sursaut mémoriel
( | 26.05.2006 | 36547 hits  | 0 R)

  TABLEAU D´HONNEUR des Membres actifs de PEUPLESAWA.COM
( | 20.05.2006 | 34773 hits  | 0 R)



   0 |  1 |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5 |  6 |  7 |  8 |  9 |  10 |  11 |  12 |  13 |  14 |  15 |      ... >|



Jumeaux Masao "Ngondo"

Remember Moamar Kadhafi

LIVING CHAINS OF COLONISATION






© Peuplesawa.com 2007 | WEB Technology : BN-iCOM by Biangue Networks